Haji Habib can barely talk but is a “threat to law”

SAHIM SALIM

RAMPUR, MAY 4

At 100, Haji Habib Ahmed is too frail to get up from bed but the Uttar Pradesh police see him as a “law and order threat”. Early this year, they booked him under 110G CrPC, a section that is reserved for habitual offenders but the label certainly doesn’t fit this resident of Camri in Rampur.

Habib is barely audible as he tries to articulate his trauma. “It was last year. My three sons had a fight with my daughter’s sons over some property. It was resolved but we came to know that my grandchildren had lodged a complaint in the Camri Police Station,” says Habib.

A case under Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) was registered against Habib, his sons Nisar Ahmed, Fazle Ahmed and Maqbool Ahmed in June last year. Nisar says he heard nothing from the police for six months. But in January this year, the Camri police informed him that he and his sons would have to be present in a city court to produce guarantors to give an undertaking that they would ensure their good conduct for two to three years, as required under 110G CrPC.

Habib was also asked to be present in court as he too had been booked—a difficult task for him since he recently suffered a fall and had to be given 15 stitches.

“Immediately after we received the notice, I went to the court with my father, but the District Magistrate was absent that day. Since then I have gone to the court five or six times, but nothing has come out of it,” says Habib’s son Nisar.

Earlier in April, at a tehsil meeting at Bilaspur, the Ahmeds presented their case before the Superintendent of Police, Ashok Jain. Taking serious note of the incident, he ordered an inquiry against the then Station Officer of Camri, Vinod Sharma.

Police officials said it was highly irresponsible on the part of SI Vinod Sharma to have booked the 100-year-old under the section 110G that is normally reserved for ‘habitual offenders’. Ahmed, they said, did not have a single case against him.

From father’s lap, boy marched off to magistrate

SANJAY SINGH

SULTANPUR, May 4 

When Chandrika Mallah, 45, went to the police station to lodge an FIR after he and his mother were beaten up allegedly by his neighbour’s men, he never imagined the trauma that would follow. Instead of registering the FIR, the police decided to teach him a lesson for entering the police station.They put Mallah’s 95-year-old mother Laxmi Devi and his four-year-old son Mukesh on their records as a “threat to peace” in the village and subsequently initiated proceedings under Section 110 of the CrPC against them this January.

Four months later, the police submitted a report before the SDM, Haliyapur, calling members of Mallah’s family—except his mother—“habitual offenders” and requested the SDM to undertake a bond for their “good behaviour”. Proceedings under Section 110 of the CrPC are initiated against those who are considered to be “dangerous to the community”.

Mallah’s problems started on January 3 when he began building a wall around his house and ran into some opposition from his neighbour, Budhna Yadav. Later, Mallah alleges, he and his family were beaten up by one Vijau Singh. That was when he went to register an FIR.

Later, he and his brothers went to Chandigarh to find work as labourers. Mallah returned to his village on April 23 to celebrate the wedding of his nephew, only to find policemen dropping in, enquiring about his other family members and son Mukesh. When they saw the four-year-old Mukesh in his father’s lap, they were taken aback. “One of them said, arre isko kahan le jayenge (How can we take this boy before the magistrate)’,” says Mallah.

Mallah decided to go with his family to meet the magistrate in Haliyapur, who let them off without executing the bond. But Mallah’s difficulties have not ended. He claims some unidentified people forced his signature and also directed his other son Sunil to take on the name of Mukesh so that they can prove in court that Mukesh is not a minor. Sultanpur SP D.C. Mishra says they will remove Mukesh’s name from their records and investigate the case.

editor@expressindia.com

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