No decision yet on FIR against A N Roy

The High Court had earlier stayed an order to the police to file such an FIR,the Supreme Court then lifted the High Court stay and directed the police to register an FIR against Roy and the others,but on January 13 it restored the stay and asked the High Court to decide within the deadline.

The Supreme Court had dismissed a special leave petition filed by Raj Awasthi,who had challenged the High Court stay order in June,based on appeals filed by state and the police officials.

The High Court stay had been on a lower court order. In 2008,a Bandra metropolitan magistrate ordered the Vakola police station to register an FIR against Roy and the other officials for having allegedly used forged documents to detain Raj Awasthi under the Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities (MPDA) Act.

The state government moved the HC’s vacation judge,which issued an interim stay on the magistrate’s order.

Awasthi was detained on January 3,2006,after Roy,then the city’s police commissioner,gave his sanction for the action relying on several documents,most of which were allegedly non-cognisable complaints. Awasthi used the Right to Information and said that he found out that the alleged complaint against him,by an Ehsanul Jabbar Siddiqui of Kurla,had never been filed with the police.

Awasthi approached the metropolitan magistrate’s court seeking action against the officers for forgery and false implication.

In an affidavit filed in the HC,the police claimed that the case papers had to be reconstructed as the original complaint filed by Siddiqui had been destroyed by the widow of the investigating officer after he died in an accident in Dhule in May 2007.