Pic Courtesy: hcbanagpur
Nagpur: The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court on Friday quashed an FIR registered against suspended senior forest officer M S Reddy in an abetment of suicide case.
Reddy, who had been made a co-accused in the suicide of a woman colleague, range forest officer (RFO) Deepali Chavan early this year, had filed a petition in the HC’s Nagpur bench for quashing of the FIR registered against him by the police in Maharashtra’s Amravati district.
In its order, a division bench of Justices G A Sanap and AS Chandurkar said there was no material whatsoever to attract the provisions of section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code against Reddy in the case.
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Saturday 23 Nov. 2024
“In the light of the principles laid down in State of Haryana Versus Bhajanlal (1992) and especially illustration nos.1 and 3 thereof, continuation of the present proceedings against the petitioner would thus amount to an exercise in futility thus resulting in abuse of the process of law,” the court observed and quashed the FIR.
Reddy, earlier suspended in connection with the suicide of Chavan, who was RFO at the Melghat Tiger Reserve (MTR), was arrested on April 29 this year by the Amravati rural police.
Chavan had committed suicide by shooting herself with a service weapon in March this year allegedly due to harassment by senior officials.
In a purported suicide note, she had levelled allegations against her senior officer, Deputy Conservator of Forest Vinod Shivkumar, who is the main accused in the case and had been arrested earlier.
In the note, Chavan had said that Reddy, then Field Director at the Melghat Tiger Reserve, had failed to take action against Shivkumar despite her complaint to him.
