Supreme Court declines to entertain ex-Mayor plea seeking FIR against cops

Appearing for the petitioner, Advocate Anoop Awasthi said the police had arrived at Suri’s residence around 12.45 am in around 15 vehicles carrying 30-50 officers to arrest Upadhyay. He added that he had filed Article 32 writ petition because he felt that some guidelines were required with regard to inter-state searches by police without warrant.

Refuting the charges, Uttar Pradesh Additional Advocate General Sharan Thakur termed the petition “completely misconceived”.

Thakur said “Article 32 is being used as a surrogate to file bail petitions, anticipatory bail petitions, and also criminal writs where the prayer is FIR should be registered. Now his main prayer in this petition is FIR should be registered.”

The counsel said that “if for good or bad reason, FIR is not registered” in a case, “there is a statutory mechanism under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 … All these mechanisms are being circumvented and a direct petition under Article 32. For what reason? Because we were trying to arrest the gentleman (Upadhyay) before he got protection from this court. There was a proper arrest memo drawn … We got a General Diary entry at our police station, came to Nizamuddin police station … informed the Delhi local police. The Delhi police assigned two officers who came with us. They simply rang the bell of this gentleman’s apartment because according to our surveillance team, he was within 200 m of the nearest tower … And that’s it. When he said no, we simply left.”

Thakur added: “We did not even enter his house … He also has a statutory duty to allow us to do our job. He is being hyper sensitive. Today when there is no FIR registered, he can avail the statutory mechanism. What is so special about him that he files an Article 32 petition and extraordinary jurisdiction of the court being invoked in such a manner, floodgates will open. Everybody will file an Article 32 petition.”

The bench too was of the view that Suri should follow the statutory mechanism and lodge a complaint if he felt so.

The police had been looking for Upadhyay in connection with a road rage case. The YouTuber, however, has claimed that the action followed after his video report on the Ram Mandir donation theft controversy.

On August 25, the SC had directed that no coercive action be taken against Upadhyay in the FIRs already registered or likely to be registered against him.