Coming down heavily on Madhya Pradesh police for illegally arresting a US-based NRI doctor and her lawyer mother in 2012, the Supreme Court today quashed the FIR and also asked the state to pay Rs 10 lakh as compensation to them saying "freedom" has its "sanctity".
A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and S K Singh, which sat in the vacation to pronounce several verdicts including the present one, held that the proceedings before the magisterial court against the mother-daughter duo lacked "ingredient" of section 420 (cheating) of the IPC and hence quashed.
"On a studied scrutiny of the report, it is quite vivid that the arrest of the petitioners was not made by following the procedure of arrest. Section 41-A (notice of appearance) of the CrPC as has been interpreted by this Court has not been followed. The report clearly shows there have been number of violations in the arrest and seizure. Circumstances in no case justify the manner in which the petitioners were treated.
"In such a situation, we are inclined to think that the dignity of the petitioners, a doctor and a practicing advocate has been seriously jeopardized...Taking into consideration the totality of facts and circumstances, we think it appropriate to grant a sum of Rs 5,00,000 towards compensation to each of the petitioners (total Rs 10 lakh) to be paid by theState of MP within three months hence," the bench said.
Writing the judgement for the bench, Justice Misra said a person is likely to feel "shaken" and "disillusioned" if individual liberty is curtailed in an "unlawful manner".
"It is also clear that liberty of the petitioner was curtailed in violation of law. The freedom of an individual has its sanctity. When the individual liberty is curtailed in an unlawful manner, the victim is likely to feel more anguished, agonized, shaken, perturbed, disillusioned and emotionally torn. It is an assault on his/her identity," it said.
Rini Johar and her mother Gulshan Johar were arrested on November 27, 2012 from their residence at Pune following an FIR against them by Madhya Pradesh Cyber police. It was alleged that they committed fraud of 10,500 USD in a transaction related to purchase of cameras and a laptop.
The verdict came on the appeal of the mother-daughter duo
challenging the legality of the arrest on the basis of the FIR registered against them under Sections 420 (cheating)and 34 (common intention) of the IPC and Section 66-D (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
Quashing the FIR, the bench, in its 27-page judgement, said, "...Fidelity to statutory safeguards instill faith of the collective in the system. It does not require wisdom of a seer to visualize that for some invisible reason, an attempt has been made to corrode the procedural safeguards which are meant to sustain the sanguinity of liberty."
In their plea, the two women had claimed that after they were arrested, they were taken from Pune to Bhopal in an unreserved railway compartment and despite request, the second petitioner was compelled to lie on the cold floor of the train compartment without any food and water.
The apex court said that the two ladies were arrested without following the procedure and put in the compartment of a train without being produced before the local Magistrate from Pune to Bhopal.
"We are compelled to say so as liberty which is basically the splendor of beauty of life and bliss of growth, cannot be allowed to be frozen in such a contrived winter. That would tantamount to comatosing of liberty which is the strongest pillar of democracy," the bench said.
The top court also took the police to task for flouting various guidelines laid down by it on procedures related to search, seizure and arrest saying, "the investigating agency it seems has put its sense of accountability to law on the ventilator".
