Chhattisgarh police visit Zee anchor’s home again, find it locked

“We visited Rohit Ranjan’s home at 9 am today, but his house was locked,” Raipur DSP Udayan Behar, who is leading the Chhattisgarh police team in this case, said.

Behar said that though a complaint was filed with the Indirapuram station house officer regarding the events that unfolded at Ranjan’s residence on Tuesday, the Ghaziabad police had not issued a receipt of the complaint. “We were simply told that a receipt will not be issued to us. We will be visiting the Ghaziabad SSP’s office today regarding our complaint,” Behar said. The Chhattisgarh police will also visit the Zee News office to issue a notice to the officials concerned regarding their investigation, Behar added.

The Chhattisgarh police had reached Ranjan’s home Tuesday with a court warrant for arrest based on a complaint by Congress MLA from Bhillao, Devendra Yadav. It alleged that the channel “edited the clip and ran a false story” to “spread terrorism and break the nation’s unity”. At the same time, the UP Police too reached the spot and took Ranjan into custody for questioning in a related case registered in Noida against two colleagues by the channel.

In the complaint submitted to SHO Indirapuram Tuesday, Behar said his team reached Ranjan’s home at 6 am Tuesday “to carry out the process of arrest” when 10-12 Ghaziabad police officials arrived and asked his team to wait.

“We were asked to show our identity cards as well as the arrest warrant. When we asked Ranjan to follow the due process prescribed under a court-issued arrest warrant, SHO Indirapuram arrived at around 9 am and informed us that warrantee Ranjan was being taken to Indirapuram station and asked us to accompany as well. Thereafter, Ranjan was taken away in a Maruti Swift car without us,” Behar has stated in the complaint.

A Ghaziabad police official, meanwhile, said that the Chhattisgarh police did not follow the due process of law which required them to approach local cops before arriving at Ranjan’s residence. “There are principles laid down which have to be followed by all police officials before making an arrest. Chhattisgarh police did not approach the local police station which they were bound to do,” the official said.

According to Behar, in the facts and circumstances of this case, Chhattisgarh police were not required to approach local police under Section 79(3) (warrant directed to police officer for execution outside jurisdiction)of the Criminal Procedure Code. “Under Section 79(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code, if a police officer has a reason to believe that delay in obtaining endorsement from magistrate or local cops in whose jurisdiction the warrant is to be executed will prevent such execution, then police officer who has to execute the warrant can do so without such an endorsement in any place beyond the local jurisdiction of the court which issued it. Therefore we rushed to Ranjan’s residence as we did not want to delay the execution of the warrant,” Behar said.

The Chhattisgarh police FIR was registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code including, 153A (promoting enmity between groups), 295A (outraging religious feelings), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 467 (forgery).

Behar said, “We had gone to meet SSP ghaziabad at his office. He was not present and so we submitted our complaint regarding yesterday’s events to senior officers present there. The complaint was received and we have been told that an IGPF number will be issued to us against the submission of the said complaint.” Chhattisgarh police is on its way to Zee news office in Noida, Behar said.