BENGALURU: Once a complaint is registered on a particular premise of an incident, the complainant cannot register another one related to the same incident, the Karnataka High Court has ruled. Allowing a petition questioning the proceedings initiated against BV Byre Gowda, a BJP leader from KR Layout in Hosakote Town, Bengaluru Rural District, based on a second complaint of assault, Justice M Nagaprasanna quashed it.
The second complaint was related to alleged assault on officials by BJP workers for removing buntings ‘unauthorisedly’ put up to welcome BJP leader Amit Shah when Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections were notified in 2018. “If both the FIRs, registered under two different crime numbers, are read in juxtaposition, what unmistakably emerges is that both are by the same complainant, which pertain to the same incident, same time and date,” the court said while quashing the proceedings before a trial court in Hosakote.
The then Municipal Commissioner and head of a flying squad, Nisar Ahmed, had on April 18, 2018 lodged a complaint with the Hosakote police alleging that the BJP had unauthorisedly put up a lot of buntings to mark the arrival of Amit Shah. When they went to the spot to remove the buntings, BJP leader Byre Gowda, along with others, allegedly obstructed and abused them in foul language and one Ashok assaulted the complainant. The same day, another individual lodged a complaint for the offences punishable under Section 504, 332 and 353 of the IPC.