New Delhi. Delhi High Court directed the Centre and the police to take action as per the law in the FIRs registered in connection with the violence in Delhi on Republic Day.
A bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh also dismissed a PIL seeking immediate release of persons detained by police since January 26 in connection with the violence on Republic Day. The court dismissed the petition by saying that it appeared to be a publicity interest litigation.
The petitioner, Harman Preet Singh claimed that he has come to know through social activists that people were detained from the Singhu, Ghaziabad and Tikri borders. His advocate Ashima Mandla has argued that people have been detained without informing their family or not producing them before a magistrate.
On Tuesday, during the hearing, advocate Ashima Mandla told the bench that according to news reports Delhi Police has lodged 44 FIRs in connection with the incident and around 120 persons have been detained. She had argued that not signing of arrest memos, or informing next of kin and not producing them before a magistrate “falls within the contours of illegal detention”.
The tractor parade on Republic Day was meant to highlight the demands of the farmer unions but created chaos on as tens of thousands of protesters, wielding sticks and holding the tricolour and union flags, broke barriers, clashed with police and entered the city from various points to lay siege to the Red Fort and climb the flagpole on Republic Day. Delhi Police has filed multiple FIRs after the incident.
Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over two months now against the three laws — the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act.
