Facts of the case
On 26.05.2019, FIR No.91/2019 was registered in Srirampura Police Station, Bengaluru against Jayakanth alleging that he had uploaded defamatory posts about former Prime Minister Shri. H. D. Devegowda, Chief Minister Shri. H. D. Kumaraswamy and Shri. Nikhil Kumaraswamy on ‘Facebook’ and ‘Instagram pages captioned as ‘Troll Maga’, by Pradeep Kumar S.P., General Secretary of State JDS Legal Cell.
Learnt, Jaykanth S. approached the City Civil Court, Bengaluru seeking for Anticipatory bail. On 10th June 2019, the learned LXXXI Additional City Civil and Sessions Judge, Bengaluru granted anticipatory bail with a direction to surrender before the Police within one week therefrom.
When Jaykanth followed by the instructions of the court, appeared before Police. Deliberately, police refused to acknowledge his visit to the Police Station on that day, Petitioner went to the Police Station on the next day with his counsel and surety. Police not only refused to accept the surety but on the other hand, issued a notice to the petitioner stating that he had violated bail condition.
Later, Police again picked up Jaykanth from his residence in connection with second FIR bearing No.99/2019 registered on 23rd June 2019. Feeling aggrieved, Jaykanth filed Criminal petition under Section 482 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, praying to quash FIR No. 99/2019 registered in Sriramapura Police Station, Bengaluru and all further proceedings thereon, before the Karnataka high court, Bengaluru.
“Sec 482 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973: Saving of inherent powers of High Court. Nothing in this Code shall be deemed to limit or affect the inherent powers of the High Court to make such orders as may be necessary to give effect to any order under this Code, or to prevent abuse of the process of any Court or otherwise to secure the ends of justice.”
Arguments
Shri. Aruna Shyam, learned Advocate for petitioner urged following grounds in support of the petition:
- That the petitioner has not committed any offence;
- That FIRs have been registered at the behest of ruling party workers;
- that police have acted in a high-handed manner and taken the petitioner into custody by registering the second FIR to defeat the bail order granted by the learned Sessions Judge;
- That the petitioner is an Engineer by profession and hails from a respectable family; and
- That police have not followed the directions contained in Arneshkumar vs. State of Bihar and another.”
Decision of the Court
After hearing the contentions of both the parties, the court been felt, this is a classic case of abuse of authority and power, the court allowed the petition and quashed FIR No. 99/2019 registered in Srirampura Police Station and all further proceedings and State shall pay the cost of Rs.1,00,000/- to the petitioner within one month. Further stated that State shall recover the cost from the salary of officers found guilty in the Departmental Enquiry.
[googlepdf url=”http://libertatem.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Jaykanth-vs-State-of-karnataka.pdf” download=”Download Judgement PDF” ]
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