The Delhi High Court has rejected a PIL seeking direction to formulate transparent and pragmatic mechanism to provide acknowledgment to individuals joining probe in criminal cases.
"Investigation of an offence is the field exclusively reserved for the police officers, whose powers in that field are unfettered, so long as (these are) legitimately exercised and not abused," a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said.
"We, therefore, do not find any ground to entertain this petition filed as a PIL and dismiss the same," it added.
The court's order came on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by M Sufian Siddiqui, who had contended that some of the investigating officers proceed to arrest the persons on false grounds that they have not joined in the probe.
He had argued that if there were to be a system in place to enable such persons to have an acknowledgment of their joining the investigation, they would be saved from harassment at the hands of police officers.
The court, however, said that "aberration practiced by some of the police officials cannot be a ground for us to rewrite the CrPC which according to the petitioner suffers from this lacuna.
"We may also notice that as far as the city of Delhi is concerned, all the police stations have CCTVs and thus the presence of any person summoned to the police station is recorded and it will not be ordinarily possible for the summoning official to deny that the person has not attended inspite of being summoned."
The Chief Justice further observed "We may also record the precaution taken by some persons, so summoned, to have a DD entry done of their visit. We have in our experience also learnt that the summoning official, to avoid issuance of the fresh summons, generally writes the date on which presence is next required on the summon itself and which acts as acknowledgment."
If anyone has a specific grievance against any police official, such person has sufficient remedies available to him in law under the CrPC itself, the bench said.
