In a significant judgment, the Delhi High Court has ordered the Gujarat Police to compensate a woman and her 13-year-old son whom officials of the Ahmedabad City Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) had “abducted” from Delhi and kept in their custody last year.

The court asked the police to pay a compensation of Rs 2.70 lakh while acting on a petition filed by the mother of the boy. The petitioner, identified as Tasleema, had filed the ‘habeas corpus’ writ in the High Court and sought compensation for the violation of her son’s personal liberty. The family belongs to Bangladesh.

As per the details of the case, the boy was picked up by a team of DCB, led by Sub-Inspector J M Bharwad, on May 25, 2008, when he was alone at his father’s scrap shop in Seelampur area of Delhi. They were looking for his father, Mohammed Azad, in connection with a criminal case registered with the Ellisbridge police station in Ahmedabad.

When Tasleema came to the shop, she was told about the incident by eyewitnesses. She lodged a complaint of abduction with the Seelampur police station against officials of the Gujarat Police. Subsequently, she filed the writ petition through her counsel, Nitya Ramakrishnan. The court ordered to produce the boy before it on June 2, 2008 and handed over his custody to his parents the same day.

Recently, the division bench of Justice B D Ahmed and Ajit Bharihoke hearing the plea, ordered the Gujarat government to pay compensation to the petitioner and her son. It also stated that the government is open to “fix the responsibilities for this infraction of constitutional rights and recover the same (compensation money) from those found delinquent”.

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