‘Investigations can’t be declared complete if suspects unidentified’

Stating that no investigation can be declared that it has been completed unless the culprit is identified, the Sindh High Court (SHC) has observed that a report under A-class would never be the admission of the completion of investigation.

The observation came on Saturday when the SHC was hearing a criminal miscellaneous application filed against the rejection of a reinvestigation plea by a district and sessions court. A counsel for the applicant had submitted that his client had lodged an FIR with regard to injury caused by some unidentified persons and police kept the report in dormant by declaring it A-class for the want of arrests of the culprits.

Reports are declared A-class when the accused are unidentified. The counsel submitted that the district court was approached for reinvestigations of the case so that the culprits, that had been identified later on, could be arrested. He submitted that the sessions court dismissed the plea stating that the order passed by the magistrate was not amenable to the sessions court.

An SHC single bench, comprising Justice Salahuddin Panhwar, observed that any report under A-class was not the final or legal disposal of a crime’s FIR as it had been observed by the Supreme Court (SC).

The high court observed that the attitude of the police in believing the submission of a report under A-class as disposal of case was illegal and against the spirit of the investigation. The court observed that active consciousness of magistrate in dealing with such reports was also found to be not in accordance with the rule of supervisory.

The SHC observed that the magistrate was bound to call the investigation officer and victim with regard to progress on the crime in A-class cases fortnightly but the magistrate failed in following the directives.

The SHC observed that there was a need to circulate the SC judgment regarding A-class cases to all criminal and special courts. The high court directed the Sindh inspector general of police to submit a complete break-up of A-class cases during the last 10 years.

The SHC ordered that the SSPs concerned, who are bound to supervise the investigations, shall depute teams of competent officers to supervise the investigations of all the A-class cases and submit reports before magistrates on a fortnightly basis. The high court observed that the magistrate would be competent to take any coercive action against delinquent person in case of failure in compliance with dictum laid by the superior courts.

The court directed the East SSP to entrust investigations of the crime registered at the Ferozabad police station to any other officer who shall investigate the case, record further statement of the victim and other witnesses and submit report before a competent court in accordance with the law. The court directed the provincial law officer and respondents to give legal exception if any regarding the SC judgment.