Lawrence Bishnoi interview: High court stays trial court proceedings

Taking serious view of reports that the Punjab police have filed a “cancellation report” in the FIR registered on January 5 in connection with gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s interview telecast by a private channel, the high court on Wednesday stayed the Mohali trial court’s proceedings in the case.

The high court bench of justice Anupinder Singh Grewal and justice Sudeepti Sharma, during the hearing on Wednesday, orally questioned the Punjab police as to why the court was not apprised of the outcome of the probe and also questioned why a copy of the probe report was not supplied to the court, which they have submitted in the trial court.

The scheduled hearing of the matter was on Tuesday during which the police had told the court that the final report had been submitted before the trial court. The court had even appreciated the efforts of the SIT headed by DG, Human Rights Commission, Prabodh Kumar.

However, as it came to light on Wednesday morning that six charges as mentioned in the FIR have been dropped and challan has been filed in only one offence of criminal intimidation on October 9 by the Punjab police, the hearing of the case, scheduled for October 28 was ordered to be preponed and case was taken up for hearing on Wednesday and all parties concerned were called in for hearing.

The court observed that the hearing of the matter took place on Tuesday when the head of the SIT had filed an affidavit. “In the affidavit, a self-contained note indicating the misconduct, negligence and dereliction of duty by the concerned officers had also been appended.”

“It has now come to our notice that cancellation report has also been filed before the JMIC, SAS Nagar, on 09.10.2024. However, it is perplexing to note that the said report was not furnished to this Court on 15.10.2024 when the matter had come up for hearing. The counsel for the State of Punjab has not been able to provide any satisfactory explanation with regard to the tearing hurry in filing cancellation report before JMIC, SAS Nagar,” the bench recorded while asking the counsel to seek necessary instructions by the adjourned date of October 28.

The court also directed the SIT head to file a copy of the investigation report. “In the meantime, we direct that further proceedings before the JMIC, SAS Nagar, be stayed,” the court ordered.

The controversy is about two interviews of the gangster telecast on March 14 and March 17, 2023, when he was in Bathinda jail. The Punjab Police had initially denied that these interviews took place within the state. Later, the SIT probe found that one of the interviews was conducted at Punjab Police facility in Kharar on the intervening night of September 3 and 4 in 2022 and the second interview was conducted in Rajasthan. The FIR in the second interview’s case has now been transferred to Rajasthan.

In the interviews, the gangster had claimed that he was not involved in the gruesome and broad daylight murder of prominent Punjabi singer, Sidhu Moose Wala, who was killed in 2022. He had also hinted at taking revenge from actor Salman Khan for allegedly hunting blackbucks in Rajasthan in 1998.

The matter had reached court in September 2023 when it took suo motu note of these interviews observing that such interviews tend to glorify crime and criminals and could have an adverse effect on impressionable minds. Later, the interviews were deleted but the police had told the court that these interviews garnered 12 million views on YouTube. The FIR was registered following directions for the same from the high court in December 2023. The case has been probed by the SIT constituted by the high court.

The January 5 FIR included seven offences, 384 (extortion), 201 (concealment of evidence), 202 (intentionally withholding information about an offence), 506 (criminal intimidation), 116 (abetment of offences that are punishable by imprisonment.), 120-b(criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and 52-A (1) of the Prisons (Punjab Amendment) Act, 2011. The final report filed in a Mohali court on October 9 includes only one Section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC and only against Bishnoi, who was originally named in the FIR.