The Bombay High Court on Thursday asked why a first information report could not be registered after a magisterial inquiry showed that five police officers were responsible for the death of a man accused of sexually abusing two minor girls in Badlapur, PTI reported.
A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Neela Gokhale reserved its order on whether a case ought to be filed by the state government in the matter.
The man, Akshay Shinde, allegedly sexually abused the minors on August 12 on the premises of their school, where he worked as a janitor. Four days later, one of the children reported the incident to her parents who approached the police. Shinde was arrested on August 17.
On September 23, Shinde was killed while he was being taken from Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai to the Crime Branch office in Thane in connection with a separate case of sexual assault filed by his second wife in 2022.
The police claimed that Shinde snatched a police weapon and fired at security personnel while in transit. He injured a police officer and was shot dead in retaliatory fire, the authorities had said.
Provisions of the law mandate a judicial probe into cases of custodial death.
On January 20, a Thane magistrate told the High Court that five police officers were found responsible for Shinde’s custodial death.
The High Court on February 3 tasked the Maharashtra government to make its submission in three days on the actions it plans to take on a magisterial inquiry into the matter.
On Thursday, senior counsel Amit Desai, for the state government, told the High Court that an independent investigation was already being carried out into the matter. The state government had also set up a commission to probe the incident, he added.
An accidental death report was filed after the incident, he said, adding that the state Crime Investigation Department was also conducting an investigation.
In response, the bench asked whether an investigation could be carried out only on the basis of an accidental death report, PTI reported.
“We are concerned about the registration of FIR,” the news agency quoted the High Court as saying. “Where is that? Is the ADR [accidental death report] an FIR? We understand that initially ADR is lodged, but when subsequently it comes to fore that it was not an accidental or natural death but a homicidal death, shouldn’t a FIR be lodged?”
The bench also asked what action the Crime Investigation Department proposed to take after the investigation is completed.
“Once the investigation is over, the CID will file its final report as per provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code,” Desai said. “It could either be a closure report or a prosecution report.”
The magisterial inquiry into Shinde’s killing found that his fingerprints were not present on the pistol he allegedly snatched and that there was no gunshot residue on his body. This suggested that the “use of force was not justified”, the inquiry report stated.
The officers named in the report were senior police inspector Sanjay Shinde, assistant police inspector Nilesh More, head constables Abhijeet More and Harish Tawade and constable Satish Ramnath Khatal who was driving the vehicle.
Four of the five police officials have filed an intervention application seeking that the findings of the inquiry report be made available to them.