While the shock of the untimely loss of the lives of three UPSE aspirants still lingers, the outrageous police action of arresting one Mr. Manoj Kathuria, an SUV driver, on the charges of driving through the flooded street where the unfortunate incident took place, is a horrifying blow to the personal liberty of citizens.
It has been reported in the news that Kathuria’s SUV, while passing through the water-logged road where the coaching’s underground library is situated, caused ripples in the water which allegedly breached the front entrance of the coaching centre and contributed to the flooding of the basement. The police has charged Mr. Kathuria for, inter alia, culpable homicide not amounting to murder and for voluntarily causing hurt. This defies logic and militates against all common sense and legal provisions.
The arrest of Mr. Kathuria is reminiscent of the play Andher Nagari Chaupat Raja, Bharatendu Harishchandra’s masterpiece about a king and his anarchical kingdom, where the death of a goat leads to an irrational pursuit to determine the culpability based on whose neck fits the noose. This incident not only raises significant concerns about the facts and circumstances surrounding the arrest of Mr. Kathuria, but also highlights a deeper, more troubling trend of the erosion of personal freedoms in the name of fixing accountability.
The absurdity of charging Mr. Kathuria with culpable homicide not amounting to murder is compounded by the fact that the Ld. Magistrate, instead of outrightly rejecting these most atrocious and far-fetched charges and releasing him on bail, has remanded him to a 14-day judicial custody. This mindless and non-judicious exercise of power by the Ld. Magistrate is a yet another instance of a citizen being unjustly deprived of his personal liberty in the most callous manner and is simply reprehensible. By remanding Mr. Kathuria to judicial custody, the Ld. Magistrate has grossly failed to perform his judicial role as the first line of defense against the deprivation of liberty of citizens at the hands of arbitrary police powers.
Pertinently, apart from stating that Mr. Kathuria was driving through the flooded road, the newspaper reports do not suggest any wrongdoing on his part. It is beyond comprehension how a person could be charged with the grave offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder for merely driving through a flooded road. The logic, or the lack thereof, behind holding Mr. Kathuria accountable for the deaths would also apply to the Delhi Commissioner of Police for his failure to ensure that the flooded road was cordoned off, and accordingly highlights its absurdity.
Considering the police’s history of trampling upon the personal liberty of the citizens, Delhi police’s actions might not come as a surprise. However, the complete non-application of mind by the Ld. Magistrate in denying bail and remanding Mr. Kathuria to 14-day judicial custody is truly shocking and absolutely unpardonable. The abysmal state of affairs in matters of remand of accused persons, which is the first constitutionally prescribed check on arbitrary deprivation of liberty, is laid bare when most trial courts act mechanically as post offices for accused persons, merely receiving and forwarding them to jails.
It appears that the Ld. Magistrate has not even cursorily examined facts before depriving Mr. Kathuria of his personal liberty for 14 day – a loss that cannot be measured or compensated and will leave a permanent scar on the individual affected.
This also leads to the inescapable conclusion that the lower judiciary needs to be sensitised and trained to apply its mind before remanding any person to custody on the request of police, and to exercise its judicial powers responsibly and with due regard to the personal liberty of the citizens.
In the play Andher Nagari, the autocratic and irrational regime of the King Chaupat Raja comes to an end when the Guru lures the King to hang himself. The society eagerly awaits the arrival of such a Guru to set the course right.
Amit Anand Tiwari is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India.