* Asks DGP to take action against IO
Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Apr 9: High Court has lambasted the prosecution for handling the criminal cases like murder carelessly and casually and dismissed the challenging of the acquittal of a person in a murder case with the direction to Director General of Police to hold disciplinary action against the Investigation Officer.
The Division Bench of Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Rahul Bharti dismissed the appeal of Government challenging the acquittal in murder of a young woman with the observation that the appeal is lacking merit of any worth.
The DB recorded that the court would be turning its eye from a very disturbing aspect of the case which the court said, if left untouched would be doing a serious undermining of criminal administration of justice and that is the trial court after having clearly held that the case was built upon two planted witnesses by the prosecution just let the matter rest there.
The two prosecution witnesses, court added, were not self-planted but were found to be so planted by the IO in the case and this conduct and act of the IO in the case can mean two things, one by doing so he actually let the real crime doers escape the process of law or else the IO ridden by his inefficiency and incompetence took the case just a matter of file making to add to his service credit of having solved a criminal case of homicidal death of a young woman.
Court on filing of appeal against the trial court judgment said there has not even uttered a whisper as to counter the said finding of the trial court about the two prosecution witnesses’ credibility and veracity.
Court said that it means the Government has also taken the fact accepted that the IO did plant the witnesses to book a family consisting of aged parents and then a minor daughter in a false accusation.
“The trial court ought to have resorted to active use of provisions against the IO so as to set a loud and clear message not only to persons volunteering false testimony in criminal case but also to the Investigation Officers that they do it at their peril without any reciprocating leniency and let off from a criminal court of law”, DB recorded.
The Court has directed the Director General of Police to order a departmental and disciplinary proceedings under the Police Rules in force against the IO Sanjeet Sharma, in case he still continues to be in service.
The trial Court while announcing the acquittal of persons who was made involved in the crime by prosecution arrived at the self-inviting inevitable conclusion that the Prosecution has failed to establish a doubt free nexus between the said person and the guilt, as a result whereof, the acquittal of the said person warranted itself and was so acquitted and setting the Babu Ram to his long lost liberty.
The DB said the appeal against an acquittal in a criminal case needs to be reproduced for the sake of highlighting and emphasizing the fact that in the matter of filing an appeal against an original order of acquittal in a criminal case to the High Court.
Court said, the action on the part of the State Government in directing the Public Prosecutor to present an appeal, inherently, envisages a corresponding responsible thinking at the end of the Government for the purpose of undertaking the exercise to call in question the acquittal in a given criminal case.
“A direction to the public prosecutor from the Government inherently suggests that there has to be an exercise of application of mind in evaluating the acquittal judgment for the purpose of formulating the decision to call in question the acquittal in the case and that application of mind would get transferred and translated in the memo of acquittal appeal”, Court said.
The DB said, the content of the appeal of the Government, exposes the very casualness of the intent on the part of the authorities, who were engaged in the matter for the purpose of taking a call to assail the acquittal judgment in appeal.
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