SC ‘sorry’ for taking 13 yrs to open trial

new delhi — The Supreme Court has made a candid admission and said it was “sorry” for the delay of over a decade in commencement of criminal trial due to two conflicting orders passed by a high court judge in a single day in two different but related cases.

The apex court said this had created a “legal conundrum” as one order of the judge restricted further probe in the case while in the order, it allowed the investigation to go on.

The case, which was stuck in legal tangles, had reached the apex court in 2009 and the woman, who had initially lodged the complaint in 2004 against her own brothers over alleged grabbing of her shop, had now passed away and was represented by her legal representative.

A bench of justices R K Agrawal and Sanjay Kishan Kaul said, “we are sorry to note that such a confusion has caused more than a decade’s delay in even the criminal trial commencing” and allowed the appeals of the woman.

In 2004, Shyam Lata, a resident of Roorkee in Uttarakhand, made a written complaint to the SSP of Haridwar alleging that her two brothers forged documents and signatures and claimed she had given her shop on rent to them.

A criminal case was lodged against her brothers alleging that they had prepared a fictitious rent receipt by forging the woman’s signatures and left its photocopy at her house for laying a false claim of tenancy.

On other hand, one of her brothers filed a civil suit seeking to restrain her from evicting him from the premises, claiming himself as a tenant of the shop on the basis of

Court unhappy with Tihar Jail authorities

the alleged forged rent receipt.

While deciding the matter, the apex court bench said that there is no doubt about the “confusing nature of contradictory orders” passed by the high court.

It said that high court’s first verdict allowing the handwriting expert to take picture of signatures would in “natural corollary” mean that further investigation will be carried out. — PTI