Early Times Report
Srinagar, Jan 31: The Supreme Court has chided Central Bureau of Investigation for “inordinate delay” in filing appeal against a verdict by J&K High Court regarding some lawyers in case of alleged rape and murder case of Neelofar and Asiya in Shopian in 2009.
A division bench of the top court comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and K.M. Joseph termed the delay in filing of the special leave petition by the India’s premier investigation agency as reflection of “gross incompetence in the legal department of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which raises serious questions of its efficacy to prosecute the cases.”
“We have perused the application for condonation of delay. It seeks to explain the inordinate delay of 542 days in filing the present special leave petition and that too by the premier investigating agency,” the court observed.
The time period taken to take a decision to file the petition after obtaining certified copy in the office of the CBI is from 26th April, 2018 to 7th March, 2019 i.e. more than ten months, the court said.
“After the Additional Solicitor General opined on 3rd May, 2019 that the case is fit for filing an appeal, it takes more than three months for the case to be marked by Central Agency Section to the counsel for drafting a petition,” the court said.
On the panel advocate submitting a draft of the special leave petition on 31st August last year, the court said, “it takes the CBI two months to vet the special leave petition.”
“The aforesaid prima facie shows clearly gross incompetence in the legal department of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which raises serious questions of its efficacy to prosecute the cases,” the court saidand asked the CBI to an affidavit within two weeks explaining all these delays “if it can do so.”
“The head of the Legal department of CBI to remain present in Court on the next date,” the court added.
In 2009, massive protests rocked Shopian district over the death of Neelofar, 22, and her sister-in-law Asiya, 17, after residents alleged they had been raped and murdered by the forces.
The CBI attributed the cause of Asiya’s death to “asphyxia as a result of ante-mortem drowning” in a stream and said the injuries on her head were “simple in nature, not sufficient to cause death”.
The High court on 26 March 2018 while disposing of a petition filed by the lawyers had said that “this court have no hesitation to hold that putting the petitioners (layers) to trial for the commission of offences under Sections167, 193 and 194 RPC read with Section 120-B RPC would be a sheer abuse of the process of law as the evidence collected in the challan even if accepted in its entirety as the gospel truth, would not make out a case of commission of offences.”
With these observations the Court had partly allowed the petition and ordered that the challan against them insofar as it pertains to the commission of offences under Section 193, 194 and 167 RPC read with Section 120-B RPC, is quashed. However, court said, the challan would proceed as against the petitioners for offence under Section 195-A RPC.
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