NEW DELHI: A Delhi court has dismissed a plea filed by four Gujarat Police officers accused of taking a minor boy from Delhi to Ahmedabad while searching for his father, observing that the policemen acted like “colonial overlords” and used the child as “bait” to force his father to surrender.Additional Sessions Judge Parveen Singh, in an order dated August 12, said the officers were tasked with locating the boy’s father, who was wanted in a criminal case, and had no authority to take the minor into custody and transport him across states, according to news agency PTI.“Their duty was to search for the accused who was the father of the minor and not to take the minor child in their custody and act like colonial overlords of the past and hang that minor child as a bait for his father to surrender before them.” the court said.The court was hearing a criminal revision petition filed by the four officers challenging a trial court’s orders taking cognisance of an offence of kidnapping and directing the framing of charges against them.According to the case, the complainant, the boy’s mother, alleged that on May 25, 2008, five to six Gujarat Police personnel in civil clothes arrived at her scrap shop in Delhi in search of her husband, who was an accused in a case. She alleged that the officers forcibly took her minor son from her custody and took him to Gujarat.The judgment noted allegations that the boy was confined, abused and beaten during the journey. The prosecution also relied on his statement recorded before a magistrate, in which he allegedly stated that he was kept in a police lock-up and subjected to torture.The officers contended that they were performing official duties while searching for an absconding accused and therefore could not be prosecuted without prior government sanction.Rejecting the contention, the court held that legal protection available to public servants applies only when the act in question has a reasonable connection with official duty.“It is not merely acting in official capacity that would give them protection but the act committed should also have a reasonable connection to that duty,” the court said.The court further observed that taking the minor from his mother’s custody and transporting him to Ahmedabad in an effort to trace his father “can by no stretch of imagination” be treated as part of the officers’ official duties.The judge also noted that the revision petition was founded on “completely incorrect facts”, including a claim that cognisance had been taken only in 2026. Court records showed that cognisance in the case was actually taken in 2010.Dismissing the revision petition, the court upheld the trial court’s orders taking cognisance of the offence and framing charges against the officers under provisions relating to kidnapping.
