Yash Goyal
Jaipur, October 30
The Jaipur Bench of the Rajasthan High Court on Wednesday quashed an FIR and a charge sheet filed against Pehlu Khan, who was lynched by cow vigilantes in April 2017, his two sons and a truck driver.
On a prayer of petitioners, the HC’s Single Bench of Justice Pankaj Bhandari quashed the FIR in which Pehlu’s name was mentioned and the charge sheet in which his two sons — Irshad and Arif, and driver Khan Mohammed were named.
FIR was lodged by a Sub-Inspector of Behror Police station against Pehlu Khan, his two sons and the driver. Later, the police filed charge sheet only against Pehlu Khan’s sons and driver in 2017 during the previous Raje government.
When the case hit the headlines early this year, the new Congress government ensured that the case would be reviewed by the competent authority.
The HC quashed the case on the ground that basic ingredients of offence are not made in the FIR itself, because there no evidence to show that the bovine (cows) was transported for slaughtering, petitioners’ lawyer Kapil Gupta told The Tribune quoting the judgement.
The counsel argued that the calves were barely a month or two old and the two cows were milking. Pehlu Khan had bought the bovine from a cattle fair and carried a receipt too.
The court was convinced by the arguments made by the petitioners’ counsel that the case amount to the abuse of process of law. It rejected the public prosecutor’s request in which he defended that the matter was under investigation by a magistrate.
Early this month, the state government and Pehlu Khan’s family members had filed an appeal before the HC against the acquittal of all six accused in the lynching case by a lower court of Alwar. The state government had to consider a three-member SIT’s report that had found enough ground to appeal against the lower court’s judgement of August 14, 2019.
Pehlu Khan (55), a native of Nuh in Haryana was brutally beaten up by 15 cow vigilantes near Behror in Rajasthan on the Delhi highway on April 1, 2017 for “transporting cattle without prior permission”.
He succumbed to injuries at a private hospital on April 3. The lynching was caught on camera. The police had given clean chit to all six accused in the case.
The police had registered a case under IPC’s Sections 302 (murder), 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), 143 (punishment for unlawful assembly) and 427 (punishment for theft) at Behrod Thana. A case was registered under Section 6 of the Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act, 1995.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2q2CBEQ
via Today’s News Headlines
No comments: