Supreme Court Issues Notice To TN Govt On Missing Of Case Diaries Of Temple Idol Theft Cases

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to the State of Tamil Nadu in a plea relating to the missing of 41 case diaries regarding the investigation of temple idol theft cases.

The bench of Justices V. Ramasubramanian and Pankaj Mithal was hearing an SLP arising from the July, 2022 decision of the Madras High Court disposing off a writ petition by Advocate Elephant G. Rajendran in respect of the idol thefts. The petitioner had approach the High Court to seek the appointment of a retired police officer along with a team to investigate cases in respect of missing of 41 case diaries relating to temple idols.

On Tuesday, the courtroom exchange that transpired is as follows-

Bench: "What happened to those 41 case diaries? Have they been found?"

Petitioner-in-person: "Despite HC directions, nothing has happened!"

Bench: "We are asking you that 41 case diaries were lost, Have they been traced today or not?"

The bench was informed that only about 16 cases files have been found and reconstructed

The bench then passed the following order- "It is stated by the counsel for the petitioner that out of 41 case diaries which were lost, 16 have been reconstructed and nothing has been done in respect of the others. Therefore, issue notice, returnable in six weeks"

The High Court had noted, "In view of the above, the significance and the importance to the litigation is required to be given. It may be that the idols are recovered or not recovered, but when a case is registered, the investigation is to be conducted promptly. But, we find serious failure on the part of the police officers in completing the investigation in the matters. The aforesaid is one part only. Otherwise, in 41 cases which were taken up for investigation, the case diaries from the police stations were found missing or said to have been stolen. The aforesaid is also shocking and needs consideration in the background that not only the valuable idols were stolen, but even 41 case diaries pertaining to those cases were said to have been stolen. But no action against those responsible to keep the case diaries safely has been taken. The aforesaid cannot be accepted by this Court, because the State was under an obligation to fix the responsibility on those who were having the custody of case diaries"

The High Court disposed off this matter with the following directions, however, without constituting a team headed by a retired police officer and monitoring by the Court-

(i) The respondents are directed to find out the names of the police officers who were responsible to keep the case diaries in the proper custody and if any negligence is apparently found, to initiate action against those officers. The direction aforesaid has been given after considering the facts of the case, though a prayer to this effect has not been made.

(ii) The respondents are directed to complete the investigation in all the pending cases expeditiously and submit the final report before the concerned Court within a reasonable period and the delay in investigation is deprecated.

(iii) The second and fourth respondents are directed to give a general direction to all the police officers to keep the case diaries in proper custody, so that such incident of losing 41 case diaries is not repeated, and if it occurs, an immediate action be taken against the police officer who is responsible to keep it in safe custody.

(iv) It is further directed that the investigation in all such cases should be expedited with a final report and should not be kept pending for the reason that either the idol could not be recovered or the accused could not be traced out. Rather, if, at the relevant time, the idol could not be recovered or the accused could not be traced out and subsequently it is traced out then also, the matter may be taken up by the police. But only for the reason that the accused is not available and the idol is not recovered, the investigation should not be kept pending for years together.

Case Title : Elephant G Rajendran vs The Secretary and others| Diary No. 33973-2022

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