Booked for transporting duplicate ROs (water purifiers), tempo driver Anwar Sheikh ran round attending court docket hearings for the following seven years to show his innocence.
A case was registered in opposition to the 46-year-old and two others initially below sections of dishonest and the Trademark Act. Later, three others had been additionally named as accused within the case. In March 2017, Anwar was arrested by the Faridabad Police and spent three days in jail earlier than he bought out on bail.
Final month, a Faridabad court docket acquitted all six individuals and got here down closely on the police. In its order, the court docket mentioned there’s not an iota of proof to show the alleged fee of offence because the proof on the file clearly means that no such incident ever occurred.
Talking to The Indian Specific, Sheikh, who lives in a one-bedroom home measuring 50 yards in West Delhi’s Vishnu Backyard, along with his spouse, five-year-old son, and mother-in-law, mentioned he had agreed to move the ROs for Rs 1,200. Sheikh mentioned he knew he was transporting ROs — however he didn’t know that they had been faux.
“I used to be employed and advised to take the tempo simply until the Badarpur border. However once I bought there, I used to be advised to cross the border and go 3 km additional for an additional Rs 300. Generally, I ponder what would have occurred had I not been grasping for the Rs 300… however we’re every day wagers so that quantity mattered,” mentioned Sheikh.
It was not simply Sheikh who went via the ordeal but additionally his household. His spouse Farhana (40) refuses to talk about it. “Jo tha bas khatam ho gaya (No matter it’s, it’s over now). I simply hope and pray it by no means occurs to anybody,” she mentioned.
For Anwar, the three days in jail had been the worst days of his life. “By no means in my life did I believe I’d be in jail. I cried each night time, the blankets had been so smelly that I’d take away my shirt and stuff it in my mouth so nobody may hear me cry. I’ve a liver situation and when my pal got here to provide me drugs, the cops requested him to drink it first earlier than handing it over to me,” he mentioned.
Throughout his battle to clear his identify, he offered his tempo and took the Metro to attend court docket hearings. Now, he has a brand new tempo — and a unique bond with the police. “Generally, I run into them whereas driving round… the cop who was there once I was within the police station is now within the Site visitors unit. I met him as soon as,” added Sheikh.
What the court docket mentioned
The accused within the case — Anwar, Laxmi Narayan, Mohd Intaj, Bijender Kumar, Naveen Kumar and Rajeev Singhal — had been acquitted on October 3.
The court docket order famous that the complainant within the case, Manoj, who had earlier claimed he acquired secret data relating to duplicate ROs, had failed within the cross-examination and even refused to determine the alleged accused. The complainant additionally talked about that no restoration was effected in his presence and claimed police had taken his signatures on a clean paper.
The court docket, in its order, mentioned, “Moreover, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to show the guilt of the accused… it isn’t for the accused to show its innocence.”
“It has additionally been indicated that when the vital hyperlink goes (as within the instantaneous case i.e. grave doubt concerning the identification of the accused, non-examination of impartial witnesses, and non-production of case property/lack of hyperlink proof, inconsistent medical proof in distinction to ocular proof and many others), the chain of circumstances will get snapped and the opposite circumstances can’t, in any method, set up the guilt of the accused past all affordable doubt,” the order added.
