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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday stepped up the heat on bureaucrats and police officers who willingly become tools in the hands of regimes to carry out illegal orders from their political masters, saying that it is mulling setting up a standing committee in each state headed by the high court chief justice to scrutinise citizens’ complaints against them.
A bench headed by CJI N V Ramana said, “I have a lot of reservations about the way in this country bureaucrats, particularly police officers, are behaving. At one time, I was thinking of creating a standing committee headed by the chief justice of the high courts to examine atrocities of bureaucrats and police officers and complaints made against them. But I do not want to do it now. The matter will come again.”
These remarks from the CJI came in a case where additional director general of police in Chhattisgarh Gurjinder Pal Singh has sought protection from arrest from state police in three cases, including sedition and disproportionate assets. He alleged that he was called late in the night to CM Bhupesh Baghel’s residence and was pressured to implicate former CM Raman Singh in the PDS scam. “When he refused to abide by the illegal order, he was implicated in case after case,” said senior advocates Fali S Nariman and Vikas Singh.
Appearing for the state, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said documents seized from outside the senior police officer’s residence clearly indicated that he was attempting to spread disharmony among different communities and fuel agitation in the state for toppling the Baghel-led Congress government. “This is a clear case of rebellion and sedition,” he said.
In the same case, the bench of CJI Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli had earlier made scathing remarks against the infectious tendency among certain police officers to cosy up to regimes and later, when the regime changed, face music.
“It is a disturbing feature across the country. To be in the good books of politicians in power, they commit ‘harakiri’. First, they register cases against political opponents at the beck and call of those at the helm of power. They face the music at the hands of other police officers when the previously targeted politicians come to power,” it had said, adding, “The police officers have to apportion blame among themselves for this sorry state of affairs.”
A bench headed by CJI N V Ramana said, “I have a lot of reservations about the way in this country bureaucrats, particularly police officers, are behaving. At one time, I was thinking of creating a standing committee headed by the chief justice of the high courts to examine atrocities of bureaucrats and police officers and complaints made against them. But I do not want to do it now. The matter will come again.”
These remarks from the CJI came in a case where additional director general of police in Chhattisgarh Gurjinder Pal Singh has sought protection from arrest from state police in three cases, including sedition and disproportionate assets. He alleged that he was called late in the night to CM Bhupesh Baghel’s residence and was pressured to implicate former CM Raman Singh in the PDS scam. “When he refused to abide by the illegal order, he was implicated in case after case,” said senior advocates Fali S Nariman and Vikas Singh.
Appearing for the state, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said documents seized from outside the senior police officer’s residence clearly indicated that he was attempting to spread disharmony among different communities and fuel agitation in the state for toppling the Baghel-led Congress government. “This is a clear case of rebellion and sedition,” he said.
In the same case, the bench of CJI Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli had earlier made scathing remarks against the infectious tendency among certain police officers to cosy up to regimes and later, when the regime changed, face music.
“It is a disturbing feature across the country. To be in the good books of politicians in power, they commit ‘harakiri’. First, they register cases against political opponents at the beck and call of those at the helm of power. They face the music at the hands of other police officers when the previously targeted politicians come to power,” it had said, adding, “The police officers have to apportion blame among themselves for this sorry state of affairs.”
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