Agartala: The Tripura High Court on Thursday held a police officer guilty of contempt of court for violating the Supreme Court’s 2014 Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar guidelines while arresting a youth in April this year. The court imposed a fine of Rs 2,000 on the officer and directed that he would undergo one month’s simple imprisonment if the amount is not paid within four weeks.
The Division Bench comprising Chief Justice M.S. Ramachandra Rao and Justice Biswajit Palit found Sub-Inspector Saikat Dey, posted at East Agartala Police Station, guilty of disregarding the mandatory safeguards governing arrests. The contempt proceedings were initiated suo motu on May 13 during the hearing of a criminal writ petition filed by Ratna Roy, who alleged that her son, Saikat Saha, had been illegally arrested and assaulted.
According to the petition, the incident stemmed from a dispute over the construction of the family’s G+3 residential building. Roy alleged that after a complaint regarding deviations from the sanctioned building plan, no adverse order was passed by the Agartala Municipal Corporation. However, she claimed that a municipal employee and a Special Police Officer later demanded Rs 2 lakh to allow the construction to continue. When her son allegedly refused to pay, he was assaulted outside their residence on April 4 and again inside East Agartala Police Station.
The High Court noted that despite a complaint filed on April 6, no FIR was registered until May 7, after the court entertained the writ petition. It subsequently constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by a Deputy Superintendent of Police and supervised by an Inspector General-rank officer, to investigate both the assault allegations and the criminal case registered against Saikat Saha.
The SIT reported that CCTV footage from the police station showed Saikat Saha being assaulted inside the station premises by the municipal employee and the Special Police Officer after he had been brought there by the respondent police officer. The investigation also found material indicating that the alleged assault followed a demand for Rs 2 lakh.
The police officer defended the arrest, claiming Saikat Saha was intoxicated and creating a public nuisance, making preventive arrest necessary under the Tripura Police Act and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS). However, the High Court found inconsistencies between the police records, general diary entries and the SIT findings. It also questioned the reliability of the medical report relied upon by the officer.
Observing that the officer had failed to comply with the arrest safeguards laid down by the Supreme Court in the Arnesh Kumar judgment and had also failed to prevent the assault inside the police station, the court held him guilty of contempt and disposed of the proceedings after imposing the penalty.
