Two sentenced to 10 years’ jail for kidnapping child

HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times, New Delhi, April 17, 2011

A Delhi court has sentenced a woman and her associate to 10 years’ imprisonment for kidnapping an infant in 2008. Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau said that kidnapping of infants has become a lucrative business. The police said Ritu Kapoor (42) and Mohd Jiyaul (26), a rickshaw puller, are "habitual child lifters". 

The court said that no leniency could be shown to them, as "neither the child nor his body has been recovered."

The police said that the accused Ritu reached the complainant Anita's house and introduced herself as a government representative under the 'Ladli' scheme and asked for details of her child. Co-accused Jiyaul was waiting in an auto rickshaw.

Later, Ritu took the complainant’s one-and-half-month-old baby and fled from the spot in Jiyaul's vehicle.

Police failed to recover the baby.  Ritu, arrested at Rajouri Garden in another kidnapping case, revealed her complicity in the matter. Jiyaul was arrested later. The court rejected Ritu's plea that she was "mentally disturbed".

The court said, "The convict (Ritu) has raised this plea at this stage as a last defence only to wriggle out and escape the penal consequences of her illegal acts”.

The court said that so far as the child is concerned, it is too small to identify anybody. The situation becomes all the more difficult when the victim belongs to a very poor family and the family of the child is unable to provide any identification proof in the form of photograph etc, it said.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Two-sentenced-to-10-years-jail-for-kidnapping-child/Article1-686541.aspx

Court acquits Blueline driver after 14 yrs of trial

Sumit Saxena, Hindustan Times, New Delhi, April 13, 2011

After 14 years of trial, a city court has acquitted a Blueline driver charged with rash and negligent driving, resulting in grievous injuries to a roadside fruit seller. Interestingly, the court observed neither the victim nor the police official, who were eyewitnesses in the case, saw the bus being driven in a rash and negligent manner.

Slamming the police for delaying the trial for more than a decade, additional chief metropolitan magistrate Rakesh Pandit said eyewitness additional sub-inspector Harish Ram deposed in his cross examination that his vehicle was standing at about 90-100 metres from the place of incident.

The judge said, "He has not spoken anything as to whether accused was driving rashly or negligently. It can be assumed that he could not do so as there was a considerable distance between their place and the place of occurrence."

The court noted as per eyewitness Sukhdev Chaudhary, he was hit from behind and on being hit he became unconscious. In cross examination, he admitted that police had told the bus number to him. "So, it means that he is not aware regarding the identity of the bus, its driver or the fact that whether it was being driven rashly," said the judge.

According to the prosecution, on May 28, 1997 at about 9.15am on Gurgaon Road near Subbe Farm, the accused identified as Bhagwan (who uses his first name) was rashly or negligently driving a bus as to endanger human life and personal safety of others. Following his rash driving, the accused struck against Sukhdev Chaudhary and caused grievous injuries to him.

The court noted none of the eyewitnesses could prove that the vehicle was being driven rashly. In these circumstances, prosecution failed to prove on record that accused had committed the offence.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/tabloid-news/newdelhi/Court-acquits-Blueline-driver-after-14-yrs-of-trial/Article1-684540.aspx

Builder held for inferior construction

Sunday Times of India, New Delh,Dwaipayan Ghosh, TNN, Mar 27, 2011, 07.22am IST

NEW DELHI: The Economic Offences Wing of the crime branch arrested a builder, Avdesh Mittal, on Friday after investigations showed that the concrete used in construction of a five-storeyed building in the M Block market road in Greater Kailash-I was of poor quality and the structure can collapse in case of a major earthquake.

The demolition of the structure, which was constructed in 2006, had been a bone of contention between the owner and the builder with the property owner wanting the structure to be razed because of the "inferior quality material" allegedly used by the builder in the construction , which resulted in seepage that caused cracks in the building.

It was only after two years and a trial court's stricture asking the police to take necessary action in the matter as the structure posed "probable danger" to the people living near it, that the EOW of Delhi Police was spurred into action and arrested Mittal, a resident of Greater Kailash-I , who is also the first person arrested in the case. The arrest comes days after Japan witnessed a devastating earthquake and tremors from Hindukush caused panic among Delhiites. Police said one N K Chauhan -the structural engineer who gave the certificate for the building -will be arrested soon.

"During interrogation, Chauhan admitted that he had neither supervised the construction , nor inspected the building, and had issued a certificate on Mittal's request, whom he claimed was his friend," said an investigating officer from EOW.

Referring to the recent incident of building collapse in Laxmi Nagar, the court had earlier asked the state government to do the needful in the case as the "danger of the construction (GK I building) is of a similar nature" .Furthermore, the building is situated in a thickly populated urban colony.

The court's order came while hearing the complaint of one Rajender Chhabra, who claimed that he had entered into an agreement in 2005 with a real estate company and its three directors for getting a house constructed on his 500 square yard plot. He claimed that he had entered into a business deal with the company for building a strong, earthquakeproof, three-storeyed house.

He, however, moved the court in 2008 alleging that the builders were cheating him by using poor quality material. He also claimed that he had got the building examined by a private body (ATES), which had opined that the material used was of very inferior quality and the building was earthquake-prone . The report concluded that the building should be immediately demolished to avoid any mishap.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-27/delhi/29194520_1_collapse-building-quality-material

Speedy trial gets woman Rs60 lakh compensation

Hindustan Times, New Delhi, Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Who says things always move at a snail's pace in courts? Here is an example of super-fast trial. A Delhi court took just six months to order a compensation of Rs 60 lakh to the family of a school teacher who was run over by a speeding SUV in August 2010. A month after the death of her husband Satya Prakash Tiwari, Kalawati, 47, filed a petition before Motor Accident Tribunal judge Kanwal Jeet Arora in September 2010. Kalawati, a tailor in Indian Air force, fought the legal battle without engaging any lawyer.  The court accepted her plea to fight unassisted and began the trial.

"I decided to fight this battle on my own. The judge appreciated my effort and gave our family speedy justice. But we are still waiting for the compensation amount to be transferred to my account," Kalawati said.

The judge, in the order pronounced on February 28, 2010, said, "The insurance company shall intimate to the petitioners about their having deposited the cheques in favour of the petitioners in terms of the award, at the address of the petitioners mentioned, so as to facilitate them to withdraw the same".

The court had directed Bajaj Allianz General insurance to deposit the compensation within a stipulated time frame or else a 12% interest would be levied on the insurance company.

Delhi police investigating officer Suraj Pal told the court that the deceased, Satya Prakash, a resident of Palam village, who was working as TGT (Sanskrit) with Navyug School, Lodhi Road, New Delhi, was traveling on his motorcycle.

Pal after recording statements of witnesses to the accident told the court that when Satya Prakash reached near Keshav Chowk, a Scorpio Car rammed his motorcycle with great force. Tiwari was rushed to AIIMS where he was declared brought dead.

Satya Prakash is survived by his two sons, Ajay Tiwari and Manish Tiwari, and his mother namely Surya Devi, as his sole legal heirs.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Speedy-trial-gets-woman-Rs60-lakh-compensation/Article1-684097.aspx

HC orders govt to pay Rs 5 lakh compensation to juvenile murder convict

HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times, New Delhi, April 02, 2011

The high court on Friday ordered the Delhi government to pay Rs 5 lakh as damages to a juvenile, who has been languishing in jail for more than eight years after his conviction in a murder case. According to law, a minor cannot be imprisoned for more than three years for any crime, including murder.

“The accused juvenile suffered incarceration for more than eight years, that is , nearly three times the maximum period prescribed under the (Juvenile Justice) Act,” a bench headed by Justice S Ravindra Bhat remarked.

The facts revealed an extremely disturbing picture, pointing to violation of the procedure established by the law and his illegal detention for five years, said the bench while noting that the boy was below 15 years of age at the time of a killing of man in Tis Hazari Court Complex in November 2001.

The trial court had sentenced the boy, along with another man, in 2004 without heeding to the boy’s defence that he was a juvenile at the time of the incident.

This failure was systematic because no one, including, the police, prosecution, counsel and the trial court, detected that the accused was a minor in conflict with the law, the bench said.

The fact that the convict, who hails from Uttar Pradesh, was a minor at the time of killing at the Tis Hazari Court canteen in November 2001, was determined after the high court had in August 2009, acting on the boy’s appeal against his conviction by the trial court, ordered examination of his age.

The incident dates back to November 11, 2001, when the boy, after having some drinks with two of his friends in Tis Hazari Court canteen, had an altercation with one of them who was strangulated to death by the boy and another accused, Subhash with a PVC pipe.

The boy, along with Subhash, was arrested the following day and sentenced to life by a trial court in October 2004. The Delhi high court, while ordering the release of the boy from jail, however, upheld the conviction of Subhash.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/HC-orders-govt-to-pay-Rs-5-lakh-compensation-to-juvenile-murder-convict/Article1-680344.aspx