Blackmailing activists on rise: HC : The Tribune India

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Blackmailing activists on rise: HC

Chandigarh: Social justice activism may be gaining momentum for bringing about change, but it has also given rise to a class of “activists” indulging in blackmail. Taking note of their increasing numbers, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has minced no words to say illegal gain was their singular objective.



Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 14

Social justice activism may be gaining momentum for bringing about change, but it has also given rise to a class of “activists” indulging in blackmail. Taking note of their increasing numbers, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has minced no words to say illegal gain was their singular objective.

“So-called social activists have cropped up in the recent past in a large number, inasmuch as they are generally found blackmailing the official machinery and the system with the sole motive of unlawful gain,” observed Justice Ramendra Jain.

The assertion came as Justice Jain dismissed a petition by Dalbir Singh Saroha for impartial investigation into an unnatural death more than two decades back. Justice Jain asserted that the petitioner had no locus standi to file the petition as he was not even remotely related to deceased Vinod Kumar.

Justice Jain noticed that the police were, on July 2, 1997, chasing “dreaded criminal” Karamveer, aka Dhira, allegedly involved in more than 20 criminal cases. During the process, Dhira allegedly started firing on the police party. In the crossfire, Vinod, allegedly accompanying Dhira, sustained bullet injuries before he died.

Initially, a case for attempt to murder and other offences was registered at the Sonepat City police station on July 3, 1997, under various sections of the IPC and the Arms Act.

Dissatisfied with the investigation, Vinod’s father Om Parkash Chugh had filed a criminal complaint against police officials, alleging his son’s murder in a fake encounter. After legal rigmarole involving filing of petitions and applications, a fresh FIR for murder was registered on March 3, 2000. After due investigation, cancellation report by the police was accepted by an Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate in December 2003 after recording the complainant-father’s protest statement.

Justice Jain observed that Chugh or any of his close relatives did not raise grouse against cancellation since 2003, but the petitioner, as a “public person” and “so-called social activist”, filed the petition for fair and impartial inquiry after 14 years.

Describing it as a futile effort to harass the police and state machinery for exerting undue pressure to favour him, the state counsel asserted that the petitioner had been booked in four cases between 2009 and 2016 and was acquitted in two FIRs while facing trial in other cases.

“The filing of 20 different petitions by the petitioner seems to be his blackmailing device to put undue pressure upon the police. After 14 years of submission of cancellation report, no fruitful purpose can be achieved by reinvestigation into the matter against the death of a person in 1997, around 21 years ago,” Justice Jain concluded.

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