The Bombay High Court said Wednesday that if the FIR against NCP chief Sharad Pawar, his daughter and MP Supriya Sule, and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, as well as others pertaining to the Lavasa hill station project, is not registered by the police, the petitioner can file a private complaint before a magistrate.
The Court said political pressure may influence the police, not the magistrate.
A division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Arif S Doctor was hearing PIL by lawyer Nanasaheb Jadhav filed earlier this year, seeking directions to the police to register a case against Sharad Pawar, Supriya Sule, and Ajit Pawar and others over alleged illegal permissions given to a project to build a private hill station at Lavasa in the state’s Pune district.
Claiming that since the complaint involved big politicians and officers, the police refused to register a First Information Report, Jadhav had also sought a CBI probe into the issue.
Jadhav had said he had filed a complaint with the Pune police commissioner on December 26, 2018, who had then forwarded it to the Pune Rural police. Jadhav added when he filed an RTI application on May 2, 2022, seeking information from the police about the action taken on his complaint, he learnt that no FIR had been registered.
Last year on May 25, he sent the same complaint to the Pune Rural superintendent of police under Section 154 (providing information in cognizable cases) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), but no action was taken, Jadhav alleged.
The bench questioned Jadhav as to why it should exercise its power while the remedy was lying before the magistrate where the petitioner can file a private complaint.
After Jadhav said that respondents in the PIL were ‘highly influential’ and he had even faced a threat to his life, the bench said that such persons may influence the police but they cannot wield authority over a magistrate.
The bench noted in its order, ‘In case the grievance is that an FIR in respect of the said complaint is not being registered, a complete statutory mechanism is available under section 156(3) (Power of magistrate to order investigation in cognizable case) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC)’.
The petitioner, who appeared in person, however, claimed that he is a resident of Nashik district, whereas the subject matter pertains to the Pune district and will have to travel nearly 200 kilometres to approach the concerned magistrate. He said, therefore, that the Court should direct the registration of an FIR.
However, the bench responded in its order, ‘In our opinion, the aforesaid reason cannot be a ground for the petitioner not to avail the remedy available to him under section 156(3) of CrPC’.
After the petitioner stated that he intended to address the court further on the next date of hearing, the bench posted the matter to October 18.
In February, then Chief Justice Dipankar Datta (now Supreme Court judge) and Justice Girish S Kulkarni had refused to interfere in an earlier PIL filed by Jadhav, seeking to declare the special permissions granted to the project as ‘illegal’.
However, the bench had observed ‘personal interest’ in the project by Sharad Pawar and Supriya Sule as well as ‘exertion of influence and clout’ by them in it. The bench had said Ajit Pawar, who was then the state irrigation minister, ‘failed to disclose the direct or indirect interest and was found to be remiss in his duty only to that extent’.
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