Bagga case: HC tells Haryana, Delhi to file written statement on factual position

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, May 6

Hours after the Haryana Police “abruptly and illegally restrained” the Punjab Police from taking BJP leader Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga to Mohali after arresting him from the national capital, the Punjab and Haryana High Court today directed the states of Haryana and Delhi to file their written statement. They have been asked to elaborate on the status of the police officials alleged to be detained.

Punjab’s plea to keep Bagga in Haryana, meanwhile, failed to find favour with Justice Lalit Batra’s Bench. The case will now come up for further hearing on Saturday. The direction came on a habeas corpus petition filed by the state of Punjab challenging the detention of its police officials in Kurukshetra area.

As the case came up for preliminary hearing, Punjab Advocate General Anmol Rattan Singh Sidhu submitted that Bagga had moved the High Court following the registration of the case, but was not granted any relief.

Also appearing for the state of Punjab, senior advocate Puneet Bali added Haryana Police had made a mockery out of the entire thing. Bali said this would break the federal structure of the Constitution and create anarchy. Bagga was legally arrested and the state of Haryana’s action was unprecedented.

Additional Solicitor General of India Satya Pal Jain, on the other hand, submitted that the Delhi Police were not informed about the arrest. The state of Haryana added that its cops acted on an alert from the Delhi Police regarding a kidnapping incident. It was added that the Delhi Police was in possession of search warrants from the court regarding Bagga, following which the Punjab Police team was stopped.

The Bench was told that the Delhi Police reached Khanpur at about 2 pm and interacted with the Punjab police personnel. Besides this, the habeas corpus petition filed by the state of Punjab was for its police officials and not for Bagga. Haryana was also represented by its Advocate General Baldev Raj Mahajan.

Appearing on Bagga’s behalf, senior advocates R.S. Rai and Chetan Mittal contended that neither the Delhi Police, nor a magistrate were informed. The allegation of detaining the cops was just an attempt to cover up its own actions of picking up Bagga.  

In its petition, Punjab contended that around 10 of its cops were illegally detained by the Haryana Police, while they were returning from Delhi after legally arresting Bagga in connection with a case registered at Mohali. The state also claimed that some cops had also been detained by the Delhi Police in the national capital.

Directions were sought to produce and release the detainees—Inspector Shiv Kumar, Sub Inspector Reena, ASI Amandeep Verma, ASI Deepak Singh, ASI Gurpratap Singh, and Contables Amritpal Singh and official with the same name, Satnam Singh, Gurbaj Singh, Harinder Singh, Rajbir Singh and Simranjit Singh.

Punjab added its cops were stopped despite showing all the legal documents regarding arrest. They were still in illegal confinement purely for the political reasons and with a view to wreck political vengeance as the accused in the FIR was affiliated with a political party.