Rajesh Kumar PandeyPrayagraj: The Allahabad high court has imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on the Uttar Pradesh govt over police negligence that delayed the disposal of a bail application by more than 10 days, holding that repeated failures by police officials to furnish information sought by the court hindered the proceedings.The amount is to be paid to the applicants, while the state govt has been given liberty to recover the cost from the erring officials after conducting an inquiry. The court also observed that it would be appropriate for the Bijnor superintendent of police to conduct an inquiry and take suitable action against the officials concerned.“Since the present bail application could have been disposed of on July 3, but could not be disposed of, as despite repeated reminders and oral intimation, the requisite instructions were not supplied to this court, it remained pending for more than 10 days due to the laxity on the part of the police,” the court said in its July 14 order.Justice Arun Kumar Singh Deshwal passed the order while hearing a bail application filed by Yaseen and another accused in a dowry death case. Both applicants are relatives of the deceased woman.Granting bail, the court noted that there was insufficient material on record to show that the applicants had harassed the deceased over dowry demands or subjected her to cruelty before her death. The court also took note of statements of independent witnesses, which pointed towards a petty domestic dispute between the husband and wife.At the same time, the bench expressed strong displeasure over the conduct of police officials in responding to repeated requests for instructions in the matter.According to the order, the office of the joint director (prosecution), Allahabad High Court, supplied a copy of the bail application to the police pairokar on June 17. An alert was sent to the SP, Bijnor, on June 19, followed by a reminder on June 29, but the necessary instructions were still not furnished.On July 3, the court directed the prosecution to obtain the PDF of the case diary from the CCTNS portal. Instead of complying with the direction, police officials submitted only the applicants’ criminal history and not the case diary, prompting the court to summon the station house officer (SHO).During the subsequent hearing, the court examined the personal explanations furnished by the SHO, a sub-inspector and the circle officer.The SHO stated that he was on leave and was also engaged in law-and-order duties related to the Kanwar Yatra. The court accepted his explanation. However, sub-inspector Himanshu Panwar attributed the lapse to a “communication gap”, while the circle officer stated that a head constable attached to him had failed to inform him about communications received from the high court.The bench found the explanations unsatisfactory and remarked that it was “very surprising” that despite the notice, alerts, reminders and oral directions, the required instructions were not provided for more than 25 days.The court observed that officials appeared to be shifting responsibility onto one another even as the matter remained pending, resulting in avoidable delay in the administration of justice.
