On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected to hear a PIL that asked for the SIT or the CBI to investigate the July 13 incident in Patna, where a BJP leader died while taking part in a rally against the Nitish Kumar administration.
The petitioner was instructed to approach the Patna High Court by a panel of judges that included Justices Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta. The constitutional courts are the upper courts.
“The high courts are constitutional courts. Their power under Article 226 of the Constitution is enormous. They being the local high court can monitor and constitute SIT with competent officers if they find local police is not working properly,” the bench said.
The petitioner dropped the case after noticing the bench’s lack of interest, and the case was thus dismissed as withdrawn.
The highest court requested that the high court take up the case urgently and provide a swift decision. It made it clear that it had not made any declarations regarding the case’s legal merits. A BJP leader from the Jehanabad district named Vijay Singh passed away while participating in a “Vidhan Sabha march.”
The Patna district government issued a brief statement claiming that ”no injury marks” were discovered on his body, contrary to party leaders’ claims that he was killed by a severe police lathicharge.
The march began at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan and came to an end a few kilometres from the assembly grounds. It was arranged in support of protests against the state government’s teacher recruitment policy.
Bhupesh Narayan, a resident of Bihar, petitioned the Supreme Court with the request for an investigation into the role played by Nitish Kumar, Tejashwi Yadav, and other officials, including the state’s police chief, in allegedly protecting the real perpetrators of the incident.
”The police is under a constitutional obligation to uphold the rule of law and maintain law and order,” said the plea. ”In a democratic country, peaceful procession or march against the government policy is a well-recognised method of protest,” it added.
According to the petition, the procession’s participants were abruptly and deliberately surrounded by police, who used batons, water cannons and tear gas shells to create a chaotic scenario. It said that Singh died as a result of police brutality and atrocity.
