(Reproduced
from Times Of india 13th April 2008 pg 10)
HC: Be careful
in issuing NBWs
Failure To Turn Up At Court Doesn’t
Require Warrant
New Delhi: The Delhi high court has advised
judges to be careful in using the power of issuing
non-bailable warrants and said that in cases related
to bailable offences, a court must not issue a
non-bailable warrant against the accused for their
failure to appear during trial.
Cancelling a magistrate’s NBW against two women,
facing trial for alleged misuse of a property,
Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said, “The judges
should exercise their jurisdiction with care in
future... while a judge presides over criminal
jurisdiction he should not give a misconceived heady
feeling of sense of power where he seeks obedience
losing sight of fundamental principles of
Constitution, rights, criminal jurisprudence and fair
play.”
Justice Kaul’s observations came while
cancelling the warrant issued against Mani Shandly
and Anuradha Thakur by a metropolitan magistrate last
month for their failure to appear in court on March
24.
The two were facing trial since August 2001 after
they were allegedly found running a shop illegally in
GK from a residential premises. Their counsel said
they regularly attended court proceedings, but due to
a confusion in dates, they appeared before the court
on March 25 instead of 24. But the magistrate had
rejected their submission and issued NBW against
them, Singh added. TNN
Ludhiana: The already-tattered image
of the Punjab police hit a new low on Saturday when
four cops, one of them an officer, were found to have
gangraped a 15-year-old in a public park.
Worse was the impunity with which the policemen
committed the rape—Rakh Bagh park is right
behind the deputy commissioner’s house and
surrounded by homes of administrative and judicial
officers.
The girl, who had come from Lucknow to visit her
relatives, had strolled into the garden late on
Friday evening with a boy. The policemen, seeing the
two alone, stopped them and began quizzing them.
As the ASI, Inderjit Singh, was in uniform, the two
got scared and did as they were ordered. The cops
took the two to a secluded area and while the others
bullied the boy into silence, the ASI raped the girl.
The rest took turns to brutalize her. Then they just
walked away.
Sunny Verma, the girl’s companion, said:
“We were sitting on the bench when these cops
came and asked us what we were doing. They took us
aside separately and when I heard the girl crying, I
tried to rush to her but two men slapped me and held
me there.” When the perpetrators left, he saw
his friend’s clothes in disarray.
Passersby saw the victims weeping and took the two to
deputy commissioner Sumer Singh Gurjar’s home. A
redfaced police establishment swung into action and
arrested three of their men, though the girl is
reported to have said that she was raped by four men.
On Saturday, SSP R K Jaiswal announced that along
with Inderjit Singh, Gurmel Singh and Hari Ram too
have been apprehended. He announced the dismissal of
the accused from service, terming it a rarest of rare
case. The police dug up provisions under Section 311
to take action which does not necessitate any
departmental inquiry. “That the ASI, in his
fifties, has two daughters makes it all the more
reprehensible,’’ Jaiswal said.