HC summons Patna SSP in lawyer’s case

Patna: Irked by the “working style” of Patna Police, the Patna high court on Monday summoned SSP Manavjit Singh Dhillon to reply as to what kind of monitoring he is doing upon the police investigation being conducted in his district.
The division bench of Justices Rajan Gupta and Mohit Kumar Shah, while hearing a PIL, expressed its displeasure for not mentioning the name of a sub-inspector (SI) in the accused column of an FIR lodged primarily against him for manhandling an advocate inside Shahstri Nagar police station in the city.The court has also summoned the investigating officer (IO) of the case on September 21.
Advocate Gautam Kejariwal, the amicus curiae (friend of the court), pointed out the discrepancy in the format of FIR lodged against the erring cops that despite the name and description of SI, who had allegedly assaulted the victim lawyer, the FIR had been drawn against an “unknown male cop”. The victim had taken the name of SI Lal Bahadur Yadav. He further pointed out that the FIR was instituted on the basis of an online complaint made by the victim advocate to the office of SSP on the night of the incident.
Justice Shah made harsh observations against such working style where “prima facie the police department seemed to have endeavoured to save their employee”.
This PIL has been instituted sue motu upon the complaints made by the members of the Bar about the alleged manhandling of a lawyer, Saket Gupta, by the Shastri Nagar police station personnel on August 3. Saket was thrashed and his colleagues Mayank Shekhar and Rajanikant were abused allegedly by SI Yadav, who had even allegedly taken out his service pistol threatening the three lawyers to shoot them.