Eleven years after two dogs were mercilessly killed by three men by tying and stabbing them, the sessions court came to the rescue of the prosecution, which challenged the magistrate’s order of refusing to allow the production of the crime’s CCTV footage.
The case was on the verge of collapse as the investigating officer (IO) had failed to cite the footage as evidence and the magistrate had also rejected the prosecution’s plea for its production. According to the complainant, a resident of the Chembur camp, the brutal crime took place on May 25, 2013. Claiming that he used to feed one of the dogs, the man alleged that he saw the trio – Shyam Rafkya, Sunny Lokhande and Vikku Waghri – dragging a stray dog with a rope tied to it. The complainant said that when he confronted them, one of them said the dog always used to bark at them so they decided to hit him.
He further said that a while later, he saw dogs lying dead near the dustbin, adding that the carcasses had signs of severe beating. The CCTV camera mounted outside the man’s house reportedly captured the trio while beating the dogs to death. However, the police didn’t cite the footage as evidence in the chargesheet. Not to mention, the cops managed to examine just two witnesses in the last 11 years.
In the meanwhile, the prosecution filed an application, seeking the submission of the CCTV footage. The magistrate, however, rejected the plea on June 10, 2023, after which the prosecution moved the sessions court. Accepting the plea, the judge noted that though the IO had mentioned about the CD containing the CCTV footage in panchnama, the same was not inadvertently deposited in the court. “Therefore, the first informant cannot be made to suffer for the IO’s fault of not making the CD’s mention in the seizure column and not filing the same along with the chargesheet,” the sessions court said. The trial court committed an error by not allowing the prosecution to bring forth the CD, it added.
