Hyderabad: In a rare case, the Telangana High Court has held the Telangana government liable to pay compensation of ₹25,000 to four citizens, as they were being falsely named in criminal cases. The court said that the amount imposed on the government is because police personnel had deleted the name of a powerful politician from the FIR copy and replacing them with names of these four as accused.
The court made it clear to the government that it has the liberty to recover the costs from the police officer, responsible for this criminal act.
Justice M. Laxman issued the orders in a criminal petition filed by Koduluri Ramu, Bopanna Ramesh, Jagarlamudi Venkata Subba Rao and Talluri Laxmaiah, residents of KPHB Colony and nearby areas in Hyderabad.
They submitted to the court that they were being inducted as accused in a case over a dispute related to a property situated in part of Survey No. 14/B, Bachupally, Quthbullapur mandal. However, the dispute was between the property owner C. Mahesh Chandra Kumar Reddy and the local politician Kolan Hanumantha Reddy.
They brought to the notice of the court that the complainant did not mention their names in the complaint copy except that Hanumantha Reddy had interfered in the dispute. Based on the complainant, Bachupally police had registered an FIR by naming Hanumantha Reddy and others as accused.
However, the investigating officer, K. Balakrishna Reddy, filed a chargesheet before the trial court by deleting Hanumantha Reddy’s name as accused and included their names. They requested the court to quash the case against them.
Justice Laxman went through the complaint and the statements of witnesses along with the chargesheet. The court found that the complainant had named only Hanumantha Reddy and his accomplices, who trespassed into his plot, but did not refer to the names of the petitioners/accused No.s 1 to 4.
Their names were not mentioned in the FIR or in the private complaint and their names were also not referred to by any of the witnesses, including the complainant.
After going through the records, the court came to the conclusion that the chargesheet was filed without any basis and no reasons were assigned by the investigating officer on why the name of Reddy was deleted.
Justice M. Laxman observed that this was a clear case of abuse of powers because of which the petitioners were subject to criminal prosecution and underwent mental agony on account of improper investigation. Therefore, the Judge issued orders to quash the criminal proceedings against the petitioners and awarded exemplary costs of ₹25,000.
