Bulandshahr : Two advocates who were accused of abusing, assaulting and threatening to kill a magistrate inside a courtroom during a 1992 vehicle-release hearing have been acquitted, with the court holding that the prosecution “failed to produce convincing evidence”. A third accused advocate died during pendency of the trial.
The incident took place on June 24, 1992, when the then-judicial magistrate at Khurja, Ashok Kumar Verma, lodged a police complaint alleging that three local advocates — Vedpal Raghav, Premshankar Chauhan and Vijay Raghav — entered his courtroom while he was hearing a vehicle-release application and disrupted the proceedings.
Charges were framed in 2004, but the prosecution failed to produce witnesses despite repeated opportunities and warnings, leaving the court with no substantive evidence on which to sustain the charges, the court said. Verma alleged that the advocates used abusive and objectionable language, tore an application from the judicial record and took it away. He also accused them of climbing onto the judge’s dais and behaving indecently, before entering the presiding officer’s chamber, where they assaulted him and threatened to kill him. The trial dragged on for decades.
On Saturday, the court of additional civil judge Monika Kalra acquitted Vedpal Raghav and Premshankar Chauhan, holding that the prosecution had “failed to establish the charges beyond reasonable doubt”. The court said the prosecution’s evidence was “particularly weak” and that during the 34-year-long proceedings, it produced only one witness – Gyan Singh, a court official – who did not support the prosecution’s case and denied witnessing any abuse, assault or tearing of judicial documents. Citing Supreme Court precedents, the court observed that “the burden in a criminal trial rests on the prosecution to prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt”. In the absence of reliable independent evidence or other material establishing the allegations, the accused were entitled to the benefit of doubt, the court said, ordering that the case records be consigned to the record room.