HYDERABAD: An attack on a police party deployed for bandobast during a religious procession that left a constable with grievous injuries at Malakpet police station of Hyderabad in 2015, ended in acquittal recently, on technical grounds. Four persons accused in the case were set free by a city court.
In September 2015, when a religious procession was going on, the police on duty at the spot asked the organisers to move ahead without delay.
This led to an argument and some of those in the procession, who were in a drunken condition, picked up a quarrel with the police. A little later, some of them pelted stones at the police party.
The injured constable was rushed to a private hospital and he was treated as a Medico-Legal Case (MLC) and the medical certificate was produced in the court as evidence.
However, the doctor who treated the injured constable was not examined during the trial and the medical certificate was not attested by the doctor.
While the medical certificate had shown the incident occurred at 10.30 pm, during cross-examination, the investigating officer (IO) told the court that the incident happened at 11 pm. Further, as per the first information report (FIR), the incident occurred at 11 am and the police station received information about the incident at 11.50 am.
In addition, the IO did not produce any document before the court to prove that the injured constable and other police personnel were on bandobast duty at the time of the incident.
All these lapses cast doubt on the case of the prosecution, observed the court. Moreover, since the injured constable has not seen the accused pelting stones at him and there was no other evidence to show that the accused did indeed pelt the stones.
Also, the injury to the constable was not proved with the evidence. The court concluded that the prosecution failed to prove its case against the accused and acquitted them of all charges.