Delhi Court Discharges Ex-AAP MLA Naresh Balyan In Extortion Case, Flags Serious Lapses In Probe

A Delhi court has discharged former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Naresh Balyan in an alleged extortion case, holding that the prosecution failed to establish prima facie that he was linked to an extortion racket allegedly run by gangster Kapil Sangwan.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Paras Dalal of Rouse Avenue Courts observed that the while the case was registered in July 2023, it reached its conclusion only in June this year and the evidence collected were in piecemeal.

The judge said that in about 36 months, there were burst of investigation for couple of days, followed by weeks and months of silence.

“At the stage of charge, the Court has to satisfy the requirements of 'the foundational threshold test', 'grave suspicion standard' and 'broad probability test', to ensure that the framing of charge must not become an empty formality,” the Court said.

“This Court thus finds that prosecution cannot cast grave suspicion upon the accused no.2 sufficient to frame charges either for entering into criminal conspiracy with accused no.1 to commit extortion or disappearance of evidence,” it added.

The case stemmed from an FIR registered in July 2023 on the complaint of businessman Gurcharan Singh, who alleged that he had received WhatsApp calls and voice messages from an international number, purportedly from gangster Kapil Sangwan, demanding Rs. 1 crore as extortion money and threatening to kill him if he failed to pay.

During investigation, the police relied on audio recordings that had surfaced on social media and were later aired in a television programme, allegedly capturing conversations between Sangwan and Balyan.

Discharging Balyan in the case, the Court found that there was unexplained delay in the investigation and that there was also serious deficiencies in the handling of electronic evidence.

The Court said that apart from unexplained delays, the police report without explanation relied heavily upon secondary evidence, and there was no explanation why primary evidence was not seized or produced.

“Here, objectivity demands that when complainant's phone was available, why was not the same seized and sent for analyses? Why secondary evidence in form of pen drive was seized, which was never compared with original recordings in the mobile?,” the judge asked.

Observing that there was major lapse in the investigation which was unexplained, the court noted that no notice was given to Facebook or the user who uploaded the recording of an alleged conversation between Balyan and Sangwan.

As per the Court, this made the IO himself an interested witness to the outcome of the case and that the said conduct lost all objectivity.

“Investigation is not merely to fix culpability of a suspect, rather it is a quest to unearth and gather all the evidences which would be necessary to reach a definite conclusion of a criminal process set in motion. The conduct of the present investigation fails to uphold the said principles and it appears that the investigation has been conducted on assumption that both suspects are the culprits since the very beginning,” the Court said.

Further, the judge added that there was not a single piece of evidence to show that there existed any prior meeting of minds between Balyan or Sangwan.

The Court said there was no evidence that both ever had any prior meeting of minds or entered into a conspiracy to commit the offence under investigation.

“What here is questionable is that IO has not checked the veracity of the claims of two new victims and complainant's motive to give additional statement after about 18 months of the incident. The two victims deposed that they received threatening calls and they were put under coercion to sign an unfavorable land deal, however no such evidence was gathered if indeed any calls were received or any land deal was entered by them,” the Court said.

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