Reacting sharply on arrest of innocent ladies of Sambalpur on the very day of Rath Yatra, BJP national secretary Suresh Pujari asked Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who is in charge of the Home portfolio and the entire police department to learn CrPC 41 before arresting the citizens.
Notably, the women were arrested for obtaining ration cards by fraud.
“This is nothing but the vanity of having 117 MlAs in the Assembly of the BJD,” said Pujari in a Press conference here slamming that the police and the local administration neither know law of the land nor have slightest respect for human rights.
Does arresting innocent people and ladies for the fault of the Government officials justifies the much touted slogan of the BJD Government of ‘Maa ku Samman, Gan ku kama’ (respect to mothers and work for the villagers), Pujari askedIJ
Pujari further wanted to know if getting ration cards with false information by none other than the illiterate and innocent people amounts to crime and warrants arrest, but giving false affidavits by two Ministers, Bikram Arukh and Ashok Panda, is legal and justifiedIJ “Is the law in the State differs from persons to persons in the Naveen’s Government,” he questioned.
Puajri further said that some people returned the ration cards and the concerned BDOs gave them the acknowledgement receipts. But the BDOs lodged FIRs in the local police station against those people and police without going into the legal sanctity of the FIRs arrested the women, which is against the direction of the Supreme Court of the country.
Citing the case of Arnesh Kumar Vrs State of Bihar in Supreme Court, Pujari said that police should not arrest a person where the punishment is not more than seven years. In the case of ration card irregularity, where police arrested different persons under Sections 177, 182 and 420 of IPC, the punishment is also not more than seven years. “So how could police arrest them violating the guidelines of the Supreme Court,” he asked further. In this case, police could have registered cases and sent summons to appear before the court, he suggested.
He further said that if Naveen Patnaik is ‘inefficient’ to deal with the most important Home Department, he should leave it with immediate effect to some other learned man in the party.