Dismissed RPF jawan in mental hospital; application filed against order sending him there

Chetan Singh Chaudhary has been admitted to the Thane Mental Hospital, as per the order passed by additional sessions judge PV Chatur. The order, dated March 25, came in response to Chaudhary’s second bail plea

Mumbai: A notice was issued on Wednesday to dismissed Railway Protection Force (RPF) constable Chetan Singh Chaudhary – accused of shooting dead his senior and three identifiably Muslim passengers on board the Mumbai-Jaipur Superfast Express on July 31, 2023 – after the widow of one of the victims filed an application in the sessions court, where his trial is underway. A similar notice was also issued to the public prosecutor in the case.

Undated photo of dismissed RPF constable Chetan Singh Chaudhary (PTI)

Chaudhary has been admitted to the Thane Mental Hospital, as per the order passed by additional sessions judge PV Chatur. The order, dated March 25, came in response to Chaudhary’s second bail plea.

In her application filed through advocate Karim Pathan on Wednesday, the widow of Asghar Ali, the intervenor in the case, contended there was no factual basis to order a fresh referral to a mental hospital as the District Mental Health Review Board had already submitted a report to the court on March 24, saying the accused was mentally stable and fit to stand trial.

Chaudhary had spent nearly five months at the Thane Mental Hospital last year, when the trial was kept in abeyance. While his second bail plea cited mental instability as the primary reason for bail, neither in the application nor in oral arguments did his lawyer ask that he be readmitted to a mental hospital.

The dismissed constable had been attending court regularly since the second bail plea was filed.

The recall application said since the Thane Mental Hospital had completed Chaudhary’s treatment last year and certified in its discharge report that he was stable, another referral was superfluous. The Mental Healthcare Act had been “misapplied” in the March 25 order to readmit him at the hospital – while section 105 of the Act mandated referral to the Mental Health Review Board “only when evidence of mental illness is produced and contested”, this was not done in the present case, the application said.

The application further pointed out that many eye witnesses had testified to the accused’s “hatred towards Muslims”, and this was further substantiated by a viral video clip of him making a speech after the shootout – the contents of that speech had been repeated by the last witness who testified.

“The offence was not a moment of madness but an act of premeditated religious targeting,” the application stated, and urged that the March 25 order be set aside.

Continued operation of the order would “stall and prolong an advanced trial in a rarest of rare case involving the cold-blooded murder of four innocent persons. The accused…committed a heinous crime; the judicial process must not now be weaponised by him to indefinitely delay the reckoning. An individual who misused a State-issued weapon to carry out targeted religious killings cannot be permitted to exploit the process of law to delay his trial indefinitely,” the application said.

As judge Chatur was transferred soon after he passed the order on March 25, the recall application was filed in the court of the judge in-charge, DG Dhoble. Incidentally, this was the second time within three months that the judge hearing the case had been transferred.

Advocate Pathan was assisted by advocates Fazal and Shehzad. All three are associated with the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR).