New Delhi: The Supreme Court Tuesday directed Manipur’s Director General of Police (DGP) to be personally present before it to answer its query on what it described as a “lethargic” investigation into the ongoing ethnic violence, saying there is “absolute breakdown of law and order and machinery of the State”.
A three-judge bench led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said it was shocked to note three-months’ delay in filing of FIRs, and that only some arrests had been made in over 6,000 cases registered since the clashes broke out on 3 May.
The court order said: “Based on the preliminary data, it does prima facie appear that the investigation has been tardy. There has been considerable lapse between the occurrence and registration of FIRs, recording of witness statements, and even the arrests are few and far between.”
In order to enable the court to “appreciate” the entire dimensions of the “nature of investigation” that is required, the court summoned the DGP at 2 pm Friday, saying the senior officer “should be in a position to answer the queries of the court”.
The bench, also including justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, was hearing a suo-motu cognisance case on the Manipur crisis, besides some related petitions.
On Monday, the court had asked the state to inform it about the number of FIRs arising out of the violence, and give an offence-wise break-up.
In response, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench that 6,532 FIRs had been registered, of which 11 pertained to crimes against women.
However, the solicitor — who was representing the Manipur government — said he was not aware of any further break-up, such as how many of them were registered as zero FIRs, or when they were converted into regular FIRs or were transferred to the jurisdictional police station for further investigation.
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‘Long delay in filing FIRs’
The bench also asked Mehta about the date of arrests made in connection with the video of two women who were paraded naked on 4 May, a day after the violence began. They were also sexually assaulted, according to the FIR.
Mehta could not give a specific answer to this query either, and said it appeared the accused were arrested after the video surfaced last month.
The solicitor said he was not in a position to give immediate responses to the queries as he was briefed during the day, after the chart relating to the FIRs was prepared overnight by the officers.
Mehta handed over the chart to the court, which, upon its perusal, remarked : “One thing is clear. There is such a long delay in filing FIRs.”
Referring to an incident in which a woman was dragged out of a car and her son lynched to death, the CJI said: “FIR was registered on 7 July in respect of an incident reported on 4 May. It was a serious incident. It appears except for one or two cases, there are no arrests at all.”
He further observed: “This gives us an impression that from the beginning of May till the end of July there was no law. There was absolute breakdown of machinery that you could not even register an FIR. Does it not point to the fact that there is complete breakdown of law and order and machinery in the state.”
Mehta conceded the situation on the ground was bad, and said action was taken the moment the Centre came to know.
When the CJI exclaimed that only 7 persons were arrested, Mehta clarified that the said arrests were in connection with the viral video, and altogether 250 arrests had been made, while 12,000 were detained as a preventive measure.
Mehta urged the bench to be cautious with its words, saying they could be “used or misused in ways that were not intended”.
But the CJI was unrelenting and went on to question the state’s “incapability” in handling the crisis. With regard to an incident where policemen had “handed over women to a mob”, the CJI asked Mehta if the personnel had been “interrogated”. “Has the DGP enquired? What is the DGP doing? It is his duty,” the CJI said.
“It is clear that [between May and July] the state police were not in charge. They may have made performative arrests, but they were not in charge. Either they were incapable of doing it or uninterested,” the CJI said.
On whether the CBI should take over all the FIRs, the bench said it was impossible to transfer all the cases to the central agency as it will cause it to break down. Mehta informed the bench that at present the proposal was to transfer the 11 cases of sexual violence to the CBI.
The court went on to seek specific information from Mehta and asked him to provide a statement of the FIRs indicating the date of occurrence, date of registration of zero FIR, date of registration of regular FIR, date on which witness statements were recorded, the date when statements were recorded before the magistrate, and date of arrests.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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