MUMBAI: The Bombay HC has upheld a Sept 2022 order of a special trial court that had directed framing of murder charge against eight police officers for the death of 25-year-old Agnello Valdaris from alleged torture while in custody of Wadala railway police 12 years ago. “Prima facie it appears that… Agnello was severely beaten up in illegal police custody,” observed a division bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Shyam Chandak in the judgment made available Tuesday, reports Swati Deshpande.“Rarely in cases of police torture or custodial death, direct ocular evidence is available of the complicity of the police personnel, who alone can only explain the circumstances in which a person in their custody died,” the HC said.“The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them,” said Justice Chandak, who authored the judgment, quoting author Lois Bujold.City youth Agnello Valdaris “died in circumstances otherwise than normal while he was in police custody”, the Bombay high court said, paving way for the trial in the 2014 case to start against eight Mumbai police officers, but they are expected to appeal before the Supreme Court. The petition before HC filed by the eight police officers challenging the sessions court order to try them for murder involved a “serious controversy” – whether Agnello’s death was “homicidal or accidental”. Agnello was 25 when he died in April 2014, after alleged police torture for three days at Wadala railway police station, his father Leonard Valdaris contended. Police contended Agnello was picked up with three others in an alleged robbery complaint and when being taken for a medical exam, suddenly forced an escape and fled but got hit by a running train and later died. Framing of charges is the last pretrial step. On Dec 19, 2020, the SC had directed the trial court to examine all aspects when framing charge. Agnello was for 24 hours illegally detained and then tortured, including alleged sexual abuse, to such an extent that he ran towards a moving train to save himself, said his father’s counsel Yug Chaudhry. For the accused police, counsel Rizwan Merchant said there is absolutely no evidence to try them for murder, a fact he said the trial court missed. The HC held that the sessions court was right in invoking a murder charge for trial of the policemen. The Sept 2022 trial court order was challenged and a single judge, Justice Amit Borkar, in Dec 2022 agreed that murder charge was attracted. But in 2023, another single-judge bench of Justice Bharati Dangre had set aside the trial court order, saying cops cannot be tried for murder based on an “inference”, observing a lacuna in investigation and that Agnello’s death can’t be concluded from medical evidence as resulting from injuries during custody. The HC, post the SC order, has now said there was no justifiable reason for “suspicious movement of Agnello” by the police on April 18, 2014 following his medical complaint. The HC also said the post-mortem report noted several injuries on Agnello’s body about 12 hours before his death and some were 24 to 96 hours old. The HC said, “Since, the post-mortem report was recorded by the team of expert medical officers, the police opinion in the inquest panchanama cannot prevail over that of experts’ opinion” and held that “strong suspicion” against the accused can pave way to frame charges because at this stage the court is not to see if there is strong evidence for conviction, even though ‘strong suspicion’ cannot replace proof during trial.
