SC orders status quo on HC's direction for lodging FIR against former Delhi CP

The Supreme Court Monday asked the Delhi Police to maintain "status quo" with regard to the Delhi High Court's direction asking it to lodge FIR against former police commissioner Neeraj Kumar and others.

They moved the apex court against the Delhi High Court's March 13 verdict asking the police to register FIR against Kumar and the then CBI officer Vinod Kumar Pandey for allegedly fabricating documents in a nearly two-decade old case.

The case pertains to an incident in 2001 when Kumar was posted as a joint director in the CBI and relates to alleged fabrication of documents of a case.

On Monday, the matter came up for hearing before a bench of Justices S A Bobde and S A Nazeer.

The bench was told that in this matter, a division bench of high court had delivered its verdict on March 13 on the letter patent appeal (LPAs) filed against its single judge order of 2006 which was passed in a criminal writ petition.

The top court said it would deal with a larger legal issue as to whether LPA, also known as intra court appeal, would lie before a division bench of the high court against its own order of a single judge bench, that too in a criminal writ petition.

When one of the lawyers referred to the facts of the case and said that CBI has examined it thrice, the bench said, "We are not on the merits of the matter".

The bench observed that it might ask the CBI Director to give his view in the matter.

"We are not asking anybody to eat humble pie. We are only asking whether it can be sorted out," the bench said, adding, "If the dispute can be settled by taking a particular view of the CBI Director, we can see then."