Panchkula: The Panchkula court that acquitted six persons in the Dera Sacha Sauda violence in Panchkula for lack of evidence has also pulled up the Haryana police for shoddy investigation.
Sessions judge Ritu Tagore, while acquitting the accused, said: “The prosecution led no good and reliable evidence to prove its case. It is a fit case where the benefit of the doubt deserves to be given”.
According to the judgment, the police failed to back the fact that the accused were followers of Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan and were present in Panchkula on August 25 during the violence.
“It is held that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove each and every ingredient of the charge alleged against the accused by leading good, cogent and reliable evidence, which it utterly failed,” the judgment read.
The state police was criticised for relying on self-incriminating statements of the accused recorded in police custody, stating that “it is not admissible evidence, except in the manner recognised in law”.
Tagore said the investigating officer (IO) “had completely ignored the importance of joining the witness from the public and adopted a casual approach in conducting the investigation”.
Observing that “the police was required to pump in more manpower and resources to cope up with the rush or to have adopted manual mode of recording FIR”, the judge said the explanation given by the prosecution for the delay in lodging the FIR was not reliable.
“Hence it thus probalise (sic) the defence version that to solve the incident, [police] falsely roped them in present case…”
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