Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court pulled up the Uttar Pradesh Police for filing what it described as a “movie script” first information report (FIR) in a cow slaughter case.
According to Bar and Bench, a bench of Justice Abdul Moin and Justice Babita Rani flagged dramatic dialogues, cinematic gunfire descriptions and glaring inconsistencies in the FIR and questioned whether the Uttar Pradesh Police were drafting FIRs based on actual events or merely reproducing dramatic lines lifted from movie scripts.
“The police personnel are either having a script in front of them and they are adopting it with a few minor changes here and there or else something is seriously wrong with the police personnel wherein such FIRs are being lodged left and right which appear to be borrowing the words from movie scripts. We need not say anything more at this stage,” the court noted.
The court was hearing a petition filed by one Aleem challenging an FIR registered on January 2 at Tadiyawan Police Station in Hardoi district.
According to the FIR, the Station House Officer (SHO) received a video allegedly showing cow slaughter. While watching the video, he was informed by a secret informer that the person seen in it was a known cow smuggler who had previously committed similar offences and was about to commit another such offence nearby.
The High Court said that the language and sequence in the FIR raised serious doubts. It recalled a similar FIR in another cow slaughter case where nearly identical dialogues and descriptions were used by the Police.
In that case, the same Bench had criticised another FIR which it said read like a film script. That FIR had recorded that at 10:45 am, accused persons were heard saying “Ujala hone wala hai” (it is about to dawn), even though the incident was allegedly in broad daylight. The court had said the allegations were “fanciful and highly exaggerated” and referred to the Supreme Court’s judgment in State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, which permits High Courts to quash FIRs that are absurd or inherently improbable. In the present case, the Court noted that the only
person who allegedly fired at the police was the injured accused himself. There was no clear allegation showing how Aleem was involved in firing or in any act under the Arms Act or the BNS.WITH AGENCY INPUTS