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‘Ties of brotherhood?’: Judge pans cops in custody death case, orders CBI probe
The Uttarakhand high court’s 16-page order is a searing indictment of the Nainital police that was reluctant to register a FIR for the prisoner’s alleged murder by prison guards in the custody death case.
Dehradun: The Uttarakhand high court has ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the probe into the death of a Haldwani jail prisoner in March this year after his wife alleged he died after being beaten by four prison guards.
The high court also told the state government to consider transferring Nainital senior superintendent of police Preeti Priyadarshini and initiating departmental action against her for not filing a first information report (FIR) on the wife’s complaint. The court said the FIR was filed on May 26, more than 45 days after the custodial death on March 6 on the orders of the district’s chief judicial magistrate.
“The written words in the judgments of the courts and the provisions of right to life, as enshrined in the Indian Constitution, will remain dead letter, if action against erring police officers are not taken by the administration,” justice Ravindra Maithani said in his 16-page verdict that also asked the administratiion to transfer the circle officer of Haldwani and the four prison guards accused in this case.
Incidentally, it was on the complaint of the wife accusing him of aggravated sexual assault of a child in the first place that the man was arrested under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act on March 4 and sent to Haldwani sub-jail. On March 6, he was brought dead to the hospital. The official account was that he fell but the autopsy recorded his 10 injuries in some detail.
His wife, however, filed her first complaint after a prisoner, Rahul Shrivastav, phoned her after his release on March 13 and told her that four prison guards, Devendra Prasad Yadav, head guard, Kriti Nainwal, Devendra Rawat, Harish Rawat, brutally thrashed her husband that led to his death.
The verdict detailed how the woman approached different authorities to seek investigation into her husband’s murder but was stonewalled by the police. It also recorded how the police at one point cited a magisterial inquiry into the custody death as one reason though there was no bar on registering the FIR.
The Haldwani circle officer did inquire into the death on the SSP’s orders but the court spotted many gaps.
“Is it ‘ties of brotherhood’ that the matter was not promptly lodged? Is it ‘ties of brotherhood’ that instead of lodging FIR, SSP Nainital ordered for inquiry by CO Haldwani? Is it ‘ties of brotherhood’ that CO Haldwani concluded after enquiry that the statement of eyewitness Rahul Srivastava does not find corroboration? Is it ‘ties of brotherhood’ that CO Haldwani, while recording its conclusion, did not even examine the doctor who conducted the post mortem and noted the injury?” justice Maithani asked, referring to a 1995 Supreme Court ruling that spoke of police personnel preferring to “even pervert the truth to save their colleagues”.
The high court also ordered that the four guards at Haldwani sub-jail be immediately transferred to some place outside the district “to ensure fair investigation otherwise within those four walls of Sub-Jail Haldwani perhaps nobody would dare to speak the truth and only witness would be those stone walls which unfortunately cannot”.
“The instant case is not an ordinary case. Allegations are of custodial death. It is against Guards of Sub-Jail, Haldwani. Deceased entered Sub-Jail, Haldwani hale and hearty with no wounds on his body. But, when he was taken out from Sub-Jail, Haldwani on March 6, 2021 and taken to Base Hospital, Haldwani, he was declared brought dead…according to the petitioner, she approached everyone in order to lodge the FIR …the SSP, declined to lodge the FIR…”
