Necessary to obviate incidents of other state police conducting ops in Delhi without informing local cops

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Thursday said it is necessary to obviate repetition of episodes where police from other states come to the national capital and conduct operations without intimating the local police.

The high court’s observation came while dealing with a case where the Uttar Pradesh police took away a young married couple from Delhi to Modi Nagar in Ghaziabad district without even intimating the Delhi Police.

The couple was “lifted” from the place where they were residing in Delhi on February 17 and released later on. The girl and the boy, aged 19 and 21 years respectively, were also present in the court and interacted with the judge. Justice Bhambhani was informed by the counsel for the couple that a similar incident had taken place in October 2021 and a coordinate bench of the high court had also addressed a similar situation.

In 2021, the high court had questioned the UP Police for its operations against couples in the national capital and for arresting the father and brother of a man who got married to a woman against her family’s wishes.

It had said it was trite law (laws that are obvious or common) that people under the jurisdiction of Delhi Police could not be apprehended by UP Police without intimation to them and issued notice to the UP police personnel concerned.

Justice Bhambhani observed, “Evidently, history keeps repeating itself. In these circumstances, it is necessary to delve deeper into the matter to obviate the repetition of episodes such as this of police from outside states coming into Delhi and conducting operations without intimation to the local police.”

During the hearing, the high court perused CCTV footage of cameras installed in and around the place of residence of the couple in an effort to ascertain the identity of people who entered and exited their premises on the night of the incident.

The court said faces of those who came and took away the petitioners from Delhi to Modi Nagar were not visible to bare eye and added that the footage appears to be

“truncated”.

“I propose to take it further as far as I can take it. These things sometimes come as roadblocks. But this footage is incomplete. It is truncated,” the judge said.

The high court issued notice to the Deputy Commissioner of Police of CyPAD (Cyber Preventation Awareness Detection), Special Cell of Delhi Police, while asking him to examine the CCTV footage to obtain facial shots of persons in the video and to remain present in the court or be represented on March 9.