Kolkata: The division bench of Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam and Justice Bivas Pattanayak directed retired IPS Pankaj Datta to move the first vacation bench.
The petitioner had moved the appeal petition after the single bench denied the protective cover to the retired IPS officer who had been booked under sections of the BNNS for his ‘Sonagachhi’ barb.
The retired IPS officer had made a reference to Sonagachhi while speaking on the rape and murder incident at the R G Kar Hospital at the Derozio Auditorium of Presidency University. “Such a horrific and barbaric incident happening at R G Kar, can anybody imagine this? Had it happened in Sonagachhi, we would have understood but this happening in a hospital means there’s something terribly wrong,” the retired IPS had said.
An FIR was lodged against the retired IPS officer at the Burtolla police station on the ground that the accused had insulted sex workers residing in the area.
“How could he say so?” asked Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj earlier on Thursday while the counsel for the petitioner Jayanta Narayan Chatterjee pleaded that Datta was only giving an instance of unsafe places in the city and had no intention to cast aspersion on the sex workers living there.
Justice Bharadwaj didn’t buy the petitioner’s plea that had used Sonagachi to describe an unsafe place in the city.