Erring investigators must face departmental action: HC

In a stern message to erring investigators, the Delhi High Court has said such police officers "must" face departmental action for their "culpable" lapses in probing crimes as they lead to acquittals.
"All such erring police officers who are responsible and who become cause for failure in any prosecution case on account of their sheer negligence or culpable lapses or incompetence must suffer departmental action as has been recently held by the apex court...," a bench of justices Kailash Gambhir and Sunita Gupta said.
The court said "incompetence" and "culpable" lapses on the part of police officers "increases the rate of acquittals and results in multiplication of crimes in the society."

It also came down on the government for not segregating the law and order with that of investigation duties of police despite being asked by the Supreme Court and the Law Commission.
"This (acquittal) is primarily due to the incompetency of many such police officers who are entrusted with such a sensitive job of carrying out investigation into any crime and secondly because of lack of willingness on the part of the government to separate the investigation from the law and order, despite being directed by the Supreme Court many a times, right from the authoritative pronouncement in Prakash Singh vs. Union of India reported and various recommendations made by the Law Commission of India in this regard," it said.

The court's observations came in an interim order on the plea of Delhi police filed against the acquittal of one Ashok Kumar Jain by a lower court on August 31, 2013 in a case.

Jain had allegedly entered into a house at Rohini here on January 11, 2008 on the pretext of delivering sweets as he was blessed with a baby boy.
He, armed with a knife, assaulted Rajani after tying hands and gaging her mouth and attempted to rob valuables. He also threatened to kill her, police said.
As two relatives of the victim intervened, Jain fled from the scene and was later caught by police, it said.

The lower court had let off Jain after finding fault with the testimonies of the victim and others and had said that police did not put on record the knife, sweet box and other relevant evidence.