2002 Nitish Katara murder case: Fraud by advocates to implicate witness, says SC, orders CBI probe

It added, “The CBI shall register the regular case, after holding preliminary inquiry if necessary to do so, against all the persons found involved and responsible, and shall investigate all the links leading to the commission of the alleged crimes and fraud on court.”

The SC asked the CBI to submit a report to court in two months.

The daughter of Bhagwan Singh, a resident Uttar Pradesh, had alleged that she was raped by Ajay Katara. A criminal appeal, filed at the behest of Singh, had urged the Supreme Court to set aside Allahabad High Court’s 2019 judgment that quashed rape charges against Ajay Katara.

Two special leave petitions (SLPs) were filed before the SC in the name of Singh – one challenging a December 12, 2019 order of the Allahabad High Court quashing proceedings against Ajay Katara in a 2013 case and the other against the HC’s April 2, 2024 order dismissing an application seeking revision of the December 12 judgment.

The 2013 case was lodged over a complaint filed by Singh accusing Sukhpal and three others of kidnapping his daughter Rinki, then a minor. Though Ajay Katara’s name did not figure in the FIR lodged on Singh’s complaint, he was later allegedly sought to be implicated in it by Rinki.

Five years after the police closed the case, the Allahabad HC ordered a probe into the allegations against Ajay Katara. He challenged the same and it came to light before the SC that some lawyers had appeared on behalf of Singh before the HC without his authority, knowledge or consent. With the HC dismissing the proceedings, SLPs were moved before SC. Singh had then told the SC that he had no knowledge of having signed any vakalatnama to file the SLPs and that he did not know the lawyers who claimed to represent him.

The lawyers had then said that the vakalatnama signed by Singh was provided by his son-in-law Sukhpal Singh, whose wife Rinki claimed that he himself had handed over the signed vakalatnama to her. Singh, however, denied this saying that after Rinki eloped and married Sukhpal in 2013, he had not met them.

The court noted in the judgment, “Ajay Katara was the star witness in the famous Nitish Katara murder case… is made to suffer for being witness in the said case. As stated by him, he was subjected to continuous threats and still continues to be under pressure for having appeared as the witness. He has stated that… he had no case civil or criminal filed against him, and after the said case, he has been continuously targeted with a campaign of false and frivolous cases and named in around 37 cases, including the present one at the behest of Yadav family and their associates. However, he has been cleared in 35 of the 37 cases.”

The SC said that what happened were “acts of frauds committed not only on the person sought to be falsely implicated and on the person in whose name such false proceedings are filed without his knowledge and consent, but is a fraud committed on the courts”.

“No court can allow itself to be used as an instrument of fraud and no court can allow its eyes to be closed to the fact that it is being used as an instrument of fraud,” it added.

It added that the matter assumes serious concern when the advocates, who are the officers of the court, actively participate in the “ill-motivated litigations of the unscrupulous litigants and assist them in misusing and abusing the process of law to achieve their ulterior purposes”.

Justice Trivedi also highlighted what she said is the “pathetic… condition of witnesses in the Indian legal system”.

“The witnesses are threatened, coerced by using force and lured by monetary considerations, at the instances of those who are in power, their henchmen and hirelings, with a view to smother and stifle truth, and to make mockery of justice…,” the judgment said.

Taking note of the alleged involvement of some lawyers in the fraud played on it, the court said, “No professional, much less legal professional, is immuned from being prosecuted for his/her criminal misdeeds.”

As a preventive measure, the order directed that “advocates-on-record may mark the appearances of only those advocates who are authorised to appear and argue the case on the particular day of hearing”.