Court dismisses plea for witness re-examination in 2018 firing case

A local court has dismissed an application from one of the prosecution witnesses in the six-year-old case of firing at F Bar and Restaurant, Sector 26, seeking for him to be allowed for re-examination and recording his statements afresh.

The firing incident in question took place during the birthday celebrations of Sehdev Salaria.

The police had registered the FIR against the accused on November 20, 2018, on the complaint of Deepak Kundu, who told the police that he and his friends had gone to bar to attend Salaria’s birthday party.

When the party was underway, the accused attacked him and his friends. Two of the accused pulled out pistols and opened fire with an intention to kill them.

In the current application, the witness, Pankaj Jhakhar, claimed that he identified the accused persons under pressure and coercion of Chandigarh Police. Jakhar said the police officials was threatened and forced him to identify Rinku, Rohit Bhardwaj, Chetan Munjal, Arjun Thakur and Rajesh Kumar as the assailants.

In view of this he prayed that he be re-examined in the court to place on record the true facts of the case.

Public Prosecutor Hukam Singh opposed the application and said it was examined as a witness in compliance with the direction given to the investigating officer to produce the witness. At the time of examination, the witness did not apprise the court that he was deposing under pressure and as such he has deposed voluntarily in the court.

After hearing of the arguments, the court said the prayer of the applicant cannot be allowed at this stage, The statement was recorded on February 21, 2024, before the Additional Sessions Judge.

At that time, he was cross-examined at length by the defence counsel.

During his examination, Pankaj did not disclose to the court that he was being threated by the police to depose against the facts of the case.

The court noted that the applicant, when appearing in the witness box, had not uttered even a single word that he has given the statement under some threat nor any observation has been made by the then Presiding Officer about his demoneur that he is not deposing voluntarily and did not report duress or threat from any quarter for the last one year.

“Mere fact that on the day of examination of applicant, he was accompanied by a police official does not mean that his statement has been recorded under some pressure or duress of police. In the absence of any clear or cogent reason for the re-examination of the applicant, prima-facie no case is made out to allow the applicant to re-examine him,” it added, while dismissing the application.