Munmun Kaur
Published On: January 29, 2022 at 17:40 IST
Recently, the Bombay High Court gave directions to Maharashtra’s Chief Secretary to take stern action against the errant Officers of police stations for not reporting cameras that required repair. Further, the CS was also directed to submit a report to the Court setting out the data of functional as well as non-functional CCTVs at all the police stations in the State and the steps taken to keep the backup of the data.
The High Court was hearing a Writ Petition filed by one Somnath Giri and another challenging the “fabricated and “arbitrary” notice issued by Sinnar Police station of Maharashtra’s Nashik district on January 08 under section 149 CrPC. As per the Police, it was issued to allegedly “maintain law and order” and to prevent any offence arising out of alleged threats given by Petitioners to Complainants in a criminal case.
A Division Bench of Justice S J Kathawalla and Justice Milind N Jadhav hearing the matter observed that the CCTV systems are installed in the Police stations, merely by way of compliance to the Order, but the same are intentionally either not maintained properly to serve the purpose it is meant to serve, or are deliberately kept non–functional so that no evidence would be available in any matter.
Although, the Bench accepted the unconditional apologies of the Police officials and gave them a benefit of the doubt based on the extracts of the General Diary produced in the Court, at the same time recorded grave dissatisfaction on the point of CCTV not working at the police station put it as query, the verification of the statements of the two Police Officers before the Court.
The Bench also cited the 2020 Judgment in the case of Paramvir Singh Saini where the Supreme Court directed the installation of CCTVs across all police stations in the country and also gave exact positions for installation of such cameras.
The Bench observed that the statements made by police officials that they were unable to provide CCTV footage to the court on account of the CCTVs installed at the Police station being non-functional, was in breach of the Supreme Court Order and issued directions to the Chief Secretary of the State.
The Bench sought from the CS, a report on February 15.