In a relief to four members of the management and teaching fraternity of a pre-school that was operating at Bellandur, the High Court of Karnataka quashed the FIRs registered against them in February on the charges of aggravated sexual assault, abetting sexual assault, rape, and unnatural sexual offence by arraigning them as co-accused along with the prime accused, Manjunath, who was a transport assistant at the school.
“The allegations made in the FIRs and the complaint, even if they are taken at their face value and accepted in its entirety, do not prima facie constitute the offences alleged against them. As such, continuation of the proceedings against the petitioners would be an abuse of process of law,” said Justice Aravind Kumar while allowing the petitions filed by Veena, Bhaktipreeta Dutta, Saraswathi and Ayisha.
There cannot be any dispute that prosecution would be at liberty to proceed, as per the FIR, against Manjunath, the court said in its recent order.
The police, in four FIRs, had included charges of aggravated sexual assault, abetting sexual assault under Sections, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 17 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012; and Sections 376, 377 and 188 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) even against the school’s director, principal, co-ordinator, and a teacher.
However, before the High Court, the police had claimed that only the charge under Section 188 [disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant] of the IPC attracted against the four co-accused.
Apart from Section 188 of IPC, the police had also filed an affidavit before the court stating that they were proposing to invoke Section 21 [for failing to report the incident of sexual offence] of POCSO Act against the four.
Abuse of process of law
However, the court found that the police could not have registered a case under Section 188 without a private complaint filed by a duly authorised officer complaining about non-adherence of direction as mandated in the law. It was the case of the police that the school had not adhered to some of the child safety guidelines issued by the city Police Commissioner.
Mr. Justice Kumar, who had summoned and perused the station house diary of Marathahalli police station, also found an entry related to the management of the pre-school franchise informing the station house officer on February 17/18, 2017 about a complaint from a parent that the accused, Manjunath, had sexually harassed a child.
Also, the court found from the records that the management had undertaken police verification, as part of child safety guidelines, about the background of Manjunath, and the HAL police had issued an endorsement stating that “there are no adverse remarks [about Manjunath] in HAL police station records”.
Meanwhile, the court clarified that quashing of the proceedings would not come in the way of authorities initiating proceedings against the petitioners in the manner known to law.