The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a plea seeking registration of a criminal case against police officials in whose custody a 32-year-old man who had died in 2013 in Haryana’s Faridabad district.
A bench comprising Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice PB Varale has issued notice to the Haryana government and the state’s director general of police on the plea lodged by Anand Rai Kaushik, the brother of the deceased. The court has listed the matter for further hearing on July 26.
Anand Kaushik in his petition filed through advocate Rahul Gupta has challenged the November 28, 2023 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.The high court had rejected his plea for registration of criminal case and transfer of investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or any other probe agency.
The petitioner claimed that his brother, Satender Kaushik, died in the custody of the NIT police station in Faridabad on July 25, 2013. He has also asserted that his brother was taken into custody by police without any FIR against him on the complaint of a hotel manager over alleged non-payment of bill.
Nonetheless, the police have claimed that the victim died after hanging himself from a window of the police station toilet. The petitioner has maintained that the high court erred on facts as well as law in dismissing the petition under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal procedure for ordering probe in the matter when admittedly it was a custodial death. Furthermore, the custody of Satender Kaushik was illegal when no FIR was registered in the case, it said.
It added the high court ought to have seen that the death had taken place in police custody and that neither an FIR was registered nor any proper investigation had taken place.
On November 28, 2023, the high court had remarked that on March 11, 2015, an order was passed by a co-ordinate bench after perusing the judicial enquiry report, all the relevant daily diary reports of the police station and the postmortem report prepared by a board of doctors, and it was apparent that there was no foul play in the present case. It was not necessary to get the FIR registered with a view to initiate the investigation, it had noted.
The order had also mentioned that the co-ordinate bench had taken a lenient view and directed for payment of compensation as the death had occurred in police custody. It had stated the petitioner had refused to receive the compensation amount from the District Legal Service Authority, Faridabad, and also from the National Human Rights Commission.
While rejecting the plea for registration of criminal case, the High Court had said such an application for reviewing the order dated March 11, 2015, was not at all maintainable and that too without any lawful justification as no reasons were mentioned in the said application for recalling the order passed by this court.