A Delhi Court granted bail to an accused who was caught with a photocopy copy of answers of a question paper at an examination center for the Delhi Police recruitment online exam. Delhi police had sought five days custody for interrogation which was declined by the court. Metropolitan magistrate Abhinav Pandey of Karkardooma Court on Friday granted bail to accused Dheeraj in a case of cheating.
The Court said that the offence against the accused is u/s 420 IPC and as per the case diary, it is clear that the offence was not committed in the presence of a police officer and that police only proceeded for the investigation to the spot of occurrence upon the complaint of the complainant where the accused was already present. While declining the police custody remand the court said, “In these circumstances, as per the guidelines of Hon’ble Supreme Court in Arnesh Kumar vs. State of Bihar, there was no requirement of the arrest of the accused and proceedings u/s 41A Cr.p.c could well have been resorted to.”
“It seems that some or the other vague grounds for police custody have been mentioned in the present application only to justify the arrest,” the court added. In these circumstances, the present bail application of the accused Dheeraj is allowed, and he is admitted to regular court bail upon furnishing personal bond in the sum of Rs 30,000 with one surety in the like amount to the satisfaction of this Court.
The court, however, clarified that the bail bonds shall only be accepted after due verification. Till the furnishing and acceptance of bail bonds, the accused will be remanded to judicial custody for a period of 14 days, to be produced on November 11, 2022. The Investigating Officer (I0) has moved an application seeking police custody remand of accused Dheeraj for a period of 05 days.
Advocate Satya Prakash opposed the remand sought by the police. He moved a bail application and submitted that there is no requirement of arrest and remand as per the guidelines of the Supreme court in this case. The allegations against the accused Dheeraj was allegedly appearing in an online examination for the post of Head Constable in Delhi Police at Arawachin School, Vivek Vihar.
It is further alleged in the complaint made to the police that during random checking inside the examination venue, the accused was found to be in possession of a photostat of a paper sheet having words, numericals, figures, etc. written into and divided into 5 parts mentioning part A (general knowledge), part B (Science), part C (Maths), part D (Reasoning) and part E (Computer). The complaint alleges that the said paper sheet was actually an answer key to the question paper of the examination.
The question paper itself admittedly has not been recovered. It has been stated by the IO that TCS employees were asked to provide the question paper, but they showed inability for the same, and stated that the same can be obtained only from the Staff Selection Commission but no notice in this regard seems to have been given to the TCS employees, the court noted in the order of October 28, 2022.
