New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Wednesday issued notices to the Centre and the Delhi Police while hearing two petitions seeking a probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) in alleged police excesses on Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) student protesters Jantar Mantar, saying the incident was not “isolated.”
Event Context
Asking the Centre and the police to file responses, a bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and justice Tejas Karia directed police to preserve the CCTV footage, videography and other digital records related to the incident.
Team Analysis
Sankaranarayanan accused Additional DCP Sandeep Lamba of physically assaulting a woman standing on the sidelines, urging the court to summon the officer and hold him accountable. Singh, on the other hand added that the police, along with several persons in civil clothes, attacked the demonstrators without provocation.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and additional solicitor general SV Raju, who were representing the police, termed the petitions “publicity seeking petitions” which were filed by individuals for “hogging limelight”. They said that if the petitioners had any grievance, they can approach the trial court seeking directions to the police to register an FIR.
“The petition though looks in the first blush to be attractive, it is not so. It is based on suppression of facts, based on persons not present at the scene of the offence, based on social media recordings and today these petitions are “publicity-seeking petitions”, so that they can get limelight. Petitions do not warrant issuance of notice. It’s a petition for hogging limelight, publicity,” Raju said.
Raju added that the agitation did not remain peaceful and there were videos showing injuries to police men and damage to police vehicles. “There are videos which shows that crowd threw stones and there were trucks with stones and bricks at the place of the incident,” law officer said.
The petitions were filed in the backdrop of the July 20 “Chalo Sansad” march, organised by the CJP after a hunger strike at Jantar Mantar that had continued for more than three weeks.
The protest saw thousands of demonstrators march from Jantar Mantar towards Parliament, demanding Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation over alleged examination paper leaks and accountability for student suicides.
As protesters attempted to move through central Delhi, the Delhi Police stopped the march using multiple layers of barricades. In the afternoon on Monday, a large group breached the barricades and advanced towards the Parliament complex, prompting security personnel to fire tear gas shells and carry out a lathi-charge to disperse the crowd.
Match Outlook
The two petitions filed by lawyers Umesh Kumar and Anshul Kumar will be heard on September 11, the bench said.
“Is it a case of some isolated individual incident? Perhaps no. This is one. Number two, if it was an unlawful assembly as you say, it’s subject to further arguments and subject to further submissions. There is a law how to deal with it. There is a judgment of the Supreme Court in Rameela Maidan. If these issues are being raised in the PIL, how can you say that every individual should go and lodge an FIR,” the court additional solicitor general SV Raju, who was representing Delhi Police.
The court said, “Issue notice. In the meantime, we direct that the relevant record, including the CCTV footage, videography, if any shall be preserved.”
Senior advocates N Hariharan, Gopal Sankaranarayanan and Vikas Singh representing the petitioners urged the court to issue notice in the petitions which also sought preservation of CCTV footage, production of deployment records and orders authorising the use of force, identification of officers responsible and registration of FIRs against errant personnel.
Hariharan argued that the protest at Jantar Mantar was a peaceful exercise but was met with excessive and disproportionate police force. He alleged that protesters were assaulted with nail-studded lathis, pellet weapons and electrically charged batons without prior warning, leaving over 90 injured and several women allegedly molested.
