BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court directed the Home Department to bring in an amendment to the Karnataka Police Manual to the effect that investigating the case and counter case of the same incident by two different investigating officers (IOs) is a violation of law which attracts departmental action against them.
The state has not implemented its own circular of 2013 to ensure the investigation of two cases of same crime by the same investigating officer, the state has to reissue the circular or bring an amendment to the Police Manual, Justice M Nagaprasanna said.
The court passed the order, while allowing partly a petition filed by Gajendra KM and others questioning the two investigations by two IOs into a single assault incident. The court directed the state to get the matter reinvestigated by the same IO within three months. The case was registered in January 2023.
The court stated that the apex court has observed that two challans are registered into the same incident, and both cannot be true. The SC observed that a same IO must investigate into a case and a counter case, the court said.
The high court stated the state’s 2013 circular has remained only on paper. Ten years have passed and this court is coming across cases where a case and a counter case is still being investigated by two different IOs.
This results in grave injustice, all because of the callousness of the state in not implementing its circular. It has become necessary to direct the state to again issue a circular or bring necessary amendments to the Police Manual, the court said.
“The circular should ensue depicting that in the event different investigating officers investigate into a case and a counter case, those IOs would become answerable to a departmental action against those ersons, who venture into appointing two IOs to investigate a case and a counter case, as the law is lucid the circular to implement the law is pellucid. Therefore, the state should henceforth ensure that a case and a counter case shall be investigated by the same IO,” the HC said.