Punjab HC quashes 35-year-old enforced disappearance case against CRPF officer in Kashmir

August 4, 2025 by News Desk

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed a decades-old criminal case against former CRPF Deputy Superintendent of Police Ajay Kumar Pandey, calling the sanction for his prosecution “factually flawed” and unsupported by any fresh evidence.

Justice Vinod S Bhardwaj, who delivered the judgment, observed that Pandey had been wrongly implicated and that there was “no cogent and objective material” pointing to his involvement in the alleged crime. “There is no prima facie evidence that a raid was ever conducted by the petitioner,” Justice Bhardwaj noted in the ruling, adding that prosecution sanctions are not a “mere formality” but a vital safeguard to protect public officials from arbitrary and baseless charges.

The case dates back to 1990, when an FIR was registered at Pattan police station in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir under Sections 364 and 344 of the then-applicable Ranbir Penal Code—relating to kidnapping with intent to murder and wrongful confinement beyond 10 days.

The complaint, filed by local resident Peerzada Ghulam Mohammad, alleged that his son, Peer Mohammad Shafi, had been taken away by CRPF personnel during anti-militancy operations and was never seen again. For years, the case saw no movement.

It was only in 2007, 17 years after the incident, that the Jammu Kashmir government, under Ghulam Nabi Azad, approached the Ministry of Home Affairs for sanction to prosecute Pandey. The MHA granted the approval in 2010 to Omar Abdullah government, and a follow-up order was issued in 2011, over two decades after the alleged disappearance.

Calling this delay “unjustifiable,” the court cited Supreme Court precedent in Mahendra Lal Das v. State of Bihar (2002), where an FIR was quashed due to a delay of 13 to 15 years. “The present case involves a gap of 35 years,” the bench noted, underlining the absence of new evidence or grounds that could warrant a trial.

Pandey had challenged the prosecution sanction orders of 2010 and 2011, arguing that they were arbitrary and lacked any fresh findings. His counsel highlighted that a 1992 Court of Inquiry by the CRPF’s 46th Battalion had already cleared him of wrongdoing, and that his unit was not even deployed in the area where the alleged raid occurred. “He had cooperated with every investigation,” his lawyer said.

The court agreed, sharply criticising the manner in which the sanction was approved. “The sanctioning authority ignored material that was already on record and failed to cite any new developments. Such oversight cannot be the basis of prosecuting a public servant after three and a half decades,” the judge said.

Rejecting the prosecution’s claim that only a full trial could bring out the truth, the court warned against allowing malicious and stale complaints to linger indefinitely. “Such an approach would render the entire process of sanction meaningless and leave officials defenseless,” Justice Bhardwaj ruled.