Cops In Plainclothes Firing Upon Car Driver Not Part Of Official Duty: Supreme Court

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The court made the observation while dismissing the plea of nine Punjab police personnel seeking to quash murder charges in an alleged 2015 fake encounter case.
The Supreme Court ruled that the conduct of police personnel surrounding a civilian vehicle in plain clothes and firing upon its occupant cannot be considered part of official duties related to maintaining public order or carrying out a lawful arrest.
The court made the observation while dismissing the plea of nine Punjab police personnel seeking to quash murder charges in an alleged 2015 fake encounter case.
A bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta also reinstated the charge of destruction of evidence against then-Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Parampal Singh for allegedly ordering the removal of the car's number plate following the incident.
'It has been held that the cloak of official duty cannot be extended to acts intended to thwart justice," the court said, adding that prior sanction was not required to prosecute the accused police officials, including the DCP.
The Supreme Court's April 29 order, recently uploaded on its website, upheld a May 20, 2019 decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which had refused to quash the case against the nine accused personnel.
Rejecting the argument that the complaint was barred under Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC)—which requires prior sanction for prosecuting public servants—the court said such protection was not applicable in this case.
'Equally untenable is the submission that cognisance was barred for want of sanction under Section 197 CrPC. The petitioners stand accused of surrounding a civilian vehicle in plain clothes and jointly firing upon its occupant. Such conduct, by its very nature, bears no reasonable nexus to the duties of maintaining public order or effecting lawful arrest," the bench said.
In the case of DCP Parampal Singh, the court said the alleged act of removing the vehicle's registration plate—if proven—was clearly aimed at suppressing evidence and could not be reasonably linked to any bona fide police function. 'Where the very accusation is suppression of evidence, the nexus is absent on the face of the record," it said.
The criminal complaint in the case stated that on June 16, 2015, around 6:30 PM, a police team in plain clothes intercepted a white Hyundai i-20 on Verka-Batala Road in Amritsar. The team, travelling in a Bolero, an Innova, and a Verna, allegedly opened fire at close range, killing the driver, Mukhjit Singh alias Mukha.
The complaint further alleged that the firing was witnessed by two people, including the complainant, who was passing by on a motorcycle. Their statements were recorded under Section 200 CrPC during a preliminary inquiry.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT), constituted at the behest of senior police officials, reportedly found the self-defence claim mentioned in the FIR to be false. The SIT recommended the prosecution of eight officers for culpable homicide and recovered CCTV footage showing the police vehicles converging on the i-20, corroborating the sequence of events.
Justice Nath, writing the judgment for the bench, said the orders of the magistrate summoning the policemen and the subsequent framing of charges by the sessions court were based on a prima facie assessment of concerted firearm assault. 'No error of law or perversity of approach is shown," the court held, while dismissing the appeals filed by the accused police personnel.
In a parallel development, the Supreme Court allowed an appeal by complainant Princepal Singh, challenging the High Court's decision to quash the complaint and summoning order against DCP Parampal Singh in the evidence tampering case.

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