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Murad Abdul Mulani v. Salma Babu Shaikh & Ors.

Criminal Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Criminal Appeal Nos. 961-62 of 2015)Decided 21 Jul 2015
Criminal Appeal Nos. 961-62 of 2015
Justice J.S. Khehar · Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel

Background

A teenage girl, Yasmin, died in suspicious circumstances in Mumbai in 2006 after allegedly being pressured by a man with a one-sided romantic interest in her; her mother alleged the police investigation into the death was deliberately botched to shield the accused. The Bombay High Court, in a writ petition filed by the mother, found the investigating officers' conduct showed deliberate shielding of the real culprit and directed the State Government to take both disciplinary action and initiate criminal prosecution against the officers (including the appellant, one of the investigating officers) within twelve weeks. The officers appealed to the Supreme Court against this direction, and the Supreme Court had stayed its operation in the interim.

Decision Breakdown

By the time the appeal was heard, nearly a decade had passed since Yasmin's death, and the accused in the related criminal case had already been acquitted by the trial court (a finding the complainant's side disputed as itself the product of a manipulated investigation). The Supreme Court held that the High Court's direction mandating disciplinary action and criminal prosecution outright needed modification, and, with the agreement of counsel for both sides, substituted it with a direction that the question of whether departmental or criminal action should be taken against the appellant be examined afresh by the Home Secretary of Maharashtra, after hearing both sides, within three months. The appeals were disposed of on these modified terms, leaving open the right of an aggrieved party to challenge the Home Secretary's eventual decision in accordance with law.

Lesson Learnt

Courts can and do scale back High Court directions that pre-judge disciplinary or criminal consequences for police officers, substituting a fair, time-bound administrative inquiry process instead: accountability for alleged investigative misconduct does not disappear, but it is channeled through due process rather than imposed directly by appellate fiat.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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