People who have been raped and killed should be given justice: Bench



The bench ordered the DGP to produce all data pertaining to the dates of occurrences, the timeliness of FIR registration, arrests made, and recordings of victims' testimony.

We want to approach this issue with absolute data. We have, therefore, asked for full disclosure of data. We have something in mind for the ultimate order, but it is subject to us deducing the final data submitted to us. Our approach is irrespective of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. An offence is an offence irrespective of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim,” the bench told Gupta.

 An anguished Supreme Court slammed the "lethargic" and "tardy" investigation into the loss of human lives, dignity, and property in Manipur, lamenting the state's "absolute breakdown of constitutional machinery for two months" and summoning the state's director general of police (DGP) on August 7 to provide an explanation.

"There is no doubt about it: the state police are incapable of conducting investigations." It is obvious that they have lost control of the state's law and order...Manipur has lost its law and order. The investigation is sluggish. FIRs are not filed for two months, arrests are not made, and statements are not recorded after such a lag," stated a bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud.

The bench ordered the DGP to produce all records pertaining to the dates of the occurrences, the timing of the filing of FIRs, the arrests made, and the recording of the victims' testimonies.

 

"If even FIRs could not be registered for two months since May 3, it gives the impression that there was no law." Perhaps it is right that arrests could not be made since police could not enter the areas. Assuming such was the case, does it not indicate that there was a complete collapse of law and order as well as the state's constitutional machinery?" The bench, which also included justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, questioned Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta.

The breakdown of constitutional machinery is a legal basis for imposing President's Rule in a state, according to Article 356 of the Constitution.

Mehta, representing the N Biren Singh government, responded that the state was still not experiencing a complete breakdown of constitutional machinery, and that there had been no lethargy since the Union government ordered a CBI probe into the case involving a video of two women being stripped and paraded naked.

"People who live in the state, if law and order machinery cannot protect them, what happens to the people?" responded the bench.

 

In response to the viral video case from May 4, in which three women were stripped naked, at least one of them was gang-raped, and her brother and father were slain, the bench noted that the victims stated in their testimony that the police handed them over to a furious crowd.

"What happened after their statements?" Have those people been identified or arrested? Did the DGP try to find out who the cops were? Has anybody questioned them? What has the DGP done thus far? Isn't it his job to do this?" it questioned Mehta, who, for his part, asked the bench to wait for the conclusion of the CBI's preliminary inquiry into the matter.

 Mehta, who informed the bench that 11 of the 6,523 FIRs contained crimes against women and children, proposed that all 11 FIRs be handed over to the CBI.

 The bench, however, asked him: “And what about the remaining 6,000-odd FIRs? The state police clearly cannot investigate. If you dump it on CBI, you will render that agency dysfunctional since CBI is not capable of handling such a volume. It would be important in a situation like this to have a mechanism in place to bifurcate the FIRs and find out how many of them involve serious offences like murder, rape, destruction of homes and places of worship, serious bodily injuries and suchlike crimes.”

 

Referring to Mehta’s repeated statements that the Centre has now intervened, the bench remarked: “It’s clear from the records that for those two months, between May 3 and July, police was not in charge. They did something perfunctory. They were not in charge either because they were incapable of doing it or unwilling to do it.”