Chanan Singh vs State of Punjab and another

K.K. Srivastava, J.

By means of this petition filed under Section 482 Cr.P.C. petitioner Chanan Singh son of Kashmir Singh, resident of Khemkaran, District Amritsar in the State of Punjab seeks transfer of investigation of the case F.I.R. No. 13 of 1995, dated 15.3.1995 under Sections 307 and 34 IPC and under Sections 25, 27 and 54 of Arms Act of Police Station Khemkaran aforesaid to an independent agency like C.I.D. (Criminal Branch) of Vigilance Branch.

In nutshell, the averments made in the F.I.R. are as under :

On 14.3.1995 at 9.30 p.m. petitioner and his son Ranjit Singh were assaulted by Jagdish Lal Khanna and others who were armed with firearms. The son of the petitioner in this occurrence received multiple firearm injuries which caused his confinement in the hospital for about 15 days. A number of bullets were removed from his person. The aforesaid FIR was registered. The medicolegal report regarding the injuries of Ranjit Singh showed that he sustained four firearm injuries on his person which forced his hospitalisation for a period of 15 days. The police did not take any action in the matter against the culprit Jagdish Lal who wielded considerable influence being a press reporter of Hind Samachar Group of Newspapers. The petitioner approached to the higher police authorities right from Dy. S.P. Patti, S.P. Tarn Taran and Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar but his efforts did not yield any fruitful results. The culprits weres freely roaming in the town and the police did not act in the matter by effecting their arrest. The contention of the petitioner is that the inaction on the part of the police has caused grave miscarriage of justice and there is no alternative left but to approach this Court by filing this petition seeking transfer of the investigation. This petition was duly supported by the affidavit of Chanan Singh.

Notice of motion was issued as far back as May 31, 1995 to the A.G. Punjab and after almost a year of the date of issue of notice of motion no reply has been filed in this petition on behalf of the respondents.

Learned AAG for the State of Punjab had today made a verbal request for some more time to file a reply. In the facts and circumstances of the case in which already about a year''s time has elapsed and no reply could be filed even by way of filing a short affidavit and keeping in view the serious nature of the offence, as mentioned above, I am of the considered view that there are no good grounds for acceding to the request made by the respondent for more time to file reply in the case and resultantly, the prayer in the aforesaid facts and circumstances is declined.

After hearing the learned AAG for the State of Punjab and learned counsel and perusing the material on record which is in the shape of the petition and affidavit referred already in the earlier part of this order, I deem it appropriate to allow this petition and issue a direction to the respondent for transferring the investigation of the case from the present Investigating Agency to Vigilance Branch in the Police District of Tarn Taran situated in the revenue District of Amritsar with the direction that the Vigilance Branch shall proceed with the investigation of the case according to law expeditiously but not later than three months. A copy of this order attested by the Special Secretary be furnished to Mr. Cuccria for doing the needful.