New Delhi, April 11
The possible reasons behind the failure of the Delhi Police to secure conviction of Outlook cartoonist Irfan Hussain’s “killers” six years ago have come to the fore in a series of correspondence between the investigation and prosecution wings on the conduct of trial and in a letter to the Principal Secretary (Home), NCT Government, by the Additional Public Prosecutor (APP).
The correspondence pertained to, among other important things, placing on record 20 negatives of the photographs taken on the spot where the body of Irfan with 28 stab wounds was found on March 13, 1999, as evidence, after the same had supposedly gone missing from the police records.
The trial court had, however, continued to insist on the production of the photographs.
A copy of the correspondence of Senior Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) A. K. Pandey with Joint Commissioner of Police, DCP East, SHO Kalyanpuri, available with The Tribune indicated that the police officials responsible to produce the negatives and assisting the Public Prosecutor (PP) were not cooperating with him. With regard to the negatives, the blame was being put on each other by the junior-level officers.
The correspondence reflected how the PP was not getting cooperation from investigating officer or his team in the proper conduct of the trial and instead he was accused of “rude and demoralising behaviour” with witnesses in the court.
APP Pandey, in his letter of January 30, 2003, to the Principal Secretary, had explained that the complaint against the PP about his alleged “rude behaviour” with witnesses by the IO to the Legal Cell, was nothing but an attempt to “misguide the administration with the sole aim of getting a forthright prosecutor transferred from the case for no fault of his… and the allegation was meant to save his (IO’s) own skin”.
Pandey had detailed how witnesses had been turning hostile, including Head Constable Hukam Chand and Constable Dev Dutt. “Constable Dev Dutt deliberately became hostile by substituting/replacing the name of one accused which was important for prosecution and for this reason he was cross-examined by the PP,” Pandey pointed out.
He had told the Home Secretary in uncertain terms that the police was “trying to remove” the PP and simply wanted that he should not put cross-questions that might prove fatal for them (police) in future. They wanted that he should confront only earlier statements of the witnesses and finish the case, he alleged.
Such a stand of the police was “totally against the prosecution and state’s interest and also against the legal ethics,” the letter said.
It also did not rule out the “complicity” of Naib Court (an official of the court) attached to the trial judge in making the police witnesses hostile and reminded the Principal Secretary that this matter was brought to his notice earlier.
The APP had put a poser to the Principal Secretary: “Was not every body in league to acquit the accused?”
