A Division Bench of Justices Mukta Gupta and Anish Dayal also upheld the order sentencing an inspector to three years of imprisonment for kidnapping Sonu in the same case.
The Court rejected the police officers’ assertions that the deceased had died of suicide. It found that there were serious discrepancies in the records and that the general diary entries were fabricated and manipulated.
Taking note of the injuries on Sonu’s body, the Court found it hard to believe that he committed suicide and “then sustained such injuries during the process of being saved by trained police personnel.”
“These discrepancies are glaring and can only underscore the case of the prosecution that all police personnel present at that night belonging to PS Sector-20 (Noida) were somehow stretching themselves hard to disclaim their presence at the time post lodging of Sonu by the accused police team. It is, therefore, completely clear that conduct of all these police officials refusing to acknowledge their presence after the lodging of Sonu or around that time, leads to a conclusion that the situation in the PS at that time was not fine,” the order stated.
Source: Barandbench
