IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA CrWJC No 185 of 2009 1 Amrendra Rai @ Sipahi, son of Vidheya Rai 2 Ranjeet Rai, son of Amrendra Rai, both residents of Village – Dorapur, P S – Uchakagaon, District – Gopalganj - Petitioners Versus 1 State of Bihar through Director General of Police, Government of Bihar, Patna 2 Director General of Police, Government of Bihar, Patna 3 Deputy Inspector General, Saran at Chapra 4 Superintendent of Police, District – Gopalganj 5 Sri Amrit Raj, Superintendent of Police, District – Gopalganj 6 SDPO, Hathua, District – Gopalganj 7 Officer-in-Charge, Uchakagaon Police Station, District - Gopalganj - Respondents *** For the petitioners : M/s Naresh Dikshit & Ranjeet Kumar Pandey, Advocates For the S t a t e : Mr A C to G A VII *** 4 27.10.2009 The wife of petitioner No 1 and mother of petitioner No 2 being Arti Devi was taken to Gopalganj Sadar Hospital with third degree burn injuries. On being so brought to the Hospital, the police was informed and her statement was recorded by the ASI present at the Sadar Hospital. In her statement, she clearly disclosed that there was serious dispute in her in-laws’ family with regard to partitioning of property. As a consequence of that dispute, her brother-in-law and others had poured kerosene oil on her and burnt her. On this statement being recorded, the first information being Uchakagaon Police Station Case No 136 of 2008 was instituted under Sections 147, 148, 149, 323, 324, 307 of Indian Penal Code. Later, seeing her serious condition, she was referred to Medical College, Gorakhpur for better treatment. She 2 was taken there by her husband and her son (petitioners) where she died. On return, petitioners enquired from the police as to what has happened and were surprised to find that inspite of the statement of the victim who later died and, thus, that statement had become a dying declaration, police was showing no interest in the matter. It was after great persuasion what was added was not Section 302, IPC but Section 304, IPC. This led the petitioners to worry about the fate of investigation. They approached the Director General of Police which, it is alleged, enraged the district level police authorities. What surprises this Court is that though the case is supervised by the Superintendent of Police and was expected to be a supervision with objectivity has turned out to be a persecution of petitioners themselves. The Superintendent of Police has given a clean chit to all the accused persons and it is the petitioners who have been made the accused directly alleging that there were large number of people who said that they had heard that it was the petitioners who killed their wife/mother to falsely implicate their relations. What enmity petitioners had with their wife/mother is not even whispered. To this Court, it appears highly unreasonable and unlikely that a person would kill his wife or a person would kill his mother with whom he has no differences only to harass other relations. This conclusion appears to be lacking in objectivity. Because of enmity or because of family dispute, the parties in dispute may exchange blows or kill each other but to expect that in such a dispute, a person would kill his 3 wife or a person would kill his mother only to get an excuse to implicate others does not stand to reason. Surely, there is much more than what meets the eyes. The supervision note, which has been annexed with the counter affidavit by the Superintendent of Police himself, is more like an interrogation rather than supervision. Without saying more on merits, I feel that the investigation requires to be relooked into. I, therefore, direct the Director General of Police, Bihar to look into the matter and assign a person of the rank of Deputy Inspector General to supervise the investigation so that the truth may come out and the accused are brought to book. Let petitioners file a copy of this order before the Director General of Police to act accordingly. It would only be prudent for the Court to await the outcome of further investigation as directed by this Court in the matter. With these observations, the writ petition is disposed of. M.E.H./ (Navaniti Prasad Singh)