HC seeks response from Haryana govt on status of probe
: The Punjab and Haryana high court (HC) has issued notice to the Haryana government on an application filed by one of the accused in a first information report (FIR) registered on the complaint of senior Haryana IAS officer Ashok Khemka at Panchkula in April 2022. The state government has sought time to file a reply.
The petitioner, Ravinder Kumar, who is a co-accused along with Haryana IAS officer Sanjeev Verma in FIR number 171 registered on Khemka’s complaint, has sought court’s intervention to ask the state government as to why the investigation was not being completed in the FIR registered on April 26, 2022. The petitioner who had also filed a criminal main petition in 2022 has prayed that alternatively his plea for quashing the FIR registered on April 26, 2022 be allowed.
Issuing notice to the state government, justice Sandeep Moudgil of the high court on Tuesday ordered that the matter will come up before the bench on August 28.
Haryana government’s law officer BS Virk accepted the notice and sought time to file a reply. “It is made clear to the parties that arguments would be heard in main petition on
August 28,’’ the HC said.
What were the two FIRs
After the then managing director, Haryana State Warehousing Corporation (HSWC), Sanjeev Verma, had sought registration of a criminal case against Khemka and three others for allegedly making appointments in HSWC in an illegal and arbitrary manner, the Panchkula police in April 2022 had registered a case against Khemka, former HSWC manager Som Nath, former assistant manager SC Kansal and former assistant Naresh Kumar under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for cheating and Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act (criminal misconduct by a public servant) in FIR number 170.
However, on Khemka’s complaint, the police also registered a criminal case against Verma and Ravinder for making a false charge of offence and framing an incorrect document with intent to cause injury in a FIR number 171. They both were booked under Sections 167, 182, 195-A, 198, 211, 218 and 120 B of the IPC at Sector-5 police station following a complaint by Khemka.
Ravinder Kumar, a co-accused along with Verma in the second FIR, had in 2022 filed a petition before the HC seeking its quashing on the grounds that its registration was an abuse of the process of law as it was registered by the police as an immediate counterblast to the FIR registered against Khemka without arriving at a conclusion that a false FIR (number 170) has been registered. Justice Sureshwar Thakur of the HC on July 6, 2022, ordered that “the investigations to the petition FIR (171) may continue but the investigating officer, except with the leave of the court, may not institute a report under Section 173 of the CrPC before the magistrate.”
In his latest petition, Ravinder said the state government has not filed any reply even after a lapse of 21 months and is also not proceeding with the investigation.
“The petitioner rather claims that investigation be continued in the present case as his main challenge to the FIR against him is on the ground that the same could not have been lodged without first investigating the issue and arriving at the veracity of the allegations made by the petitioner against the accused in FIR number 170, which was based on an inquiry,’’ the petition said.