Hyderabad: Citing inordinate delay, the first additional sessions judge court in Nampally has rejected the ‘excuses’ given by the Telangana Crime Investigation Department (CID) for taking eight years to file a chargesheet. The CID said the delay was due to the transfer of nine different investigating officers (IOs) and a delay in getting the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) report.
In 2016, the cyber crime wing of CID registered a criminal case against a 34-year-old man for uploading objectionable content against a woman online. He was arrested and when produced in court, the magistrate granted him bail.
After being inactive till 2023, the CID filed a chargesheet in the concerned trial court along with a petition for condonation of delay. The trial court dismissed the CID’s petition in April this year.
When the CID appealed against the lower court’s order, the sessions judge also dismissed it on Wednesday, saying it was an ‘inordinate delay.’ “In the police department, the transfer of the police officer is a routine matter and cannot be a ground for filing the chargesheet after an enormous delay of eight years. It is the settled legal proposition that a chargesheet can be filed even without the FSL report, and the prosecution would be at liberty to file the FSL report or any other document at any stage of the case,” the sessions judge pointed out.
In the present case, the chargesheet should ideally be filed within three years from the date of the offence. “The reasons given by the investigating agency for the delay of eight years in filing the chargesheet do not appear to be reasonable and convincing,” the court said.
In its review petition before the sessions court, the CID had earlier contended that “a total of nine investigating officers were transferred and the FSL report was received belatedly and hence the chargesheet could not be filed. There is sufficient material against the accused for the offence under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act, 2008 and 509 of the IPC. There was no negligence on the part of the state and the delay is neither wanted nor intentional.”
Claiming that exercising a speedy trial was his fundamental right, the accused, who is now in business, challenged the agency’s justification and urged the court not to accept the CID’s plea on the ground of inordinate delay.
The undue delay in filing the FIR in a cybercrime case led the accused to give up his dream of going to the US.
“My client wanted to go to the US for better opportunities. Since there was an inordinate delay in filing the chargesheet, he had to give up his dream,” the accused’s lawyer KVS Sreedhar told TOI.
