Case Title: Dr Naresh Kumar Mangla V. Smt. Anita Agarwal & Ors. Etc.
After the charge sheet had been submitted, the Supreme Court noted that it was free to order a CBI probe in the present case.
In addition to cancelling the anticipatory bail given to the in-laws of the deceased woman in her dowry death case and directing the Central Bureau of Investigation to further investigate the case, the bench made this observation.
The in-laws of the dead woman, who were charged in the dowry killing case, had previously been granted anticipatory release by the Allahabad High Court. The High Court made the following observations to grant them anticipatory bail: (a) The FIR prima facie looks concocted to accuse the applicants; (b) the claims are "generic in character," with no particular function being attributed to the accused, and (c) "there is no correlation in between the different allegations levied in the FIR."
The bench, which also included Justices Indu Malhotra and Indira Banerjee, made reference to the case files and noted that the UP Police's investigation in this particular instance "left much to be desired." The High Court's justifications for granting the defendants anticipatory bail were also rejected by the panel. It read:
"The FIR contains a recital of allegations bearing on the role of the accused in demanding dowry, of the prior incidents of assault and the payment of money by cheque to the in-laws of the deceased. The FIR has referred to the telephone calls which were received both from the father-in-law of the deceased on the morning of 3 August 2020 and from the deceased on two occasions on the same day- a few hours before her body was found. The grant of anticipatory bail in such a serious offence would operate to obstruct the investigation. The FIR by a father who has suffered the death of his daughter in these circumstances cannot be regarded as "engineered" to falsely implicate the spouse of the deceased and his family. "
The court observed that a charge sheet had been submitted to the appropriate court in this instance. The bench ruled that where the investigation is contaminated and there is a genuine risk of justice being obstructed, the filing of the charge sheet does not remove the higher court's jurisdiction. The bench noted in reference to Vinay Tyagi v. Irshad:
"The court held that wherever a charge sheet has been submitted to the court, even this Court would not ordinarily reopen the investigation especially by entrusting it to a specialized agency. However, in a proper case, when the Court feels that the investigation by the police has not been in the proper perspective and that in order to do complete justice, where the facts of the case demand that the investigation is handed over to a specialized agency, a superior court is not bereft of the authority to do so."
In addition, the bench cited rulings in Pooja Pal v. Union of India and Dharam Pal v. State of Haryana that maintained the Apex Court's authority to transfer an inquiry to the CBI regardless of the stage of the case.
The court noted that the actions taken by the investigating authorities in this matter, from the point at which they arrived on the site of the incident, to the point at which they filed the charge sheet, did not give an impression of a robust investigation process. The Court used its authority under Article 142 of the Constitution to direct "further inquiry" by the CBI.