HC dismisses Bhangoo’s plea against custody to Chhattisgarh Police
CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday dismissed a plea by Pearls Group CMD Nirmal Singh Bhangoo against custody to Chhattisgarh Police.
A special court at Bemetra in Chhattisgarh in July had ordered that he be produced before it in a criminal case registered on defrauding people through a ponzi scheme. Bhangoo is accused of swindling of Rs 45,000 crore from over five crore investors in different states.
Bhangoo had challenged a Muktsar judicial magistrate’s order in the HC in which the jail authorities were directed to hand over his custody to Chhattisgarh Police. He had also challenged order on getting him examined at Rajindera Hospital, Patiala, which declared him fit for travel. Bhangoo all along has been citing his ill health against long travel.
The high court bench of justice Meenakshi I Mehta criticised the role played by the jail authorities and local health authorities in helping him to “evade” transfer of his custody to Chhattisgarh Police.
“The entire afore-referred sequence of the events unequivocally speaks volumes of the fact that the petitioner has abused the process of law by misusing his medical condition and strangely, the jail authorities as well as the authorities at the local civil hospital, also, for the reasons best known to them, seem to be acting in unison with the petitioner to help him out in evading his production at the above said special court,” the bench said, adding that this conduct on their part is “highly deplorable” because all the limbs of the system of the administration of criminal justice need to act and work in the required and desired manner so as to make it achieve the goal of its very establishment.
According to the order, a sub-inspector of Chhattisgarh Police presented a production warrant before the superintendent of the jail, Muktsar, for its compliance but Bhangoo said he was not feeling well. He was medically examined at the local civil hospital and doctors opined that he was “unfit” for long travelling.
The SI approached the judicial magistrate through assistant public prosecutor for getting his medical examination done and compliance of the Chhattisgarh court order as he raised suspicion over exercise by local health authorities and jail officials.
Acting on it, the judicial officer ordered his medical examination upon which a team at Rajindra Hospital examined him and declared him fit for travel. But the jail authorities took him to Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, Faridkot, for medical examination, from where he was referred to Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh.
On the court’s direction, he was examined at the PGIMER where the doctors’ panel declared him fit for travel.
The court did not entertain his argument that the magistrate at Muktsar had no jurisdiction to entertain the application for transfer of custody as he was behind bars in connection with a case in Bathinda.