NEW DELHI: A Delhi court has rejected a plea filed by four Gujarat Police officers accused of taking a minor boy to Ahmedabad while searching for his father, saying that the policemen acted like "colonial overlords" and "hanged the child as bait" to make his father surrender.
Additional Sessions Judge Parveen Singh said the officers' duty was to search for the minor's father, who was wanted in a case, and not to take the child into custody and transport him across states from Delhi to Gujarat.
In the order dated August 12, the court said, "Their duty was to search for the accused who was the father of the minor and not to take the minor child in their custody and act like colonial overlords of the past and hang that minor child as a bait for his father to surrender before them."
The court was hearing a criminal revision petition filed by the four Gujarat Police officers challenging orders of a trial court that took cognisance of an offence of kidnapping and directed framing of charges against them.
According to the case details, the complainant, the mother of the boy, alleged that on May 25, 2008, five-six Gujarat Police officers in civil clothes came to her scrap shop in Delhi looking for her husband, who was an accused in a case.
They allegedly forcibly took her minor son from her lawful custody to Gujarat.
The boy was allegedly confined, abused and beaten during the journey, the judgment said.
The prosecution also relied on his statement recorded before a magistrate, which allegedly reflected that he was kept in a police lock-up and tortured.
The policemen argued they were performing official duties while searching for an absconding accused and therefore prior government sanction was required before prosecution.
Rejecting the argument, the court said the protection available to public servants for acts connected with official duty could not extend to an act that had no reasonable connection with such duty.
"It is not merely acting in official capacity that would give them protection but the act committed should also have a reasonable connection to that duty," the court said.
The court held that taking the minor from his mother's custody and transporting him to Ahmedabad for the purpose of locating his father "can by no stretch of imagination" be considered part of the policemen's official duty.
The court also noted that the revision petition was based on "completely incorrect facts", including the claim that cognisance was taken only in 2026.
The record showed that cognisance had actually been taken in 2010.
It dismissed the revision petition and upheld the trial court's orders taking cognisance and framing charges under the law relating to kidnapping.