The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the Punjab police chief to immediately register two FIRs in connection with gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s two interviews aired by a private news channel in March.
A division bench of justices Anupinder Singh Grewal and Kirti Singh also asked the Punjab Police special investigation team headed by Prabodh Kumar, Director General, Human Rights Commission, to carry out investigations in the FIRs.
The other members of the SIT are IPS officers S Rahul and Nilambari Vijay Jagadale.
In its December 21 order which was released on Saturday, the high court also said the head of the SIT would be at liberty to seek assistance of any other officer or of any other kind after making such a request to the director general of police.
The SIT has been asked to conclude the investigation expeditiously and file a status report before this court within a period of two months, according to the order.
The division bench passed these directions while hearing a suo motu matter related to the use of mobile phones by inmates within jail premises.
“The DGP, Punjab, is directed to immediately register two FIRs with regard to the conduct of two interviews as recommended by the Special Investigation Team in the police station having statewide jurisdiction,” said the order.
Bishnoi is one of the accused in the 2022 singer Sidhu Moosewala murder case.
In March this year, a private news channel ran two interviews of Bishnoi.
During the hearing on December 14, the SIT, probing the back-to-back interviews of the gangster, had said in its report that it was highly improbable that the interviews of Bishnoi were conducted in any of jails in Punjab when he was in police custody.
The court further directed the Punjab DGP to get the URLs/weblinks/videos pertaining to both the interviews removed/blocked/disabled/restricted from social media platforms like YouTube forthwith.
“Ensure that the Press channel, where the said interview is hosted, removes the URLs/weblinks/videos from all its news /social media platforms with immediate effect. In case the said interviews are discovered by police authorities to be existing on any social media platform in future, the same be get removed with immediate effect,” it said.
The DGP was also asked to direct the search engines Google Search, Yahoo Search, Microsoft Bing to globally de-index and dereference from their search results the interviews and their related contents.
In the order, the court stated that it went through the contents of the interviews which indicate that it glorifies crime and criminals.
“The interviewee (Bishnoi) is involved in 71 cases in the State of Punjab and had been convicted in four cases which include offences under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, 302 IPC, extortions, etc.
“The interviewee is justifying target killings and his criminal activities. He has reiterated and justified the threat to a film actor. As in a large number of cases wherein he is involved, trials are underway and attempt to projecting his persona as larger than life could influence the witnesses,” said the court.
It further said these interviews are stated to have garnered over 12 million views.
“It would have an adverse impact upon youngsters with impressionable minds. Punjab is a border State and any deterioration in law and order or increase in crime could affect the national security as at times, anti-national elements take advantage of the situation and often use criminals for their nefarious designs.
“They often get help from across the border. There is a thin line between extortion, target killings and anti-?national activities. The conduct of the interviews is an apparent jail security breach and violation of the Prisons Act. The interviews have been telecast for the last nine months and are available on public domain,” it added.
While directing the registration of the FIR, the court also said, “Those, who facilitated the interviews need to be brought to book at the earliest.”
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Referring to the SIT report on Bishnoi, the court stated it is apparent that the committee has not reached a definite conclusion that the interviews were not being conducted in a jail or police custody within Punjab.
“We find it strange that the Committee took over eight months to arrive at an inconclusive finding,” it said.
Nonetheless, the Committee has made a recommendation for registration of two FIRs with regard to two interviews which were conducted in violation of the law.
The bench has also asked the additional director general (prisons) to file a status report on the timelines for installation of jammers, CCTV cameras, nylon mesh, X-ray body scanners for augmentation of jail security.
The court has fixed January 10 as the next date of hearing in the case.
