The Delhi high court on Monday dismissed, with costs of ₹ 25,000, a petition filed by National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) paper leak accused Dhananjay Nivrutti Lokhande challenging his arrest and seeking immediate release on the ground that he was not supplied a copy of the arrest memo.
“We find the present petition to be an abuse of the process of law. This is absolutely meritless. Lokhande, 25-year-old, was arrested on May 13 as an accused in relation to the alleged irregularities in the NEET-UG examination. Accordingly we dismiss the same with a cost of ₹ 25,000 to be submitted with the advocates welfare fund,” the court said in the order.
Lokhande approached the high court after the trial court, on August 22, rejected his plea seeking a copy of his arrest memo. The CBI earlier this month filed its chargesheet against all 13 accused arrested in the case, stating that its investigation traced the alleged leak from the paper setters to beneficiary candidates and unearthed the alleged conspiracy. This was after Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special public prosecutor Premtosh Kumar Mishra submitted that the grounds of arrest were communicated to Lokhande after his arrest and that the information was also conveyed telephonically. The trial court held that the arrest memo would fall within the category of unrelied documents, for which an accused is not entitled to a copy. It further observed that whether a copy of the arrest memo had been furnished to Lokhande was a matter to be determined during the trial.
He claimed that the only document in the entire chargesheet record relating to his arrest was a two-page “Personal Search Memo” dated May 13.
In his petition before the high court, Lokhande contended that his arrest was illegal in the absence of an arrest memo.
