Madhya Pradesh High Court: The Division Bench of Rohit Arya and Milind Ramesh Phadke, JJ. took strong exception to the functioning of the Police force in the State while lambasting the authorities for blatant callousness and failure in tracing an 11-year-old missing minor girl.
The writ petition was filed by an unfortunate father in the year 2017 with the pious hope that this Court in exercise of its extraordinary constitutional jurisdiction shall come to his rescue for tracing her missing minor girl aged about 11 years.
Counsel for the petitioner complained that at some point of time, though there was a breakthrough situation during investigation with the incriminating material found, still the investigation was put to a standstill. It further appeared that despite three SITs constituted to search for the missing corpus, the corpus so far has not been found out. It shows incompetence of such police officials, who were members of the SITs. There was a disclosure of the fact by a person of having raped, killed and buried the body of the missing corpus, but so far no action has been taken against him. The photographs of the minor girl on record reflect how ruthlessly she was beaten black and blue, smashed her face and the whole body looked totally mutilated.
The Court pointed that despite repeated orders callousness on the part of the police force is well evident. The Court while lambasting police officials stated that the height of absurdity on the part of the Police officials is writ large, as despite the said knowledge of demise of the corpus, subsequent reports are being submitted that the missing corpus is being searched.
Affidavit submitted by the DGP was called merely a lip service as no substantial steps have been taken for action against such assailant, who was alleged to have stated about the rape and murder of the deceased missing corpus.
The Court was further surprised to note that so far, no FIR has been lodged to start the investigation on aforesaid disclosure of the fact of the death of the deceased corpus.
We are constrained to observe so, despite repeated orders by this Court, DG Police Madhya Pradesh since the year 2020 has maintained blissful silence for the reasons best known to him. We take strong exception to the functioning of the Police force in the State particularly, in the Guna district relevant to the facts of this case.
The Court observed that Safety and protection of public at large against invasion on their personal liberty and property appears to be seriously jeopardized quoting “There is no one to Police the Police Man in this State”.
The Court called for the presence of the Inspector General of Police on 08-07-2022 for further hearing.
[Ganjendra Singh Chandel v. State of Madhya Pradesh, 2022 SCC OnLine MP 1599, decided on 05-07-2022]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
Shri Anil Kumar Shrivastava, Advocate, for the Petitioner;
Shri M.P.S. Raghuvanshi, Additional Advocate General, for the respondent-State.
*Suchita Shukla, Editorial Assistant has reported this brief.