High Court upholds order on examining more witnesses

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 5

More than seven years after the Police Complaints Authority held that three police officers, including an SHO, grossly abused their powers, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has upheld the trial court’s order summoning additional witnesses.

The order by Justice Arvind Singh Sangwan came on a petition filed by Ashwani Kumar against the UT, Chandigarh, and another respondent. He was seeking the setting aside of an order dated September 13, 2017, passed by the trial court vide which the application filed by the complainant for summoning additional witnesses was allowed.

The FIR in the matter was registered on October 17, 2013, for house trespass and other offences under Sections 380, 448 and 454 of the IPC at the Industrial Area police station. The Bench was told that the complainant, Sukhdeep Singh, was a tenant under the petitioner in a shop-cum-flat in Sector 30. He lodged the FIR on allegations that the police took forcible possession from him and took away the articles lying in the premises. 

Seeking the summoning of three persons, the complainant had added that he was unlawfully dispossessed from the tenanted premises in June 2011. Despite running from pillar to post, the investigation was not done properly.

It was stated that one of the persons was a witness to the incident, whereas the other witnesses were regarding an inquiry conducted by the police to show the manner in which the officials failed to perform their duties. The trial court, vide an impugned order dated September 13, 2017, allowed the application.

In reply to the petition, counsel for the complainant described the matter as a case of police high-handedness. After 28 months of the incident, the police registered an FIR, that too when the petitioner made various complaints to the police authorities. His counsel added that the Police Complaints Authority observed: “....All three officers... have grossly abused their powers by helping Ashwani Khanna in his illegal act of dispossessing Sukhdeep Singh from the tenanted premises. The presence of tenant’s goods in the premises is a strong and unrebuttable circumstance and a ground reality to prove his possession”. 

His counsel further submitted that a regular departmental inquiry was conducted against the “erring police officials”. Inspector Malkit Singh and SI Tilak Raj were found guilty in the departmental inquiry by the DSP (Crime), UT, and were punished in accordance with the service rules.

“After hearing the counsel for the parties, I find no ground to interfere in the impugned order passed by the trial court in allowing the application. Two witnesses were cited as a prosecution witnesses, but they neither were given up, nor the prosecution or the public prosecutor made any effort to examine them. “Therefore, the trial court has rightly allowed the application filed by the respondent/complainant”.