NEW DELHI: Stalling the intent of the Uttarakhand state government to drop a case of “cruelty against child” and human trafficking against a senior civil judge, the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s (CJM) court of Haridwar has refused to quash the case against the judge.
Quoting “public interest”, the Trivendra Singh Rawat-led BJP government had, on 28 August 2019, decided to drop the criminal charges that were filed against the civil judge, Deepali Sharma, for allegedly abusing a teenage girl who was working as a domestic help at her residence.
The case is of 10 January 2018, when the Uttarakhand High Court, taking cognizance of information shared by the girl’s parents, directed officials to look into the complaint that a 13-year-old girl, a resident of Haldwani who was working as a house help, was being ill-treated by the then senior division civil judge, Haridwar, Deepali Sharma at her residence.
On 30 January, a team led by the then Haridwar district judge Rajendra Singh recovered the girl from Sharma’s residence. When the girl was rescued by Singh, who was accompanied by the then ASP Rachita Juyal and members of a child helpline, she was found with at least 20 wounds on her body.
The very same day, the then Chief Justice of Uttarakhand High Court, K.M. Joseph, who is a judge of the Supreme Court now, ordered the immediate suspension of Sharma for allegedly abusing the teenage girl who was working as a domestic help at her residence. The suspension was based on a report submitted to the High Court by Haridwar district judge Rajendra Singh.
A medical test that was conducted on the girl at the district hospital had confirmed 20 wounds on the girl’s body, including on her head. She had also suffered burn injuries. The girl, who hails from Nainital, was staying with the judge for past four years.
An FIR under Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act (Punishment for Cruelty to Child), and Sections 370 (trafficking), 323 (causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation) of IPC was then filed against Sharma at the SIDCUL (State Industrial Development Corporation of Uttarakhand) police station, after which a charge-sheet was submitted by the state police.
Later, quoting “public interest”, on 28 August 2019, Atar Singh, Additional Secretary, government of Uttarakhand, wrote to the District Magistrate of Haridwar to drop the case against Deepali Sharma under the provision of Section 321 of CrPC that talks about “withdrawal from prosecution” which means that the government can drop the charges at any time by taking consent from the court where the case is being tried.
However, on 21 November, the CJM’s court of Haridwar said that the case against Sharma cannot be quashed as there was no public interest in doing so. The court gave the decision while deciding on an application filed by local activist J.P. Badoni who had objected to the government’s action to drop the case against Sharma.
Badoni had to argue the case on his own as no lawyer was ready to represent him in the case against a judge.
While giving his judgment on Thursday, CJM Arun Vohra said that there is no public interest in withdrawing this case. “In fact, public interest will be affected if the case is withdrawn against Sharma,” the CJM said.
The Sunday Guardian reached out to Deepali Sharma for her response on the issue, but no response was received till the time the story went to press.
Madan Kaushik, BJP MLA and Uttarakhand government spokesperson, too, did not share his response to this newspaper’s queries. When contacted, the staff at the Chief Minister’s office directed this newspaper to contact Rawat’s officer on special duty (OSD), Jagdish Chandra Khulbe, for a response. Khulbe, too, chose not to respond to The Sunday Guardian’s queries. Nor was any response received from the Chief Minister’s office and the Uttarakhand law department to the emails shared by this newspaper with them.
Interestingly, a petition filed by Deepali Sharma on 30 October 2018 challenging her suspension, was decided by a two-judge High Court bench of acting Chief Justice Rajeev Sharma and Justice Sharad Kumar Sharma, on the same day it was filed (30 October 2018). The two-judge bench quashed the order of her suspension and issued orders that her arrears, too, should be paid. On 2 November 2018, Justice Rajeev Sharma was transferred to the High Court of Punjab and Haryana.
This is not for the first time that human trafficking involving senior officials has come to light in the mountain state. In March 2017, a 21-year-old girl from Jharkhand was rescued from the residence of a senior scientist working in one of the laboratories of the Defence Research and Development Organisation in Dehradun.