New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Tuesday imposed a cost of Rs 5 lakh on a petitioner who allegedly demanded money for withdrawing a case of illegal construction he had filed against his neighbour.
Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri asked the petitioner to deposit the amount with the Delhi State Legal Services Authority within a period of four weeks. The order also said that the amount should be utilised towards “counselling/psychological support to be provided to POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) victims requiring such assistance”.
The court was hearing a petition filed by one Pradeep Aggarwal in November 2021, seeking a direction to the Delhi government, divisional commissioner, MCD, and special commissioner of Delhi Police to initiate action against his neighbour, Ram Niwas Gupta, alleging illegal and unauthorised construction by him on a parcel of agricultural land in Delhi’s Burari village, without any sanction.
However, during the hearings, Gupta produced transcripts of conversations between Aggarwal and a mutual friend, Vijay Kumar Gupta, alleging that Aggarwal was demanding an amount of Rs 50 lakh from his neighbour for withdrawing the case.
On the court’s direction, DCP (crime) conducted an enquiry into the conversations and registered an FIR against Aggarwal last year on charges of extortion.
The court also directed a criminal contempt case to be filed against Aggarwal in December 2022. The contempt case was filed in January this year, and is pending before the court. A division bench of the high court issued a notice to Aggarwal in the contempt case on 9 January.
The order by Justice Ohri’s bench comes three days after the Supreme Court imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on the Uttar Pradesh government for filing a frivolous appeal in a case pertaining to payment of gratuity to a woman whose lecturer husband had died in 2009 while in service.
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Extortion FIR registered
While issuing notice on the petition on 15 December, the high court had directed the Delhi government and the station house officer (SHO) concerned to “ensure that no unauthorised construction activity is permitted in the subject area except in accordance with a sanctioned scheme of the Government for creating plotted development or in accordance with a sanctioned building plan, if any”.
In July 2022, Gupta alleged that Aggarwal was trying to extort money from him. He told the court that Aggarwal and Gupta were not just neighbours, but had known each other for the last two decades. He also submitted that there had been multiple transactions between them and that they both had filed several civil and criminal cases against each other.
Gupta also produced a transcript of a conversation between Aggarwal and their mutual friend, Vijay Kumar Gupta, from April and May 2022. In August last year, the high court then directed the DCP (Crime) to conduct a probe into the matter, on the basis of the conversations produced before it.
On 7 December last year, the court was informed that an FIR had been registered against Aggarwal under Section 384 (extortion) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), by the Delhi Police Crime Branch.
In an order passed on 19 December, the Delhi government also told the court that during the enquiry, voice samples of Aggarwal and Vijay Kumar Gupta were taken and sent for forensic examination. The status report submitted by the government also revealed that Vijay Kumar Gupta had a 12.5 per cent share in the land in question before the Delhi HC.
Taking note of the transcript as well as other material produced before it, the court was “of the prima facie view that the conduct of the petitioner is an attempt to interfere and obstruct the judicial proceedings and administration of justice, constituting criminal contempt, as defined under Section 2(c)(ii) and (iii) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971”.
The court therefore directed the matter to be placed before the chief justice of the high court, so that a criminal contempt case can be initiated against Aggarwal.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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