False prosecution for rape, murder: Punjab and Haryana HC slams Haryana top cop over plea

The case pertained to false prosecution of one Ram Sarup, resident of Pehowa in Kurukshetra district, on charges of rape and murder of his own daughter in 1993. Dhull was then Superintendent of Police, Kurukshetra.

Dhull’s review petition was dismissed by Justice K Kannan on February 3. The written order was released Monday.

“He (Dhull) must have had his own head hung in shame for what has happened. This was verily an occasion for atonement. It is a pity that he still does not feel that way and looks for a scapegoat for the Himalayan blunder,” Justice K Kannan wrote in the judgment.

Justice Kannan further remarked, “He (Dhull) failed to exercise adequate care and supervision that had caused the derailing of justice. It cannot be a situation of no one being responsible for falsely prosecuting an innocent man and heaping insults on him. If somebody must take the blame, the Superintendent of Police justly ought to take that blame.”

After the Kurukshetra court acquitted Ram Sarup in the case in August 1997 on a CBI report that failed to bring to book real offenders of the crime, advocate RS Bains had filed his petition in the High Court for compensation.

It was on February 9 last year that the High Court, while allowing Ram Sarup’s petition pending for over 16 years, ordered the Haryana government to pay a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to Sarup along with an interest at 9 per cent from the date of institution of petition. It totalled to Rs 10 lakh. The court had ordered the state to recover compensation amount from Dhull and Gian Singh, the then Station House Officer, Pehowa police station. But Dhull chose to file a review petition in the High Court.

The Indian Express had on February 12 last year first reported that by the time the decision in the case came, neither maliciously prosecuted Ram Sarup nor his wife Javitri were alive to see their dignity restored and receive the compensation.

After Ram Sarup was falsely implicated in the case, his family members who were farm labourers, had to leave their village Lohar Majra in Pehowa. They later settled in Beer Dandari village in neighbouring Karnal district. Ram Sarup and his wife died during the pendency of the case. Their four daughters and a son are all married now.

Justice Kannan has found the facts of the case as “extremely poignant tale of political interference in police investigation” while observing that “it was because of the intervention of a public spirited person who brought out substantial proof that a false case had been established as foisted on Ram Sarup to screen some persons connected to politically strong persons”.

Besides Dhull, Haryana government had also filed a review petition in the HC against payment of compensation to Sarup. However, before hearing that petition, HC had asked government to first deposit Rs 10 lakh compensation amount in the court’s treasury.

In its review petition, the Haryana government had submitted that since Ram Sarup had died before the High Court ordered to pay compensation to him and “compensation for personal injury and humiliation is in the nature of personal damages, which cannot survive to the legal representatives in terms of Section 306 of the Indian Succession Act”.

While dismissing the government’s petition as well, Justice Kannan wrote in his judgement, “Compensation for violation of human right transcends the frontiers of tort claims – Hence fetters of Section 306 of Indian Succession Act cannot apply.”

Justice Kannan has said that the amount of Rs 10 lakh deposited in the High Court by the Haryana government earlier, can now be withdrawn by Ram Sarup’s children as the victim and his wife both had died long ago.