Delhi riots: HC says can’t lodge 5 FIRs in one incident
Failure to conduct proper probe will torment sentinels of democracy, says another court
The Delhi High Court has held that police cannot lodge five FIRs for the same incident and quashed four of them registered for the alleged offences of looting and setting on fire a compound during the north-east Delhi riots last year.
There cannot be a second FIR and fresh investigation for the same cognisable offence, the High Court said. Five separate FIRs cannot be registered for the very same incident as it is contrary to the laws laid down by the Supreme Court, it said.
While maintaining one FIR, the high court quashed the other four lodged against the same accused in March last year at Jaffrabad Police Station and all the proceedings emanating therefrom.
It cannot be said that the incidents were separate or the offences are different. As stated earlier, a perusal of the charge sheets filed in the respective FIRs show that they are more or less identical and the accused are also same. However, if there is any material that has been found against the accused the same can be placed on record in the FIR, Justice Subramonium Prasad said.
Delhi Police claimed that the properties were distinct and the damages have been suffered individually by the residents and that the subject matter of each of the FIRs is different from others. The court said all the five FIRs are identical in their content and more or less a facsimile of one another.
Meanwhile, another court came down heavily on the Delhi Police for its probe into a 2020 riots case, saying that its failure to conduct a proper investigation will “torment” the sentinels of democracy when history will look back at the worst communal riots in the national capital since partition. The court, which discharged former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain’s brother Shah Alam and two others in a case related to alleged loot and vandalization of a shop during the riots in February 2020 at Delhi’s Chand Bagh area, also called the probe callous and indolent” which gives an impression that a constable was planted as a witness.
Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Yadav called the case a colossal wastage of the hard-earned money of taxpayers in which the police merely tried to pull the wool over the court’s eyes and nothing else. The court noted that there was no CCTV footage of the incident to confirm the presence of the accused at the spot, no independent eye witness, and no evidence regarding the criminal conspiracy.