Cases against Jats: 4-member panel fails to make headway
CHANDIGARH: In what is unlikely to help the Haryana government’s efforts to end the stalemate with agitating pro-quota groups through a dialogue, the fourmember committee constituted to review criminal cases registered against the Jat protesters during last year’s stir failed to make any headway on Tuesday.
The committee, comprising two advocates each from the Haryana government and the All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS), which met in Chandigarh, began by discussing the cases registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into arson, loot and violence during the quota stir in February 2016.
“The representatives of Jat leaders began by raising the CBI cases among others, but they were informed that cases being investigated by the CBI cannot be withdrawn by the state government,” Haryana advocate general Baldev Raj Mahajan said.
The AG, who was present at the meeting, said that as per provisions of Section 321 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, the state government cannot withdraw cases registered and being investigated by the CBI under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946. The talks between the two sides on withdrawal of stir-related cases – a major demand of the agitators – could not proceed any further thereafter.
The CBI has registered five cases – four of them related to attack, arson and loot at a minister’s properties in Rohtak – in the quota stir violence. While three of these cases were registered by the agency in October 2016, two more FIRs were filed on February 14 this year.
The state government had made a request to the Union ministry personnel, public grievances and pensions to transfer these cases that were originally registered by the state police to the CBI for investigation. Once the ministry agreed, the CBI registered the FIRs. The police had filed 2,200 cases and the protesters want all of these withdrawn.