Court quashes rape FIR against three DJB officials

The Delhi High Court Friday quashed an FIR and summoning order against three Delhi Jal Board employees, accused of gangraping an executive working in a private company.

Justice Suresh Kait allowed the plea of DJB engineers and quashed the trial court order which had summoned the officials to stand trial in the case despite a closure report filed by police which stated that they were falsely implicated.

The court said: "This court is not expected to throw out a case on technicalities but is expected to interfere wherever there has been failure of justice or misuse of judicial mechanism or procedure."

"This court is not expected to be a mere silent spectator, when it is made out that the criminal prosecution is abuse of process of court. Accordingly, the FIR and all proceedings emanated thereof are quashed," it added.

Filing the plea before the Delhi High Court the accused-- Sharat Chandra, Praveen Bhargav and Ramesh Thakur had contended that the trial court summoned them despite police stating in its closure report that they were falsely implicated in the case.

The Delhi Police in its final report had said there was no sufficient evidence against the accused and argued that the case be closed.

The court accepted the arguments placed by counsel for accused that the trial court had ignored the several months' delay in lodging the complaint and also the closure report filed by police in the case.

The victim claimed that the incident had happened at her house in October 2006 and the case was registered at Malviya Nagar Police Station in June 2007, the counsel had told the court.

The trial court, May 13 had summoned DJB engineers rejecting the police closure report against them.

Police had said that the victim was acting at the behest of her employer to malign the officials.

The victim was a senior executive with a private firm engaged in contract work for DJB. In her complaint, she alleged that she was raped by the accused at her rented house on October 8, 2006, after being offered pastry laced with sedatives.

She alleged that the trio had also videotaped her being gangraped and used the footage to blackmail her. She had added that she used to meet them in connection with contracts awarded to the firm.

Police, initialy did not register the FIR, but they were forced to lodge a complaint after the woman approached court. A case of gangrape was lodged with Malviya Nagar Police Station in 2007 against the three DJB officials.