A court in Pehowa in Haryana’s Kurukshetra acquitted a washerman in a four-year-old bicycle theft case saying “this matter has shaken the conscience of this court”.
The order further said that the case had forced the court to conclude that a police officer manipulated the entire police system and investigating authorities to settle personal vengeance against an innocent person.
In a 37-page order passed last month, Judicial Magistrate First Class Amitendra Singh observed that it was an exemplary case of an “absolute ill-motivated” and “botched-up investigation”, where some police officers misused their powers to harass an innocent person for the simple reason that he dared to file a complaint against one of their colleagues and succeeded in getting the officer punished by a court of law.
‘Take stringent action’
“This leads this court to a certain question, who will police the police and what will happen if the protectors of society and law themselves behave in a manner which cannot be termed less than illegal?” observed the court. It recommended stringent action against the erring policemen as well as ASI Nagender within three months after conducting departmental enquiry.
The case pertains to the theft of a bicycle belonging to Home Guard Surender Kumar from Pehowa court complex on February 24, 2017. The accused, Krishan Kumar, in his statement, pleaded innocence saying he was being implicated due to “personal enmity” and to “create pressure on him to withdraw a complaint against ASI Nagender”. Mr. Kumar told the court that Nagender beat him up and broke his tooth on November 19, 2010 when he demanded ₹150 from him for washing and ironing his clothes.
He moved a local court and the ASI was convicted on charges of causing hurt and criminal intimidation. The ASI got several fake cases of theft and possession of drugs and illicit liquor registered against Mr. Kumar, but he was acquitted in all of them.
In the present case too, the court observed that the entire deposition of the prosecution witnesses suffered from contradictions on material points, which caused dent in the prosecution case as well as created doubt in the mind of the court. The judge also remarked that the Investigation Officer, also the prosecution witness in the case, “did not knew how to conduct an investigation, or has purposely and intentionally done the investigation in such lackadaisical/callous manner, for the reasons best known to him”.
Defence counsel Sudesh Kumari welcomed the court’s decision saying it would rein in policemen from implicating innocent persons and committing atrocities on them.
