The Delhi high court on Monday dismissed, with costs of ₹ 25,000, a petition filed by National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) paper leak accused Dhananjay Nivrutti Lokhande challenging his arrest and seeking immediate release on the ground that he was not supplied a copy of the arrest memo.
Court Dismisses Petition in NEET-UG Examination Case
A 25-year-old named Lokhande was arrested on May 13 in connection with alleged irregularities in the NEET-UG examination. The court has dismissed a petition related to this case, labeling it as an abuse of the legal process. The ruling stated, “This is absolutely meritless. Accordingly, we dismiss the same with a cost of ₹ 25,000 to be submitted with the advocates’ welfare fund.”
This was after Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special public prosecutor Premtosh Kumar Mishra submitted that the grounds of arrest were communicated to Lokhande after his arrest and that the information was also conveyed telephonically. The trial court held that the arrest memo would fall within the category of unrelied documents, for which an accused is not entitled to a copy. It further observed that whether a copy of the arrest memo had been furnished to Lokhande was a matter to be determined during the trial.
Lokhande approached the high court after the trial court, on August 22, rejected his plea seeking a copy of his arrest memo. “There are no grounds of arrest, no reasons of arrest, no record of the date, time and place of arrest as such, no record of communication of the grounds to the Petitioner, no intimation to any relative or friend under section 48 BNSS [Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita], no declaration of rights, and no offer of medical examination. 9 Shubham Madhukar Khairnar; the column ‘By whom personal search conducted’ is blank,” the petition said.
He claimed that the only document in the entire chargesheet record relating to his arrest was a two-page “Personal Search Memo” dated May 13. The memo that does exist records the Petitioner Dhananjay Nivrutti Lokhande as the son of “Madhukar Raghunath Khairar”, who is, per the chargesheet itself, the father of co-accused No.
In his petition before the high court, Lokhande contended that his arrest was illegal in the absence of an arrest memo.
