Theft at court property room: Police chief, CRPF officer, dist judge asked to appear

The theft is related to a murder case, in which a CRPF constable opened fire on civilians. Pointing out that the court had called the Deputy Inspector General (DIG), CRPF, Avadi, and the Tiruvallur Superintendent of Police by video conference on an earlier occasion and exhorted them to work in tandem to trace the whereabouts of the accused, Justice PN Prakash said: “Unfortunately, the police have not been able to secure the accused till date.”

The report submitted by the JM No.II, on October 23, was indeed sordid, the judge said, adding: “In the report, she has stated that the head clerk and the assistant of the said court, along with another person, had committed theft of several items from the property room of the court, including the two ammunitions and bullets, which are the subject matter in this case.”

Justice Prakash also took exception that the CB-CID was able to recover 33 items but was unable to recover 45 items, which include the ammunition involved in this case. The CB-CID had completed the investigation in the theft case and filed the charge sheet, and the case was still pending before JM-1 till date. Justice Prakash mentioned in his order about calling State police chief JK Tripathy over mobile phone to express the court’s anguish during the hearing. He then directed the Principal District and Sessions Judge, Tiruvallur, both the JMs, DGP, CRPF DIG, SP and the investigating officer who filed the charge sheet in the theft case to appear before him through video conferencing on Wednesday to enable the stakeholders to work out a strategy to solve the case.

“Yet another disquieting fact is that, it is not known as to how many cases had ended in acquittal for want of materials objects involved in the theft that had gone missing from the property room of the Court of JM No.II,” Justice Prakash added.