PUCL activists submit memo to Raje

Jaipur: The Peoples Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), in a memorandum to chief minister Vasundhara Raje, on Wednesday demanded that the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, be withdrawn with immediate effect. It staged a protest also near the assembly.

The memorandum said that referring the bill to assembly's select committee means the "black law", which came into existence through an ordinance issued on September 7, will remain in force till December 4. "Such a law should not be there even for a single day. The government should withdraw the ordinance during the current assembly session itself," the memorandum said.

The PUCL claimed that amendments in CrPC were made with an intension to cover up the misdeeds of elected representatives from a Sarpanch to the chief minister and of bureaucrats up to the rank of chief secretary. "The government was, however, projecting the amendments as a sincere effort to protect honest government servants from judicial and police harassment," said Kavita Srivastava, PUCL state president.

The memorandum highlighted that the government has not hesitated even in breaching the boundaries of the executive and the judiciary through this ordinance. "The amendment to CrPC sections 156(3) and 190 is an attack on the independence of the judiciary," said Srivastava.

The PUCL activists expressed anguish that protection granted to victims of sexual offences was being extended to corrupt babus. "Adding IPC section 228 (B) is an irony. Such a draconian law is in force now in the state is a shame," said an activist.

The activists slammed the government's defence of the amendments on the ground that about 73% cases registered through CrPC section 156(3) were found to be false. "If the police do not conduct a proper investigation, any enquiry could go wrong. The government should also have made it clear how many court applications have been filed to open the final report (FR) for seeking investigations. Police filing FR is not the final word in an investigation," Srivastava pointed out.