STATE DELHI ADMINISTRATION Vs. JAGJITSINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Special leave granted. Heard learned counsel for the parties.

(2.) The prosecution case, in short, is that to create fear and terror, to commit murder and to aggravate tense situation some persons hatched a conspiracy to massacre the general public by placing transistor bombs at public places and also by placing them in public transports as trains, buses etc. Many explosions took place in May, 1985 in Delhi and parts of Uttar Pradesh in consequence whereof many persons were killed in Delhi and some places in Uttar Pradesh. Several cases were registered in different police stations of Aligarh, Ghaziabad, Meerut and Khekra etc. in Delhi. F.I.R. No. 238 of 1985 was registered i.e. State versus Kartar Singh Narang etc. wherein all the accused persons named therein were arrested except one Gurdeep Singh Sehgal who was declared as a proclaimed offender. The accused Jagjit Singh and Gurvinder Singh turned approvers and they were granted pardon under S. 306 Criminal P.C. 1973. They were examined as P.W. 1 and P.W. 2 in the committal case proceeding in the Court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate on December 24, 1985. Both these approvers resiled from their statements in the Court of the Committing Magistrate. The accused persons were committed to the Court of Session to stand their trial for offences under Ss. 121, 121A, 153, 153A, 302 and 307 I.P.C. and Ss. 3, 5 and 6 of Explosives Substances Act.

(3.) On February 27, 1986, Surjit Kaur, another accused in the Transistor Bomb Case, against whom cases were pending in the Meerut, Ghaziabad and Aligarh Districts of U.P., moved an application under S. 406 of the Code of Criminal Procedure before this Court for transfer of criminal case pending in the Court of Meerut to a Court in Delhi. This Court after hearing Counsel for the State of Uttar Pradesh has directed that criminal cases referred to at Serial Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 6 in paragraph 2 of the transfer petition stand transferred to the Court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Delhi and shall be tried along with the case instituted in the Court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Delhi arising out of F.I.R. No. 238 of 1985 of Police Station, Patel Nagar, New Delhi. When the matter was taken up in the Court of Session, the respondent, Jagjit Singh, the approver moved an application that he cannot be examined as a witness as he had not accepted the pardon and did not support the prosecution version and he was forced to make a wrong statement by the police before the Metropolitan Magistrate. The application was rejected by the Trial Judge after hearing the arguments of the parties on March 1, 1986.