By
NEW DELHI: As the Supreme Court on Friday convicted former MP and RJD leader Prabhunath Singh in a twin murder case, the judgment laid out how the whole system was working as per script to let off the accused but the mistake commited in abducting a court witness, just ten days before she was to make her statement, lead to the opening of a Pandora’s box and exposed the complicity of all public officers in saving Singh.
“Everything was going as planned” for Singh, with almost all witnesses turning hostile, police favouring him and judicial officers “completely insensitive towards their pious duty, but everything turned upside down when he committed a glaring mistake of abducting deceased’s mother and that one mistake cost him heavily”, noted the SC on Friday.
Analysing evidence and statements of witnesses, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Abhay S Oka and Vikram Nath convicted Singh in the 1995 murder case and put the state’s judicial system and police administration in the dock for miserably failing in their duties which resulted in Singh being acquitted in the case. The court directed the Bihar government to take Singh into custody and place him before it on September 1 when it would decide on the quantum of sentence. He is already in jail serving life imprisonment in another murder case.
“We have noticed that the three main stakeholders in a criminal trial, namely the investigating officer that is the part of the police of the state of Bihar, the public prosecutor, and the judiciary, have all utterly failed to keep up their respective duties and responsibilities cast upon them. This court time and again has commented upon the failure of the major stakeholders in criminal delivery system,” said Justice Nath, who penned the judgment for the bench.
“The trial court and the HC miserably failed to notice the sensitivity and intricacies of the case. Both the courts completely shut their eyes to the manner of the investigation, the prosecutor’s role, and the high-handedness of the accused as also the conduct of the presiding officer of the trial court,” the apex court said.
“Everything was going as planned” for Singh, with almost all witnesses turning hostile, police favouring him and judicial officers “completely insensitive towards their pious duty, but everything turned upside down when he committed a glaring mistake of abducting deceased’s mother and that one mistake cost him heavily”, noted the SC on Friday.
Analysing evidence and statements of witnesses, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Abhay S Oka and Vikram Nath convicted Singh in the 1995 murder case and put the state’s judicial system and police administration in the dock for miserably failing in their duties which resulted in Singh being acquitted in the case. The court directed the Bihar government to take Singh into custody and place him before it on September 1 when it would decide on the quantum of sentence. He is already in jail serving life imprisonment in another murder case.
“We have noticed that the three main stakeholders in a criminal trial, namely the investigating officer that is the part of the police of the state of Bihar, the public prosecutor, and the judiciary, have all utterly failed to keep up their respective duties and responsibilities cast upon them. This court time and again has commented upon the failure of the major stakeholders in criminal delivery system,” said Justice Nath, who penned the judgment for the bench.
“The trial court and the HC miserably failed to notice the sensitivity and intricacies of the case. Both the courts completely shut their eyes to the manner of the investigation, the prosecutor’s role, and the high-handedness of the accused as also the conduct of the presiding officer of the trial court,” the apex court said.
What is your reaction?
Excited
0
Happy
0
In Love
0
Not Sure
0
Silly
0
