Supreme Court: The bench of MR Shah and MM Sundresh, JJ has issued notice returnable on 25.11.2022 in the case relating to the alleged assault of one Anant Karmuse.
It has been alleged that on April 5, 2020, Karmuse was taken to the then Cabinet Minister, Jitender Awhad’s bungalow on his instructions, where he was beaten with bamboos, fibre sticks, belts and iron rods by NCP workers in the presence of two police constables and Awhad, for uploading a viral picture of Awhad, criticizing his act of ridiculing the Prime Minister on his Facebook account.
Consequently, an FIR was registered under Sections 365, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 324, and 506 (2) IPC against Awhad. However, neither his nor the names of his aids involved were included in the FIR. Later, an FIR was lodged under Sections 292 IPC and Section 66(E) of the Information and Technology Act against Karmuse by one of the close aids of Awhad, allegedly, with the sole purpose to pressurize him to withdraw his compliant.
One and half years later, on 14.10.2021, a supplementary chargesheet was filed where Awhad’s name was added and he was thereafter arrested. He was, however, released on the same date.
It was further sumitted that Police has deliberately omitted several material pieces of evidences and did not collect and preserve the CDRs and SDRs of the concerned persons. Hence, alleging that the people involved in the said FIR are the people in power and hold influential posts, it has been prayed that the matter be transferred to CBI for fair and impartial investigation in the matter.
[Anant Thanur Karmuse v. State of Maharashtra, Special Leave to Appeal (Crl.) No(s). 9906/2022, order dated 21.10.2022]
For Anant Karmuse: Advocates Chirag Shah, Utsav Trivedi, Manini Roy, Himanshu Sachdeva and Aniket Pawar appeared