Summoning Police Officers In A Routine Manner Should Stop As It Affects Maintenance Of Law And Order: Delhi Court

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Synopsis

Court was hearing revision plea by a senior police officer, Delhi summoned for non-appearance of a subordinate officer.

A Delhi Court recently held that police officers should not be summoned in a routine manner, as it hinders them from discharging their primary duty of ensuring law and order.

Principal District and Sessions Judge, Saket Court, while passing the order observed,

“Perusal of the record shows that the revisionist in his revision has given a tabulated chart which shows that he has been summoned not once or twice but more than 300 times in the court and the plea of the revisionist is that in every case emanating from his police station instead of the designated investigating officer, it is the revisionist who is called for addressing the court queries on each and every case. If such practice is adopted and followed by all the courts then it will be very difficult for the police officials to maintain law and order in their respective areas as they will be spending whole of their time in the courts.”

In view of the aforesaid, the order dated 18.05.2023 calling for an explanation from the Commissioner of Police, Delhi was set aside by the Court in addition to expunction of extra-judicial remarks passed against the revisionist in State v. Magan @ Bhuri, FIR No. 10/2020, PS Badarpur.

Reliance was inter-alia placed on Ajit Kumar v. NCT of Delhi, WP Crl. 2236 of 2022, Rakesh Chand v. State, 2015 SCCOnLine Del 14193 and KH Siraj v. High Court of Kerala, (2006) 6 SCC 395.

It was submitted by the revisionist that he had been working with the Delhi Police Services for over two decades and never got any adverse remarks and mere non-appearance of a subordinate officer is no ground to pass adverse remarks against a person higher in authority.

“Not only this practice is to be deprecated but we must also stop this practice”, Court added.

The revisionist, a senior functionary of the Delhi Police was represented by Advocates Tanveer Ahmed Mir, Vaibhav Suri and Yash Datt.

Case Title: Ishwar Singh v. State, CR No. 453 of 2023