North East Delhi violence: Court asks Commissioner of Police to assess conduct of IO over non-making site plan

New Delhi [India]: Delhi Court on Friday expressed its displeasure over the non-making of the site plan of the place of incidents by the investigation officer (IO) of the Delhi riots case.

The court has referred the matter to the Commissioner of Police to assess the conduct of the IO. This matter pertains to a riot case lodged at police station Dayalpur in 2020.

Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Pulastya Pramachala of Karkardooma Court passed the order and said, “For the purpose of assessment of the conduct of IO, the matter is referred to learned Commissioner of Police and for the purpose of getting the undone job done, it is referred to learned DCP (N/E).”

“For the purpose of this case, the site plan showing all the places of incidents being prosecuted in the case, must be filed and the same must be done by the next date of hearing,” ASJ Pramachala ordered on August 25.

This matter is related to six incidents of rioting in the Dayalpur police station area. Six complaints were clubbed in one FIR. The IO prepared the site plan for three sites of incidents.

The court noted in the order that when a file has been perused, it could be found that the same IO Insp. Shiv Charan prepared a site plan of three places of incidents only and he did not bother to prepare a site plan in respect of other places of incidents, though he claims that he had inspected those places of incidents as well.

The court also said the IO could not give any justification for his action.

“He was offered to submit any justification for adopting two different procedures of investigation in respect of different complaints, but he did not offer any justification, ” the court noted.

The judge said, “I do not find any justification for any investigating officer to adopt different parameters in respect of different complaints.”

This is the situation of the investigating agency when more than six months were taken by them in the name of preparing a calendar of evidence, he added.

“So prima facie, I find that neither investigation was done properly, nor the exercise of preparing a calendar of evidence was done with an open mind, even to be aware of their own omissions,” ASJ Pramachala added.

ASJ questioned the conduct of the IO and said, ” I understand that this is not the job of learned DCP (N/E) to investigate each case, but unfortunately him being supervisory officer, I have to burden him again with the task of getting the things done, which were not done by the IO.”

“It is also worth mentioning here that one consolidated site plan was also filed by the same IO and even in that so-called consolidated site plan all places of incidents were not pointed out by him.

Let the department make an assessment of such double standard adopted by IO,” the court remarked.