NEW DELHI: While discharging three people accused in a northeast Delhi riots case, a city court on Thursday said police’s failure to conduct a proper investigation was a “colossal” and “criminal” waste of taxpayers’ time and money.
It added that when history would look back at Delhi’s worst communal riots since partition, the failure of police to conduct a proper, scientific investigation would “surely torment the sentinels of democracy”. The court said it couldn’t permit such cases to meander mindlessly, taking precious judicial time when it was an “open-and-shut” matter.
Additional sessions judge Vinod Yadav said the sort of probe conducted and the lack of supervision by superior officers clearly showed that the investigating agency had merely tried to pull wool over the court’s eyes and nothing else.
He said he was pained to note that no real/effective investigation had been carried out and merely by recording the statement of constable Gyan Singh, that too at a belated stage, especially when the accused were already under arrest in another case, police had just tried to show the case as “solved”. “The evidence brought on record miserably falls short for framing charges against the accused,” it was observed.
After a long investigation, police had shown only five witnesses, one being the victim, the other the constable, one duty officer, a formal witness and the investigating officer.
The court discharged Shah Alam, Rashid Saifi and Shadab of all charges related to alleged vandalism, looting and setting on fire the shop of one Harpreet Singh by a mob. It noted that there were a large number of accused who had been languishing in jail for the last 18 months or so merely because the trial in their cases had not been initiated and police just seemed busy filing supplementary chargesheets.
“The precious judicial time of this court is being wasted in giving dates in those cases. A lot of time is being consumed by cases like the present one, where there is hardly any investigation carried out by police,” the court observed.
The judge said the case appeared to have been solved merely by filing the chargesheet without any real effort being made to trace eyewitnesses, the real accused and technical evidence. “This does not appeal to the senses that nobody watched such a large crowd of rioters when they were on a spree of vandalism, looting and arson,” he added.
“The complaint was required to be investigated with a fair amount of sensitivity and skill, but it was missing and recording of the statement of constable Singh on March 3, 2020 was the ‘be all and end all’ of the entire investigation,” said the court.
Coming down heavily on police, the court said, “The casualty in the matter is the pain and agony suffered by the omplainant/victim, whose case has virtually remained unsolved, callous and indolent investigation, lack of supervision by superior officers and criminal waste of the time and money of the taxpayer.” The court noted that even after receiving two written complaints, police didn’t start investigations till March 2, 2020, for reasons best known to them. All of a sudden, on March 3, 2020, the constable “emerged in the picture and the IO leapfrogged that opportunity” to record his statement and consequently arrested the accused persons from
Mandoli jail. It added that the silence and delay was not only fatal to the case, but also gave an impression that the constable had been “planted/introduced” to “solve” the case.
The other observations were that the accused had not been specifically named in the FIR, no specific role had been assigned to them, no recovery of any sort was made, no eyewitness account was available on record and no CCTV footage or video clip confirmed their presence at the scene of the crime. There was no material to even remotely show that they had participated in the criminal conspiracy.
It added that when history would look back at Delhi’s worst communal riots since partition, the failure of police to conduct a proper, scientific investigation would “surely torment the sentinels of democracy”. The court said it couldn’t permit such cases to meander mindlessly, taking precious judicial time when it was an “open-and-shut” matter.
Additional sessions judge Vinod Yadav said the sort of probe conducted and the lack of supervision by superior officers clearly showed that the investigating agency had merely tried to pull wool over the court’s eyes and nothing else.
He said he was pained to note that no real/effective investigation had been carried out and merely by recording the statement of constable Gyan Singh, that too at a belated stage, especially when the accused were already under arrest in another case, police had just tried to show the case as “solved”. “The evidence brought on record miserably falls short for framing charges against the accused,” it was observed.
After a long investigation, police had shown only five witnesses, one being the victim, the other the constable, one duty officer, a formal witness and the investigating officer.
The court discharged Shah Alam, Rashid Saifi and Shadab of all charges related to alleged vandalism, looting and setting on fire the shop of one Harpreet Singh by a mob. It noted that there were a large number of accused who had been languishing in jail for the last 18 months or so merely because the trial in their cases had not been initiated and police just seemed busy filing supplementary chargesheets.
“The precious judicial time of this court is being wasted in giving dates in those cases. A lot of time is being consumed by cases like the present one, where there is hardly any investigation carried out by police,” the court observed.
The judge said the case appeared to have been solved merely by filing the chargesheet without any real effort being made to trace eyewitnesses, the real accused and technical evidence. “This does not appeal to the senses that nobody watched such a large crowd of rioters when they were on a spree of vandalism, looting and arson,” he added.
“The complaint was required to be investigated with a fair amount of sensitivity and skill, but it was missing and recording of the statement of constable Singh on March 3, 2020 was the ‘be all and end all’ of the entire investigation,” said the court.
Coming down heavily on police, the court said, “The casualty in the matter is the pain and agony suffered by the omplainant/victim, whose case has virtually remained unsolved, callous and indolent investigation, lack of supervision by superior officers and criminal waste of the time and money of the taxpayer.” The court noted that even after receiving two written complaints, police didn’t start investigations till March 2, 2020, for reasons best known to them. All of a sudden, on March 3, 2020, the constable “emerged in the picture and the IO leapfrogged that opportunity” to record his statement and consequently arrested the accused persons from
Mandoli jail. It added that the silence and delay was not only fatal to the case, but also gave an impression that the constable had been “planted/introduced” to “solve” the case.
The other observations were that the accused had not been specifically named in the FIR, no specific role had been assigned to them, no recovery of any sort was made, no eyewitness account was available on record and no CCTV footage or video clip confirmed their presence at the scene of the crime. There was no material to even remotely show that they had participated in the criminal conspiracy.
