New Delhi: The Supreme Court has admitted the delay caused by the High Court and said ‘Sorry’ to litigants. The Contradictory judgments pronounced by two different benches of High Court on same day, two different but related cases have caused 13 years delay.
Shyam Lata, a resident of Roorkee in Uttarakhand, in 2013 made a written complaint to the SSP of Haridwar alleging that her two brothers forged documents and signatures and claimed she had give her shop on rent to them. As a follow up a criminal case was lodged against her brothers alleging that they had prepared a fictitious rent receipt by forging the woman’s signatures.
One of her brothers also filed a civil suit seeking to restrain her from evicting him from the premises. On the basis of forged rent receipt he claimed himself as a tenant of the Shop.
Now the Court had two appeals before it. In one verdict, the high court modified the sessions court order and directed that the Investigating officer should be present before the civil court along with a handwriting expert on a fixed date to take photographs of the disputes as well as specimen signatures of the woman. Virtually, this order allowed the police to proceed further in the investigation. But in the second verdict, the High Court set aside the order of judicial magistrate which directed further probe by the Police.
The Supreme Court had said that it is undoubtful that the delay has been caused to two contradictory orders passed by the High Court. It said that high court’s first verdict allowing the handwriting expert to take picture of signatures would in “natural corollary” mean that further investigation will be carried out. The second verdict was not required at all.