Police apologise for his six years in jail, but make him run to clear name

Utkarsh Anand, New Delhi, Sat, Apr 16, 2011

When Prempal looks back, all he remembers are the days he spent in court and prison. The 56-year-old skilled labourer can readily compute the 2,349 days — six years, five months and nine days — that he spent behind bars since 1991, after the police started foisting false criminal cases on him.

By 2007, he was “falsely implicated” in as many as 18 cases, including child rape, attempted murder and 13 thefts. According to Prempal, in a couple of cases, police simply picked up household articles from his house such as his television and music player, and then arrested him for “stealing” them.

When he did manage to procure bail, Prempal busied himself in getting his son and daughter married. He secured loans, sold his ancestral land and requested relatives to provide household necessities to his daughter on the promise that he would pay them once his name was cleared.

The first breather he got was in 2004, when Justice (retired) S N Dhingra, then a sessions judge, acquitted him in the rape case and noted that Prempal, being a poor person, had failed to move the wheels of justice in his favour. Stating that “criminal characters” in the police had framed him and his sons in false cases, the judge said the people responsible for converting him into a “living corpse” should get “exemplary punishment”. He also recommended that Prempal be adequately compensated.

Later, in 2005, the Sangam Vihar police arrested Prempal again on charges of firing at policemen. However, after Justice Dhingra intervened, the police had no option but to release on bail. Two years passed before another attempt-to-murder case was slapped on him in 2007.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/police-apologise-for-his-six-years-in-jail/776999/