Hisar POCSO case: Punjab and Haryana High Court asks Education Department, DGP to submit action-taken report

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 21

The Punjab and Haryana HC has called upon the police authorities and the Department of School Education to give details of the action taken on the basis of a report by an SIT in a case where a student was allegedly forced by a teacher to indulge in unnatural sex.

The direction came after Justice Suvir Sehgal of the High Court observed that a perusal of the report showed “a very shocking state of affairs”. Justice Sehgal also dismissed “as withdrawn” a petition filed by the teacher. He was seeking regular bail in an FIR registered on May 22, 2020, for unnatural offences and criminal intimidation under Sections 377 and 506 of the IPC, besides the provisions of the POCSO Act and Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act at the Sadar police station in Hisar.

His counsel had earlier told the court that the petitioner had been falsely implicated by the first informant as he had forwarded complaints received from students in 2018. The petitioner at the relevant time was working as a teacher.

Keeping in view the facts, the HC had, in October last year, directed the Hisar SP to examine the documents attached by the petitioner, along with the police diary, before filing a status report.

The Bench, subsequently, made it clear that the direction was issued in order to maintain balance. On one hand, the petitioner’s personal liberty was at stake and, on the other, a heinous crime was alleged to have been committed if the allegations made in the FIR were taken as a gospel truth.