India News | Gauhati HC Asks CBI to Take over 7-year-old Kidnap Case
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. The Gauhati High Court has ordered CBI to take over a seven-year-old case of abduction of a Congress leader's brother in Assam's Dima Hasao district.
Guwahati, Oct 13 (PTI) The Gauhati High Court has ordered CBI to take over a seven-year-old case of abduction of a Congress leader's brother in Assam's Dima Hasao district.
Justice Suman Shyam in an order passed on Thursday asked the state government and police to hand over the investigation into the case to CBI, while setting aside the probe agency's argument of ‘resource crunch' as the reason for its unwillingness to take up the matter.
The order was passed on a writ petition filed in the High Court by Jaisodi Thaosen, wife of Jibon Kemprai who was allegedly kidnapped by unidentified miscreants on January 27, 2016, from Diyunkmukh in Dima Hasao district.
Jibon was the brother of Mohendro Kemprai, who was a member of NC Hills (Dima Hasao) Autonomous Council at that point of time. Mohendro Kemprai had received a phone call two days before the alleged kidnapping to abstain from attending an emergent meeting of the Council on January 29 in which a ‘no confidence motion' was to be brought against the ruling party.
Mohendra Kemprai was the president of the district Congress committee in 2016.
The order noted that Thaosen had filed the writ petition as no headway was made in the police investigation and she had pleaded for a CBI probe.
Though a three-member special investigation team (SIT) was formed by the state police to take forward the probe, the Court said it ‘could not make much headway nor conclude the investigation'.
No chargesheet has been filed in the case till date and the victim also remains untraced with no clue whether he is alive or not, the court said.
As the petitioner's advocate B D Das requested the court to order a CBI probe, the investigating agency's lawyer R K D Choudhury submitted that the central agency is ‘reluctant to take over investigation in this case due to resource crunch'.
Advocate S Baruah, appearing for the state government and police, submitted that the "state police has done whatever was possible but despite its best efforts, there was no breakthrough in the case during the investigation".
Justice Shyam noted that prima facie it appeared that there are ingrediants of cognisable offence having been committed in the case and "probability of political motive behind the incident cannot be ruled out".
He also observed that the SIT failed to yield any result and "the likelihood of any further progress in the investigation conducted by the SIT appears to be minimal".
“…This Court is of the considered opinion that the matter deserves to be handed over to the CBI. Since it is a question of life and liberty of a citizen and in view of the factual backdrop of this case, this Court is unable to agree with the stand of the CBI that due to resource crunch, the matter should not be sent to the CBI for investigation,” the court ruled.
It asked the state government and police to initiate all steps to handover the probe to the CBI and once the records are handed over, the investigation should be carried out by the federal body "as expeditiously as possible, so as to bring the process to its logical end".
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)