E-Paper
Chandigarh court orders FIR against three for assaulting Sector-4 petrol pump staff
As per the complaint, two accused, Yugen Yadav and Himani Yadav, are children of a former Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Haryana and the third, Mahir Das, is the son of a former principal of a school in Sector 26
A local court has directed the UT police to register a FIR against three people for assaulting and threatening the staff of Sector-4 petrol pump in February.
The complainants had approached the police, but no action was taken. They had then moved court.
As per the complaint, two accused, Yugen Yadav and Himani Yadav, are children of a former Haryana MLA and the third, Mahir Das, is the son of a former principal of a school in Sector 26.
The complainant, Ajay Kumar, works as a forecourt manager at an auto service station at the petrol pump.
On February 17, the complainant was on duty around 8 pm, when Yugen came to refuel a Honda Activa. When the QR code payment failed, the staff requested him to pay at the store located on the pump’s premises. Angered by this, Yugen started abusing and threatening the staff members, including Shyam Lal and Monu.
Yugen called his sister, Himani, who came to the spot with Mahir and another unidentified person. They hurled abuses and assaulted the complainant and other staff members. Himani assaulted Shyam Lal, who filmed the attack on his mobile phone. She also punched and slapped him several times, saying that she is a national-level boxer and threatening to kill them, Kumar alleged.
They also threatened the complainant, claiming to be carrying guns in their car. The accused were allegedly intoxicated at that time. Mahir snatched Shyam Lal’s phone and deleted the video. As bystanders called the police, the trio fled the scene.
Yugen, along with four or five others, allegedly came to the pump again on February 18. The complainant also received a threat call on March 2 from a man named Neeraj Yadav, who claimed to be Yugen’s brother.
The police mentioned in their status report that no cognisable offence was found to have been committed. The investigating officer (IO) recorded statements of the complainants and the accused during the preliminary inquiry. The IO claimed that there was a family dispute between Mahir’s father and the pump’s owner and a compromise had been reached. But no copy of the compromise was produced before the court.
The court of judicial magistrate Japsreet Singh Minhas observed that the IO senior inspector Gurwinder Singh didn’t mention the CCTV footage provided to him by the complainant. “He has merely recorded the statements of the complainant, victims and respondents and selected a party on whose view he wanted to rely. The copy of email sent by the complainant to the police shows that the CCTV footage was also attached in the said e-mail. The preliminary inquiry in this case was not possible without referring to the CCTV footage. No reason has been mentioned by the IO for not referring to the CCTV footage,” the court observed.
The court further observed that the IO had also highlighted a family dispute but did not record the statement of the petrol pump owner and even otherwise, the dispute has no relevance in the matter in hand as the entire incident has been captured in the CCTV cameras.
The court has directed the Sector 3 SHO to lodge an FIR under Sections 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 341 (wrongful restraint), 447 (criminal trespass) and 506 (criminal intimidation) read with Section 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against the three accused.
