Investigating officer pulled up for falsely implicating 6 in case

Mumbai, April 14 The Sewree fast-tack court on Monday reprimanded an investigating officer for falsely implicating six slum dwellers in the Mandala slum demolition case. “Pending cases against a few of the accused does not qualify them to be offenders. The investigating officer should have valid reasons to charge a person,” observed Adhoc Additional Session Judge G W Avsormal while discharging six out of thirteen accused in Mandala slum demolition case.

The six accused — Ambika Chowdhary, Anees Khan, Jafar Adalat, Sultana Shaikh, Shakura Yaasin Shaikh, Meena Soni — had filed a discharge application in December last year.

Avsormal discharged them after investigating officer S D Kale said in court: “Previous year, some of the accused were involved in some other cases, so we rounded them up.” When unable to furnish any further details about the accused, Avsarmol asked the police to file its reply by April 17.

Avsormal observed that no prima facie case was established against any of the six accused. All six were discharged as none of them were identified in the identification parade.

According to the complainant Sadashiv More, who was a security guard with a security firm, a mob of over 100 people started pelting stones on the BMC karamcharis and the policemen who had gathered to evict the slums on May 9, 2006. Two others along with More were injured in the incident.

According to the details of the case, the police force and officials had gathered in Mandala to demolish around 5000 ‘illegal’ houses in the slum. But even before the demolition work started, the houses gutted in fire for unknown reasons. Later, accusing the officials of having plotted the fire, the slum dwellers had started pelting stones on the officials.