Criminal Courts Must Proactively Filter Factually Fractured Prosecutions At Challan Stage To Arrest 'Snail-Paced Justice': J&K High Court

Holding that criminal courts are not meant to function as passive recipients of police reports, the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has underscored that from the very presentation of a final police report (challan), courts must proactively apply judicial acumen to examine whether a case discloses a complete and coherent factual foundation warranting trial, or whether it is a factually fractured prosecution destined to collapse.Justice Rahul Bharti made these observations while quashing a long-pending criminal case, observing that such prosecutions are among the underlying causes of the snail pace of criminal administration of justice.“… such like criminal case/s is one of the underlying causes of snail pace of criminal administration of justice taking place in criminal court/s, as such like cases tax the load-ridden docket system of criminal court/s taking its own time to make a final exit unless and until an aggrieved person subjected to suffer misconceived prosecution is able to somehow reach for inherent power of this Court”, Justice Bharti remarked. The Court was dealing with a petition filed by one Sunny Kashyap invoking the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court to quash an FIR and the consequential Final Police Report which sought to prosecute him for offences under Sections 366, 376 and 343 of the Ranbir Penal Code.The genesis of the case lay in a handwritten complaint submitted in 2015 by a father alleging that his daughter, referred to as Miss X, aged about 16–17 years, had gone missing and had been forcibly kidnapped by the petitioner for sexual intercourse. Acting on this complaint, FIR was registered under Section 363 RPC. The Court recorded that the victim was purportedly recovered from the possession of the petitioner shortly thereafter. However, Justice Bharti found it “very strange” that despite recovery of the alleged victim from the petitioner, the Investigating Officer did not arrest him, even though the offence alleged was cognizable.The medical examination revealed that the victim was 20 years old and ruled out any recent sexual intercourse and this fact was reiterated by the victim in her statement under Section 164-A CrPC, contradicting her father's claim in the FIR that she was a minor.Commenting on this discrepancy, the Court observed that the incorrect mention of age had “a direct relevance attending the mindset with which registration of FIR had taken place”, a factor which the investigating agency failed to meaningfully address.The court also noted that the petitioner, finding himself caught in a criminal accusation, had approached the High Court in September 2015 by filing a habeas corpus petition, asserting that the victim was a major and that both had solemnised marriage at Arya Samaj Mandir, Jammu. In those proceedings, the victim appeared before the Court, admitted that she had married the petitioner of her own free will, and stated that she wished to return to her parents. Her statement was recorded, and the petition was disposed of. Despite these judicial proceedings, the police, after a gap of more than six years, presented the Final Police Report projecting the petitioner as an absconder and seeking his prosecution for serious offences. Justice Bharti found it striking that the challan made no reference whatsoever to the habeas corpus petition or to the victim's statements recorded therein.Critically examining the investigation, the Court observed that the police had acted with a regressive and stereotyped mindset, ignoring elementary and essential facts which were plainly visible on record. The Court remarked that such omissions appeared deliberate, as if by excluding obvious facts, the investigation could insulate itself from judicial scrutiny.In a pointed observation, Justice Bharti noted that the complainant had misquoted his daughter's age, something which could not be attributed to loss of memory. The Court observed that the Investigating Officer never confronted the complainant on this issue, despite documentary proof of the victim's date of birth being available on record. It further noted that the complainant had furnished complete particulars of the petitioner in the FIR without disclosing the source of such information, indicating that more facts were known but consciously withheld.The Court further found that the record was silent on how and on whose identification the victim was recovered from the petitioner, observing that, “More was kept suppressed rather than divulged and disclosed before the criminal court as if a criminal court is supposed to act on a blinkered mode of reading and understanding by dispensing with its judicial and forensic understanding.”Justice Bharti also took note of the fact that the very Investigating Officer who later pleaded ignorance had himself produced the victim before the High Court in the earlier habeas corpus proceedings, making the omission in the challan all the more glaring.On an overall assessment, the Court ...

Criminal Courts Must Proactively Filter Factually Fractured Prosecutions At Challan Stage To Arrest 'Snail-Paced Justice': J&K High Court

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