Bombay High Court raps Pune’s top cop, calls for bootlegger’s early release

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court recently came down heavily on the Commissioner of Police, Pune — Rashmi Shukla, for her “callous and casual” approach in deciding a plea challenging her orders to detain a ‘bootlegger.’ The HC though appreciated her “efforts” for detaining the bootlegger, however, quashed her orders and directed to release the man.

A division bench of Justice Satyaranjan Dharmadhikari and Justice Bharati Dangre was irked to get no explanation from Shukla, who failed to assign a reason for the delay caused by her in deciding the representation of the bootlegger, challenging her orders. Shukla had passed an order to detain Anil Vitkar (32) under the relevant provisions of Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Slumlords, Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Dangerous Persons, Video Pirates, Sand Smugglers and Persons engaged in Black-marketing of Essential Commodities Act, 1981.

Her orders were challenged by Vitkar, who had made a representation before the Home Department, which in turn had asked Shukla, who is also the Detaining Authority (in Pune) to file her say on the matter at the earliest. However, she delayed the entire process by nearly 16 days.

Having heard the contentions of the parties, the judges said, “She offers no explanation for the 16 days delays and on the contrary, she made a bold statement that there is no delay on her part. We are surprised by such an attitude of a high ranking officer who is authorised by the government to pass the order of detention and to deal with the liberty of an individual and is expected to be conscious of the drastic consequence of preventive detention.” Interestingly, to defend herself, Shukla had cited the number of government holidays and weekly holidays, which according to her led to delay.

The judges appreciated her ‘worthy’ efforts to detain Vitkar preventively. “We are at pains to observe all her earlier efforts are a sheer waste since, we are required to set forth such a detenu at liberty only on account of delay in taking a decision on the representation which has not been explained by the officer. We are constrained to declare that the continued detention of the detenu is bad in law,” the judges said.