E-Paper
Punjab & Haryana HC seeks details of criminal cases registered for Covid violations
The HC bench of justice GS Sandhawalia and justice Harpreet Kaur Jeewan passed the order during the resumed hearing of a suo motu plea in which it is monitoring probes and trials in criminal cases against MPs and MLAs.
The Punjab and Haryana high court (HC) has sought details of criminal cases registered for Covid violations between 2020 and 2021.
The HC bench of justice GS Sandhawalia and justice Harpreet Kaur Jeewan passed the order during the resumed hearing of a suo motu plea in which it is monitoring probes and trials in criminal cases against MPs and MLAs.
During the hearing, UT’s counsel had told the court that in an FIR dated June 9, 2022, in which Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, Partap Singh Bajwa and 25 other sitting and former MLAs and MPs were accused, the trial court had accepted a cancellation report.
Similarly, a cancellation report has been re-submitted in another FIR registered on March 16, 2021, against SAD leaders, including Bikram Singh Majithia and eight other former or then sitting MLAs, for an incident where they tried to gherao the residence of the then Punjab CM during a rally amid Covid restrictions.
In another FIR registered in August 2020, there are 73 accused, in one dated October 2021, 500-600 persons were arrayed as accused and in another August 2020 FIR, there are 75 accused persons.
The court observed that a large number of such cases, especially those under Section 188 (disobedience of an order that is duly promulgated by a public servant) of the IPC read with the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 and the Disaster Management Act, 2005, are pending.
The amicus curiae in the case, senior advocate RS Khosla had suggested that the HC could invoke its extraordinary powers to quash the proceedings.
However, the court said that if such an exercise is to be done, it should be done across the board rather than to benefit only a certain set of persons whose litigation is being monitored by the HC.
“..we have serious apprehensions as to whether these matters should continue clogging the judicial system, in view of the fact that those were extraordinary times when Covid-19 was raging and necessary instructions had been issued for the protection of citizens of this country,” the bench observed directing Punjab, Haryana and the Union Territory Chandigarh to file a status report indicating the number of cases registered between March 15, 2020, and February 28, 2022, which are “clogging the criminal courts”, so that further orders can be passed. The details have been sought by February 9, 2024. The respondents have also been told to specify whether any injuries were caused to a public servant in any of these cases.
