ACP Pradeep Mairale
THE ongoing hearing of a case in the Bombay High Court, Justice Prithviraj Chavan expressed his displeasure over Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Sakinaka division Pradeep Mairale for not maintaining a case diary as mandated in law. The appeal for anticipatory bail application on the FIR filed at Sakinaka Police Station under the Atrocity Act is being heard. ACP Pradeep Mairale is the investigating officer in this case.
Appeal for anticipatory bail application has been filed by noted advocates Atal Bihari Dubey and Amit Rane. During the hearing at Bombay High Court on February 3, Justice Prithviraj Chavan found that the case diary presented by investigating officer ACP Pradeep Mairal is not in accordance with Section 172 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The court said in its order, “There have been repeated directions to maintain the case diary in the prescribed manner. Diary produced today is in the form of loose sheets filed together from where pages can be easily inserted or removed. Be that as it may.” Earlier The Bombay High Court has expressed its “sheer anguish” over repeated instances wherein police officials do not maintain their case diaries as mandated in law despite directives issued by the Maharashtra Director General of Police (DGP) to all police stations on the issue.
In a matter earlier the bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Neela Gokhale had noted that in spite of various orders of the court and even a circular being issued by the DGP on February 12, 2024, policemen were not maintaining case diaries as they should be maintained. The court had seized a file which was purportedly a case diary of a FIR registered with Mumbai police and directed it to be forwarded to the DGP for appropriate action. “It appears to us that the investigating officers are either ignorant of the circular or are feigning ignorance to it. We can understand that the Investigating Officers may not be aware of the provisions of Criminal Procedure Code, but we cannot accept a situation where the police officers are not aware of the circulars issued by the DGP, who is the head of their institution, We are making these observations out of sheer anguish, since we have repeatedly come across such blatant contraventions of the circulars issued by the DGP as well as other statutory requirements,” the bench said.
A case diary is a record of daily investigation progress into a case. Under the provision of Section 172 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), a police officer conducting an investigation is required to maintain a record of an investigation done on each day in a particular case. The case diary, according to rules, cannot be loose sheets of paper but a proper bound volume, paginated and should not contain any other irrelevant documents. Despite repeated instructions from the High Court and circulars issued by the DGP office, investigating officer ACP Pradeep Mairale has been found violating the High Court orders and the circulars of the DGP office.
According to sources, Pradeep Marale keeps threatening people that he was a GST officer in the past and he is more knowledgeable than a advocate. Rashtriya Lok Dal Mumbai Legal Cell President Advocate Bharat Kothari has complained to DGP Rashmi Shukla and Advocate General of Maharashtra Birendra Saraf and demanded legal action against ACP Pradeep Mairale.