Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday quashed the FIR registered about eight months ago under SC/ST Act, against a news channel journalist, Bhawana Gupta, and two others, ruling that the continuation of criminal proceedings against her would amount to an abuse of the process of law.
It may be recalled that Bhawana, who worked for a news channel, and two others had moved the high court for quashing of the FIR registered in Ludhiana claiming that the case was nothing but political witch hunt on Punjab’s part and that the FIR was politically motivated at the instance of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government.
The compliant
Justice Anoop Chitkara observed that the offence falling under SC/ST provisions was invoked against the petitioner on the charges that the driver of a car she was travelling in had rammed the recklessly driven vehicle into the complainant Gagan, hurt her, damaged her phone and that she had also insulted her by publicly using indicative words against her caste.
Justice Chitkara observed that it remained undisputed that the accused/petitioner had no personal knowledge of the complainant or her family’s caste. Given this, the primary burder was on the complainant to establish this knowledge and neither the state nor the complainant mentioned that the petitioner was aware of the victim’s caste and their conspicuous silence spoke more than the words, Justice Chitkara added.
It may be recalled that the journalist Bhawana and two others were booked in the said case in May last year. Though they were granted bail later, they were detained for hours by police in Ludhiana on the charges of hitting a woman. Denying the charges, she held that the news channel she was working for had been reporting against AAP supremo and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and that as a ``counter blast’’, the said case had been registered.
