News: Cops file ‘vague’ report in court, face probe-19-09-2020

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/gurgaon/cops-file-vague-report-in-court-face-probe/articleshow/78196028.cms

GURUGRAM: Filing a status report in deviation of the directions of a city court has landed the station house officer (SHO) and sub-inspector (SI) of Sadar police station in trouble. The court has now directed the Gurugram police chief to initiate a departmental inquiry against the SHO and SI for failing to file an FIR on the complaint of a homebuyer, hiding the facts of the case and misleading the court.

Aditi, a homebuyer, approached Sadar police station in 2018 to file a FIR against a developer for not giving her possession of her plot even after several years and refusing to pay back the investment amount. Police however, refused to file an FIR in the cases, even though the developer had already been booked after a similar complaint earlier.
Unable to get any relief from police, Aditi approached court with a plea for registration of FIR on her complaint. On August 25, a status report was filed by police before court mentioning that the developer was ready to give a plot to the complainant and the parties involved were in a dispute regarding payment of money.

The complainant, meanwhile, countered the police report alleging that the developer didn’t have requisite permissions from the authorities for completion of the project, and thus couldn’t hand over the plot. The court then issued specific directions to police to verify the allegations made by the complainant and file a status report. The SHO and SI Chand, who was the investigating officer, filed a status report on September 1 highlighting that the complainant had settled the dispute for Rs 12.31 lakh, for which the developer had handed eight cheques as payment. Of these, two had been encashed while the remaining were dishonoured, and cases pertaining to them were pending in different courts, the report said, concluding that it was a payment dispute between the parties.

Irked with the police report, the court pulled up the officers for not verifying the complainant’s allegation to check if it is a criminal case of cheating as it had directed.

Taking a strong stand against the police officers, additional chief judicial magistrate (Gurugram) Anil Kaushik, in an order issued earlier this week, observed: “This is a vague report filed by the Sadar SHO and SI Mukesh Chand apparently to confuse and compound this case and consequently this court for the reasons best known to them. Hence, this court is of the view that departmental enquiry of both SI Mukesh Chand and the SHO be initiated for not filing a report in the line of directions passed by this court and secondly for not registering the FIR on the complaint of petitioner.”

The court pointed out that a case of cheating and criminal conspiracy was filed on a similar complaint against the developer, but police failed to file FIR on this complaint. It directed police to file a FIR against the developer and submit a report in two weeks.

The court observed that accepting cheques, most of which were dishonoured, didn’t dilute the case and it was a clear case of fraud.

“The police authorities, despite being aware about all these facts and circumstances, tried to hide this fact from the court in their action-taken report filed in the court and have failed to perform their duty with the highest standard of diligence and integrity as per mandate of law,” observed the court.

When contacted, police spokesperson Subhash Boken said, “We are awaiting the court order and will start a probe accordingly.”