Parra moves HC, wants FIR quashed
SRINAGAR: Senior PDP leader and close aide of former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra has approached the Jammu and Kashmir high court for quashing of an FIR against him by the J&K Police, citing violation of fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution and similarity of charges also being probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
In the petition, Parra’s counsel Shariq Reyaz submitted that his client was investigated for the same offences by the NIA as well as the Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK)) wing of J&K Police separately, which is in violation of laid down norms under the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Justice Vinod Chatterji Koul, after hearing arguments on the petition challenging the framing of charges in the police case by a designated court last month, had issued notice to the CIK last week for filing its response within a month.
Reyaz drew a table in his petition of the two FIRs and two charge sheets filed by the NIA and the CIK to draw similarities in the offences being investigated by the two probe agencies separately. In his petition, the counsel termed the framing of charges by the designated court in Srinagar on the charge sheet filed by the CIK a “mechanical exercise” and referred to
judgments of the Supreme Court “wherein a word of caution has been administered to the trial courts to carefully examine the evidence and after analysing the same frame charge under the rigorous scheme of UAPA”.
The counsel also mentioned that the FIR by the CIK is “clearly tainted with the vice of malice in law, having been registered only to attain a collateral purpose of detaining the petitioner (Parra) illegally and unlawfully being in blatant abuse of police power, violating with impunity the constitutional guarantees guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India”. Reyaz submitted before the HC that the “impugned investigation/ prosecution in the present case, if allowed to continue, would not only offend against the mandate of constitutional guarantee guaranteed to the petitioner under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India but is also sure to result into the grave miscarriage of justice”.