Rape ‘victim’ moves Punjab and Haryana High Court

Chandigarh, August 13

Alleging police inaction in a rape case registered against MLA Simarjeet Singh Bains, the “victim” today moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court. She was seeking directions to be made a party in the ongoing case on “monitoring the progress of matters pending against the MP/MLAs”.

Appearing before the Bench of Justice Rajan Gupta and Justice Karamjit Singh, her counsel CM Munjal submitted that a complete list of cases pending against Bains, MLA from Atam Nagar, had not been furnished by the state. This apart, he submitted that the investigation had hardly made progress in any of the cases pending against him.

The Bench observed that the victim’s grievance was that the police had not proceeded further with the probe. The FIR was registered after orders were passed by the Magistrate concerned at Ludhiana. The order was challenged before the HC, but the petitioner remained unsuccessful.

The Bench added: “As per the counsel, the police are sitting tight over the matter and not conducting any investigation because of influence of the MLA. According to him, the matter falls within the ambit of the supervision of such cases as laid down by the SC in Ashwani Kumar Upadhyay versus the Union of India and another WP(Civil) No. 699 of 2016.” The Bench added the main case was pending for August 19. — TNS