New Delhi: A trial court on Monday, November 14, pulled up the Delhi Police for presenting “irrelevant” witnesses before it in a 2020 riots case.
Despite giving repeated directions to the prosecutor and the investigating officer to check if everything is well with the records in a number of cases in the past, such steps were not taken, the court said.
Giving a “last warning to wake up”, it asked the prosecutor and the investigating officer to ensure relevance of witnesses in the case.
The court made these observations while examining a prosecution witness, Manoj Kumar, in the case of rioting registered by the Khajuri Khas police station against Noor Mohammad and Nabi Mohammad.
During the proceedings, the counsel for the accused said there was no mention of the complaint of Kumar in the charge-sheet framed in the matter.
The court was told that though several complaints were clubbed with the present case, charges were framed only in respect of two complaints from Dalip and Shiv Kumar Raghav.
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According to a report by LiveLaw, the investigating officer and special public prosecutor conceded that the charges were not framed in respect of the complaint made by Kumar, or even by another witness, who was summoned for another hearing on Tuesday.
“It has been also pointed out that in the charges, wrong date of incident has been mentioned,” the court said in the order.
“I have perused the record… It has been conceded that charges were not framed in respect of the complaint made by the witness present today [November 14] or even by the witness who has been summoned for tomorrow [November 15],” the judge said.
Saying that there was no purpose in examining Kumar, the court discharged him unexamined.
The case will be next heard on November 29.
As per the report, the first information report, which was filed on the complaint of Dalip Singh, said that on February 24, 2020, his automobiles service centre was attacked by a mob. He alleged that the mob also set on fire 15 motorcycles, robbed his mobile phone and also looted cash.
(With inputs from PTI)