Penalty on Punjab Police IG for providing false information under RTI
5 Apr, 2013Bant Singh, a resident of Rajpura, Patiala was arrested along with his son in 2002 in an assault case and was kept in prison for two days on the pretext that the concerned magistrate was on leave. Later, Bant Singh came to know that the investigating officer, the SHO of Sadar police station, had used false pretext to keep him in captivity. He wrote letters to Patiala SSP and to the ADGP (Crime), requesting to prosecute the SHO under Section 197 of the CrPC.
In January 2011, Bant Singh filed an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to get the details of daily progress report on his letters. The reply, provided by the DIGP (Crime)-cum-APIO stated that his letter had been considered, closed and consigned to records. However, the truth was that his letter had been considered and various orders passed on them. This came to light only following the intervention of the State Information Commission (SIC). The SIC also issued show cause notice to the IG (Crime), Punjab asking as to why false information was provided to the applicant.
Not satisfied with the IG’s submission that it was an inadvertent error on the part of the respondent, the SIC has now imposed a heavy fine and penalty. This includes a penalty of Rs. 25,000/- on the IG to be deducted from his salary and Rs. 15,000/- to be paid by the police department as compensation to the applicant.