The Jharkhand High Court, while hearing a public interest litigation (PIl) related to ace national shooter Tara Shahdeo case, asked the petitioner’s advocate to add all those judicial officers whose names appeared during the investigation into the case, to the list of parties.
The directive was issued by the court after an objection was raised to those judicial officers continuing in their offices even after having been named in the case. Next date for hearing in the case has been fixed for February 6. “A division bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice P Patnaik has directed to make party and serve notices to those judicial officers whose names appeared in the case,” said petitioner’s advocate Rajiv Kumar.
Notably, names of senior judicial officers, including Pankaj Kumar Srivastava, Nageshwar Prasad, Veena Mishra and suspended High Court Registrar Mushtaq Ahmed had appeared during the investigation following which Ranchi Police had issued notices to all of them seeking time for interrogation. Judicial Magistrate Rajesh Kumar of Sherghati in Bihar has also been interrogated by the police in the case.
The PIl was filed after the police failed to make any headway in the case lodged by Tara accusing her estranged husband Ranjit Singh Kohli alias Raquib-ul Hassan of torturing and forcing her to embrace Islam. She had also recorded her statement before the court. The PIl, seeking an investigation by the National Investigating Agency (NIA), was filed by one Vijay Jethia under the banner of ‘Akhand Bharat’.
Tara while recording her statement in the court asserted that Kohli was in contact with several influential persons holding important positions in the state administration and Judiciary as well, also getting huge amount of money from some unknown sources which must be investigated by a neutral agency.
According to Kumar, the court also enquired about the status of taking over the case by the CBI for investigations. The State Government, however, through an affidavit, informed that the case had been referred to the CBI in the month of August last year which has deliberately been kept pending for several months.
The court asked the CBI to specifically tell the court whether it has received the letter from the State Government or not, said Kumar. Giving last chance to make its point, the court asked CBI to file affidavit by February 6. “The court has also sought affidavits from both Central and State Governments in this regard,” Kumar said. It also asked Enforcement Directorate (ED), Income Tax (IT) as well as CBI to tell the court by filing separate status reports, recounting what has been done by them till date in the case, said Kumar. February 6 was fixed for filing status reports by CBI, ED and IT by the court, Kumar added.
NIA, filing its affidavit before the court earlier, has stated that no terror link has been found till date in the investigation so far during the investigation.