Image used for representation Photo Credit: Hind
The High Court in Delhi on Friday (May 16, 2025) descended hard to the police in Delhi and the police Uttar Pradesh for registering a company to the suspicious death of a 20 -year -old student Dilli, whose body was found in his car in Noida last December.
Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani, who called it a textbook case of the “passing buck” syndrome between the two state police forces, ordered the police to register and transfer all the material and evidence collected to UTTAR Pradesh within a week.
Uttar Pradesh was directed again to “register or register” companies and examine the matter without further delay or abandonment.
The case concerned the death of the harsh Kumar Sharma, who left his home in Delhi on the morning of 3 December 2024 to attend a college in Noida, but never returned. After the effort of his family’s efforts to contact him, he was filed with a missing person with the police in Delhi at 21:15
Police watched their phone in a service lane near the hostel RCI in Greater Noida, where they found his inanimate body inside their car around 23:30 the same night. Inside the car was found cylinder of carbon monoxide, syringes and diary bearing a cold note – found “If you want to meet this person, it is dead” – found.
Despite these circumstances, no police force has registered companies for murder. Therefore, not a basic investigation, such as seizures incriminating articles (car, cylinder, syringes), nor did the necessary forensic research (such as raising fingerprints, gather DNA evidence and other incriminatory material) were nor not recorded.
The court noted with the alarm that the car – the basic storage of evidence – was returned to the family without proper investigation.
In court, the police in Delhi stated that it did not consider it necessary to register zero fir, because neither the complaint received, nor the circumstances under which the body was found did not indicate a commission of any recognizable crime.
On the other hand, Uttar Pradesh said that until the investigation proceedings were concluded and the final report on the investigation was issued, they could not assume that the student’s death was the case of “murderous death”, and therefore there was no reason to register companies, unconditional fir for crimes.
The court categorically dismissed the police argument in Delhi that in the initial stage there was no recognizable crime, and stressed that they not only visited the petitioner’s residence, but also gathered the CCTV shots, watched the victim’s location and found that he was dead under suspicious circumstances.
“It can never be questioned that on the basis of what the complainant or the injured person publishes to a police officer, the policeman may refuse to register the company and stated that as long as he is sure who does not publish the exact offenses, he would not register at all,” Judge Bhambhani said.
The judge said the Uttar Pradesh police had enough information to register the company for murder without waiting for the investigation report. The Court of Justice, which was deleted on the precedent of the Supreme Court, explained that the investigation and investigation proceedings were independent and could run in parallel.
Published – May 16 2025 17:43
