Haryana IGP sends legal notice to Ambala SSP, SHO over non-registration of FIR against DGP

Ambala, May 29

Senior IPS officer Y Puran Kumar has sent a legal notice to the Ambala SSP and the Ambala Cantonment police station SHO for not registering an FIR against Haryana Police chief Manoj Yadava based on his complaint.

Kumar, who is posted as Inspector General of Police (Home Guards), had accused Yadava of trying to humiliate and harass him on the basis of his caste.

In a complaint filed with Ambala Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Hamid Akhtar on May 19, Kumar sought the registration of a criminal case against Yadava under the stringent SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

In the notice, Kumar’s counsel Uday Singh Chauhan said that not registering an FIR based on the complaint amounted to wilful neglect of the statutory duty.

“The office that is held by the addressee no.2 (SHO) is assumed to be aware of what it means for an offence to fall under the category of cognizable offence but the delay and heedless behaviour shown by him necessitates for me to explain what a cognizable offence means. The simplest meaning for an offence that is categorised as a cognizable offence is the one that warrants the need for registering an FIR without any further thoughts or preliminary enquiry,” he said.

No preliminary enquiry is required to be conducted before registration of an FIR has been made amply clear by the law itself and has been rightly upheld by the Supreme Court. The section 18(A) of the act states that preliminary enquiry shall not be required, he added.

“Not only has the addressee no.2 violated the statutory and legal obligations but he has also failed to the directions given to him by his senior i.e. addressee no.1 (SSP) and this makes both of you the above mentioned addressees liable to be prosecuted for non-registration of FIR under section 166A IPC and section 4 of Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989,” said the counsel.

The counsel further said both the addressees have clearly violated the directions so issued by the Supreme Court.

“Thus now my client has no option except to give the present legal notice to intimate you prior to initiating the contempt of court proceedings in the competent court of law. Besides this, my client also reserves his right of knocking the doors of the court,” he said.

In his complaint, Kumar had sought the registration of an FIR against Yadava under the stringent Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities Act), 1989, saying the DGP has “some personal grudge” against him due to him belonging to a scheduled caste.

DGP Yadava had been “trying to harass, humiliate, insult, threaten and intimidate him in one or other way with discriminatory conduct,” Kumar had said in his complaint.

Kumar had also accused Yadava of preventing him from entering a place of worship from August 2020 till date which, he said, amounted to “atrocity” and falls under the ambit of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities Act). — PTI