Ahmedabad, The Gujarat High Court on Friday observed that the deputy commissioner of police who allegedly slapped and beat handcuffed accused persons in public in Surat must be immediately transferred to ensure an impartial probe into the incident.
The case stems from an incident in which a deputy commissioner of police and a group of policemen were allegedly seen in video footage parading the handcuffed accused persons publicly and subjecting them to repeated physical assault. Chief Justice Agarwal, in her oral remarks, observed that the preliminary inquiry into the incident cannot be impartial if the police officer in question is in his post. “Apart from the people present on the spot, there must be some police personnel who were witnesses. They will not speak. He is such a senior officer, and he did something unacceptable. You continue with your preliminary inquiry, but you will have to transfer him. He should be posted somewhere else,” the court noted. Dave informed the court that as per videos and media reports, the accused persons were dragged by their hair, slapped and beaten repeatedly while being compelled to walk on the road with handcuffs, allegedly in the presence and under supervision of senior police officers including the DCP.
A division bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice DN Ray took up a suo motu PIL over the July 14 incident, after taking cognisance of a written complaint filed by a lawyer.
Lawyer Utkarsh Dave had written to Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal calling the July 14 incident, accompanied by a group of police personnel with handcuffed accused persons being paraded publicly and assaulted with a baton, “disturbing and shocking”. The incident is “wholly inconsistent with the constitutional values that govern the exercise of police powers in a democratic society,” it said.
