THE Delhi High Court on Thursday vacated its stay order on the bail granted to Faisal Faraooq, the owner of a private school, in connection to a north-east Delhi riots case. It observed that its stay order passed on June 26 may prejudice the interest of the accused at the time of considering his bail application in another case FIR registered at Police Station Dayalpur.
Delhi Police had challenged the Sessions Court order that granted bail to Faraooq on June 20. The Sessions Court had noted that "chargesheet is bereft of material showing the links of applicant with PFI, Pinjra Tod group and Muslim clerics". The court had also said "it is prima facie not established that the applicant was present at the spot at the time of incident".
Tussle between Centre and Delhi Government
During the hearing, Rahul Mehra, Standing Counsel (Criminal) for NCT of Delhi, had submitted that the petition filed by the Delhi Police was not maintainable as the Central Government filed it by taking over the powers of the State Government. He submitted a catena of judgments by Supreme Court and High Court ruling that the Lieutenant Governor is not competent to appoint Special Public Prosecutor/Advocate without aid and advice of Council of Ministers.
"However, in the present case, appointments have been made by Lieutenant Governor without aid and advice of the Council of Ministers against the law established, thus, the appointments are illegal on the face of it", Mehra added.
Appearing in the matter for the Delhi Police, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aman Lekhi submitted that the Lieutenant Governor (LG) had appointed the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, him and other law officers at the request of Delhi Police. Thus, he argued, the Central Government's standing counsel had rightly filed the present petition to challenge the order-dated June 20 passed by the Sessions Court. ASG, on the other side, told the court that the Division Bench judgment of the Supreme Court, cited by Mehra, was not applicable in the present case.
Justice Suresh Kumar Kait noted that the said issue has not been resolved till date between the Central Government and State of NCT of Delhi. He directed ASG Aman Lekhi and Standing Counsel for Delhi Government Rahul Mehra to file written arguments, along with case laws relied upon, at least three days before the next date of hearing i.e. July 22
Read the Order
[pdfviewer]http://theleaflet.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/70292_2020.pdf[/pdfviewer]