Karnataka High Court says State govt. will have to justify whether suspension of police officers after stampede was required  

The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday said the State government would have to justify whether suspending the police officers in connection with the stampede outside the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium was necessary or shifting them to another post would have been sufficient.

Govt.’s challenge

A Division Bench comprising Justice S.G. Pandit and Justice T.M. Nadaf made these oral observations during the hearing of an appeal filed by the government challenging the July 1 verdict of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), which had declared as illegal the suspension of Vikash Kumar Vikash, Additional Commissioner of Police (West), Bengaluru city.

The Bench made these observations when State Advocate-General Shashi Kiran Shetty requested the court to stay the order of the CAT while pointing out that Mr. Vikash Kumar had, after the CAT’s verdict in his favour, gone to the office of the Additional Commissioner of Police (West) in uniform even though this post is now held by a different officer. The A-G also said he would show from the records that the suspension order was justified while seeking time to present the records and commence argument.

Meanwhile, Senior Advocate Dhyan Chinnappa, appearing for Mr. Vikash Kumar, assured that the officer would not precipitate the matter by either filing a contempt petition or otherwise when the Bench asked him not to precipitate the matter.

CAT’s view

“The action of suspending the police officers is not based on sufficient/substantial materials. At the time of passing of the aforesaid order, there was no convincing material to show the default or negligence of the police officers concerned, the CAT had said.

On the government’s remark in the order of suspension that “despite the knowledge of these developments and expectation of huge turnout of cricket fans, the police officers did not take steps”, the CAT said this remark “is not justified” as the government’s orders setting up a ‘magisterial inquiry’ and a ‘commission of inquiry’ clearly point out that the inquiries were for “identification of persons responsible for lapses/deficiencies that led to the incident” as “it was not ascertained that who are responsible for the lapses and deficiencies”.

DG&IGP’s report

Besides, the CAT had also pointed out that the Director-General and Inspector-General of Police (DG&IGP) in his June 4 report to the State government had stated that “thousands of cricket fans had gathered in front of the Vidhana Soudha and near the Chinnaswamy stadium and the event was scheduled at a short notice, all possible bandobast arrangements were made immediately. However, due to the sudden rush of thousands of fans between 3.30 p.m. and 4.30 p.m., a stampede broke outside the stadium.”