The Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court has pulled up police authorities for deliberately delaying appropriate action against an accused, noting that despite the rejection of his anticipatory bail plea by the High Court and his subsequent application by the Supreme Court, a notice under Section 41A of the CrPC was issued. telling him that the police are running a “parallel court”.

While doing so, the court directed the Indore Police Commissioner to entrust the investigation to an officer at least of the rank of DCP and further ordered disciplinary action against the erring police officers, observing that their act of deliberate defiance to the court orders amount to serious misconduct. .

Justice Subodh Abhyankar in its observed order, “This Court also fails to understand how notice under Section 41-A can be issued to an accused after rejection of his anticipatory bail application, particularly when this Court has also held that his custodial interrogation is necessary, and which order has also been upheld by the Supreme Court, and it seems that the police are running their own court, parallel to this Court as well as the Supreme Court, which can no longer be accepted.

The present writ petition has been filed by the petitioner for the investigation to be transferred from respondent no.4, namely SHO, Banganga Police Station, Indore, to any other independent investigating agency, such as the Crime Branch , or CID or CBI, in order to conduct a fair and impartial investigation. Investigation.

The petitioner’s counsel contended that despite the rejection of the accused’s anticipatory bail by the High Court in February and the rejection of his special leave to appeal by the Supreme Court in July, the defendant police authorities did not failed to fulfill their duties and did not even attempt to arrest the accused, which clearly shows their biased approach. Thus, the lawyer argued that the investigation should be entrusted to a special agency.

The accused’s counsel argued that the Supreme Court had not rejected the accused’s special leave to appeal in its entirety and freedom had been given to him to clear his dues with HDFC Bank and obtain the original sale deed, and that it would be open to the accused to file a fresh application for grant of anticipatory bail. It was argued that the accused had already filed an anticipatory bail application before the concerned court after clearing the HDFC Bank dues and hence his arrest was not necessary.

“After considering the competing arguments and perusing the record, it appears that the anticipatory bail application M.Cr.C.no.51194/2023 of the accused was rejected by this Court on 08.2.2024; whereas special leave to appeal (Crl.) no. 4698/2024 arising from the said order was also rejected by the Supreme Court in its order dated 08.07.2024, with the aforementioned freedom“, the court said.

After perusing the case diary, the court found that the notice under Section 41A (Notice to appear before police officer) Cr.PC was issued to the accused only after his special permission to The appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court. “This clearly demonstrates that the police went easy on the accused, while awaiting the Supreme Court’s order, and deliberately did not act on the rejection of his anticipatory bail.”said the Court.

The court also expressed concern over how a notice under Section 41-A could be issued to an accused after his anticipatory bail application was rejected, especially when the High Court had also said that his custodial interrogation was necessary, and which order had also been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Therefore, the court ordered the Indore Police Commissioner to entrust the investigation of the case to an officer of at least the rank of DCP. The court further directed the commissioner to initiate disciplinary proceedings against the “misguided” police officers who are responsible for issuing notice u/s.41A of Cr.PC to the accused after rejection of his release under anticipatory bail by this court and the Supreme Court, which according to the High Court appears to be an act of “deliberate defiance” of the orders passed by the High Court and the Supreme Court, amounting to “gross misconduct”.

“It is clear that this Court has not considered the merits of the matter and the anticipatory bail application of the accused, which he filed pursuant to the order passed by the Supreme Court, will be decided by the trial court on its own merits without being influenced by this order.said the Court.

The writ petition was therefore dismissed.

File title: M/S. Praram Infra through its partner Shri Prayank Jain v. State of Madhya Pradesh and Others, Writ Petition No. 30532 of 2024

Click here to read/download the order