A house owner has been sent to jail for three months by a city court for disobeying police orders and keeping tenants without getting the mandatory verification done, which, police claim, can result in “narrow escape of anti-social elements and even terrorists from the arm of the law.”
Metropolitan Magistrate Ashok Kumar sent Bhawani Shankar, resident of Safdarjung Enclave in South Delhi, to jail for three months, for keeping two persons as tenants in one of his houses in Kotla Mubarakpur without verification, and in turn violating the notification given by the DCP.
“The act of the accused (Shankar) may seem not so serious in the first instance but if the consequences of the violation are realised then it is clear that there is serious violation of law. Hence, it is time to take such notifications very seriously and a time to create deterrent effect of not following the law in such circumstances,” the magistrate said, while sentencing Shankar to three-month imprisonment.
The court noted that as per the notification, verification is necessary when the tenants are kept in order to avert grave danger to human life and safety and to prevent injury to public property.
According to police sources, on May 27, 2011, cops were checking tenant verification in the area when it was found that Shankar had kept two persons, Gautam Varaha and Hari Pada, as tenants. When the policemen asked him for verification papers, Shankar could not produce the documents and violated the order of DCP, it said. He was arrested and later released on bail.
Both the tenants, who were made prosecution witnesses, had turned hostile during the trial and said that they did not know anything about the case. The court, however, relied on police witnesses and held that the statement of a hostile witness can be brushed aside if the prosecution is still able to produce credible evidence against the accused. Shankar claimed that he was being falsely implicated in the case because he did not fulfil illegal demands of the police. He said the two persons were not his tenants but came to learn embroidery at his place from 9 am to 7 pm. The court rejected the contentions of Shankar, saying there was no evidence to establish the same.