A Delhi court has said that the apprehension of a Northeast Delhi riot victim that he was being harassed by the local SHO in the name of investigation “prima facie seems real and not illusory”.
The complainant had moved court through his lawyer, M R Shamshad, alleging that in the last 18 months, he had been called to the police station on at least 50 occasions in connection with the investigation of his complaint regarding vandalism of his house during the riots.
Shamshad alleged that his client had to move out of his house after the riots and police were allegedly forcing him to disclose the details of the new landlord, which may lead to the complainant being thrown out of the house due to repeated visits by officers there.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Arun Kumar Garg said that he was “unable to comprehend the purpose of recording the said statement, when the aforesaid landlord is not a witness of the alleged incident”.
“Under the aforesaid circumstances, apprehension of the complainant regarding the alleged harassment by the IO and SHO Khajuri Khas in the name of further investigation, prima facie, seems to be real and not illusory,” the court said.
The court said that the investigation carried out by police was not satisfactory as “no steps seem to have been taken by the IO for collection of CDRs of some of the accused whereas the CDRs of the others have reportedly been collected by him”.
The court directed the Joint Commissioner of Police, Eastern Range, to file a comprehensive status report of further investigation in the case within two weeks.
It further directed him to ensure that the probe was carried out by the IO in “an unbiased manner so as to find out the real culprits in the case and not to harass the complainant and the witnesses unnecessarily”.
The court said that the report received from the DCP (Northeast) was “silent” about the status of the investigation being carried out by the IO in the present case.
This story first appeared on indianexpress.com