High Court reprimands judicial officer over ‘insolence’

Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, February 22

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has rapped a Haryana judicial officer for being totally “insolent” to prosecution evidence and blindly holding two accused guilty in a kidnapping case.

Acquitting the two more than 16 years after they were convicted by Sonepat Additional Sessions Judge-cum-Fast Track Court, Justice Fateh Deep Singh asserted, “The impugned findings of the trial court are inherently wrong appreciation of the evidence and the law and need to be set aside by way of acceptance of the present appeal.”

Deprecating the manner in which the police tried to “cook up a story and fabricate evidence to rope in accused and strengthen their case through dubious means”, Justice Fateh Deep Singh rapped them for highhandedness.

The case has its genesis in an FIR registered against Dalbir and Bishan in March 2001 for kidnapping, criminal intimidation and other offences at the Civil Lines police station in Sonepat. The Additional Sessions Judge’s court, vide impugned judgment dated August 11, 2004, held both accused guilty on three counts.

Justice Fateh Deep Singh asserted that worthwhile effort was not made to explain delay in case registration. Another factor that aggravated the court’s suspicion was the victim’s acceptance that her father was working in the CBI. As a result, it put the court on guard to examine the prosecution evidence minutely.

Referring to their counsel’s submissions, Justice Fateh Deep Singh noted that the girl was examined the same day at the Sonepat Civil Hospital, but not a single injury was mentioned. “It appears that the police, for obvious reasons to strengthen their case, belatedly came up with the fabricated evidence of a private doctor to show that she suffered injuries at the hands of the accused,” Justice Fateh Deep Singh observed.

Justice Fateh Deep Singh noted that the prosecutrix and prosecution’s case was that the girl was not defiled. “How or in what manner from the undergarment of the girl, through forensic science laboratory report, human semen was detected further complicates the matter that all is not well with the prosecution story,” Justice Fateh Deep Singh added.

Justice Fateh Deep Singh observed that the only semblance of evidence on the girl’s age was through a private school principal, though the basis of the school certificate was anybody’s guess. Justice Fateh Deep Singh asserted that to the mind of this court, such a piece of evidence to prove the victim’s date of birth was against the cannons of law and could not be taken as conclusive piece of evidence worth reliance.

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