New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has recently quashed the charges framed under the SC-ST Act against a school principal. However, the High Court has directed the trial court to proceed further against the husband of the principal.
The High Court said that the alleged casteist slurs were not hurled in public view.
A Delhi Police Inspector had filed a case under the SC-ST Act against the principal and her husband. It was argued that the case was a counterblast to a molestation case filed against the inspector. However, he was acquitted in that case.
Justice Saurabh Banerjee on August 25 partly allowed the quashing petition filed by the school principal and her husband.
Justice Banerjee said that the alleged offence, if any, occurring within the confines of private premises/behind closed doors, and/or in the absence of members of the public/not having any direct visibility, cannot be said to be a place "within public view" as per Section 3(1)(x) of the Act.
"Considering the factual matrix, the afore-going discussion in regard to the petitioners and the legal position as emerging, the present is a fit case to exercise the inherent powers under Section 482 of the CrPC to set aside the impugned order framing charges against the said petitioner under Section 3(1)(x) of the Act," Justice Banerjee said.
However, the offences against the husband, in view of the foregoing, are prima facie made out and are thus sustained, the court said.
Petitioner principal along with her husband had approached the High Court against the order on charge passed by the Special Court at Tis Hazari under Section 3(1)(x) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (old Act), read with Sections 323, 427, 500, 506, 186, 353 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.
It was stated that the complainant Inspector received information about a fire in the school on June 25, 2014, wherein the petitioner was the principal. He informed her about the same. Pursuant thereto, on June 26, 2014, she went to the classrooms on the first and second floors of the school with her husband without a security guard.
She stated that when they both were in one of the classrooms, the respondent Inspector misbehaved with her by holding her hand, threatening her to keep quiet and blocking her from going down. This resulted in the registration of an FIR on June 26, 2014, under Sections 341, 354A and 354 of the IPC at Police Station Nihal Vihar.
The counsel for the petitioners submitted that the complaint made by the Inspector against the petitioners was merely a counterblast to the earlier FIR registered by the principal against the Inspector.
Since it was made only after a lapse of more than one year from the incident, on June 30, 2015, it was an afterthought. The petitioner's husband had been falsely implicated only because he came to support his wife during a moment of crisis following a fire incident within the school premises on June 26, 2014.
This report was published from a syndicated wire feed. Apart from the headline, the EdexLive Desk has not edited the copy.
