Rajasthan High Court grants partial relief to temple security guards in case filed by civil judge’s wife

The Rajasthan High Court recently directed the police to drop the charge of causing grievous hurt in a case lodged against two security guards by a civil judge's wife in relation to an incident of scuffle involving the judge at Eklingji temple.

Justice Arun Monga, however, refused to quash the First Information Report (FIR) entirely as was sought by temple security guards Chatar Singh Chouhan (71) and Sawroop Singh (28), who are accused of causing hurt, wrongful restraint and criminal intimidation. 

The Bench said since the investigation has already been completed and the charge sheet is proposed to be filed against five accused, it would not be appropriate for the Court to go into merits of other allegations. 

However, the Court found that the charge under Section 117(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) was not made out since there was no allegation of the complainant having suffered any grievous injury or allegation of attempt to cause any such injury.

“A perusal of the above reflects that in the present case there is complete absence of any allegations in the FIR with regard to any grievous injury and its ingredients are lacking,” the Court said.

The Court also ordered that since rest of the offences are bailable in nature, the two accused shall be released on bail in case they are formally arrested by the police.

As per the petition, the incident involving the judicial officer happened on August 13 when Siddharth Shankar Sharma, a senior civil judge and additional chief judicial magistrate posted at Newai, Tonk, allegedly claimed to be a High Court judge and attempted to jump the queue when he was visiting the temple with family and friends.

The Court was told that CCTV footage revealed the judicial officer engaged in a heated exchange with the temple security.

With regard to the FIR lodged by Sharma’s wife, it was submitted that the same had been done with an intent to discredit the temple administration. 

The senior counsel for the accused argued that the civil judge had put his wife at the forefront to act as proxy for him and she had instituted criminal proceedings at the instance of her husband. 

However, the prosecution said investigation was complete in the case and while some penal sections have been dropped, the police plan to charge a total of five accused under Sections 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), 126(2) (wrongful restraint), 351(2)/(3)  (criminal intimidation), 324(6) (mischief) and 117(2) (voluntarily causing grievous hurt) of the BNS.

The Court said whether or not allegations levelled by the complainant are false or not is a matter of trial and shall be decided by the competent trial court upon filing of the charge sheet.

However, it proceeded to direct the police to drop the charge of causing grievous injury since the nature of injury suffered by the complainant was found to be simple for which appropriate charge has already been invoked.

Senior Advocate Puneet Jain with advocates Aslam Naushad and Sheetal Kumbhat represented the petitioners.

Senior Advocate Anand Purohit with advocate Ranjeet Joshi represented the complainant.

Public Prosecutor Vikram Singh Rajpurohit and advocate RS Bhati represented the State. 

[Read Judgment]