Giving police chiefs the right to choose their officer for probing specific crime cases in their State, the Supreme Court in a recent judgment removed the legal bar of jurisdiction that often prevented State DGPs and Commissioners from exercising this choice.
The judgment came on a case from Kerala where the State DGP had passed orders appointing an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) in charge of investigating a matrimonial dispute. The case was originally lodged at Pettah police station in Trivandrum in 2011. Almost a year later, on January 24, 2012, the DGP addressed a letter to the DCP of the Trivandrum City asking him to assign the case to ACP, Cantonment posted at Trivandrum.
This decision to transfer the investigating officer midway through the case was challenged by the accused before the Kerala High Court which decided against the police chief. The HC relied on the legal bar under Section 36 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). This provision prescribed that police officers superior to an officer in charge of a police station may exercise their powers throughout the local area to which they are appointed similar to the power exercised by officer incharge of the police station within the limits of his station.
The apex bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and PC Pant reversed the finding given by HC and upheld the order of the state police chief. It said, “The High Court, in our considered view, was not right in reading the constraints imposed by Section 36 of the CrPC on the powers of the State Police Chief to appoint a suitable and competent officer to investigate a case irrespective of the limits of local jurisdiction of such officer, if such a course of action is required.”
Going through the case record, the bench was convinced that the new officer was chosen because the victim had demanded a “neutral” and “impartial” police officer to conduct the probe in a “fair and unbiased manner”. At the same time, the Court held that even though the State police chief has been given a free hand to transfer the probe officer of a case, the same would be open to judicial review where there is reason to show malafide in decision-making.