A CBI court here on Saturday directed the special magistrate to supply a certified copy of the closure report filed by the agency in the sacrilege incidents of the Guru Granth Sahib to the Punjab government.
Special CBI Judge Nirbhow Singh overruled a special judicial magistrate's July 23 order dismissing the Punjab government's application for supply of the closure report.
The judge directed the special magistrate to supply the documents to the state of Punjab, Advocate General Atul Nanda said in an official release here.
The court noted that as per the relevant sections of the Punjab Civil and Criminal Courts Preparation and Supply of Copies of Record Rules, 1965, "the party to a criminal case is entitled to copy of challan and similarly even a stranger to a criminal case is entitled for the same in case sufficient reason is shown to the satisfaction of the Court".
"The word 'stranger' is not defined in the rules and the dictionary meaning of a word 'stranger' is a person whom one does not know or with whom one is not familiar. In view of the facts as stated above, the status of State of Punjab in any case is better than that of a stranger," it said.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had on July 04 filed the closure report in a special CBI court here, giving a clean chit to the accused in the three incidents of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib in 2015 in Faridkot.
On July 23, the CBI court dismissed the state of Punjab's application for supply of copy of the closure report.
On August 20, the state government filed a revision petition in a special court here challenging the July 23 order.
On August 26, the CBI filed an application in the Mohali CBI court, praying for keeping its closure report in abeyance and said the investigation was still continuing.
The erstwhile SAD-BJP government in Punjab had handed over three cases of sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib to the CBI.
The cases included theft of a 'bir' (copy) of the Guru Granth Sahib from a gurdwara in Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village on June 1, 2015; putting up of hand-written sacrilegious posters in Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala on September 25, 2015; and torn pages of the holy book being found at Bargari in Faridkot on October 12, 2015.
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