High Court fines state Rs50k for illegal house sealing

Patna: The Patna high court imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on state authorities for arbitrarily sealing a residential house in Jehanabad, nearly two years after the alleged recovery of liquor linked to the same premises.A single bench of justice Arun Kumar Jha, while allowing a criminal writ application filed by one Neelam Devi, passed the order on Jan 13. A copy of the order was made available on Thursday.Appearing for the petitioner, Anunay Shahi and Shivendra Prasad submitted that their client is the owner of the house in question, which was suddenly locked and sealed on Jan 31, 2022, by state authorities without assigning any reason.On enquiry, Neelam Devi learned that the sealing was a follow-up step towards confiscation of the property, as her son had been arrested earlier in connection with the alleged recovery of 8.5 litres of Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) on Oct 6, 2019.The counsels further submitted that police had found no involvement of Neelam Devi in the alleged liquor recovery made from her son. Her name did not figure in the chargesheet filed in the case registered at Jehanabad police station.The petitioner’s counsel argued that the state cannot take action against the property of a woman under the liquor prohibition law if she has no involvement in the alleged liquor offence committed by her son.While directing the immediate unsealing of the petitioner’s house, justice Jha held that the action of the state authorities was beyond the mandate of law. The court also rejected the submission of the state counsel that the delay in sealing the house was due to the Covid-19 pandemic, observing that the case was registered in Oct 2019, whereas the pandemic reached India only in March 2020.The high court imposed the cost for causing undue harassment to the petitioner.