Man's RTI queries get moving 11 year-old case of daughter's death

Eleven years after the death of a girl, her father's relentless quest of information under the RTI Act has led a court to issue summons to police to explain their failure in pursuing the matter and to the accused to answer charges of their criminal culpability.

Metropolitan Magistrate Sumit Dass has summoned a bakery shop owner and his help to answer charges in case of a death of a 24-year-old girl allegedly by food poisoning 11 years ago due to the stale sandwiches sold by them.

While summoning the owner of Singh Sons Bakery in city cantonment area and his help Jyoti, the court also asked the police to explain irregularities in the probe, including a belated move by police to seek the court's approval to cancel the FIR in the case.

The court summoned the bakery shop owner and his aide to answer the charges of causing death due to rash and negligent act of allegedly selling stale and noxious food item.

"In so far as section 304 A (causing death by rash and negligent act) of IPC, I am of the opinion at this juncture that there appears reasonable ground to justify an inference that the death of victim was directly attributable to the consumption of the sandwich which was unfit for human consumption which led to series of multiple complication and ultimately caused the death within two days of consumption thereof," the court said.

"In my opinion, Section 273 (selling noxious food) of the IPC is made out in the case in hand against the accused Singh Sons Bakery as the shopkeeper sold stale food articles which was noxious and not fit for human consumption," it added summoning the two accused on January 31, 2012.

The case dates back to September 4, 2000, when cantonment area resident Anil Kumar Mehto's son had bought from the bakery two sandwiches, which were consumed together by his four children, including Asha who died of food poisoning.

Appearing for Mehto, advocate Saurabh Sharma told the court that after consuming the sandwiches all four children complained of vomiting and high fever while Asha's condition worsened and she was hospitalised.

She was admitted to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital and was shifted to another hospital where she died of cardiac arrest three days later, the advocate told the court adding the police registered the FIR in the case after a delay of five days.

"I may note that Asha at the time of death was 24 years old and still she had such a severe infection which resulted in her untimely death," the court noted, while issuing summons to bakery shop owner and his assistant.

Quoting information gartered by the complainant through RTI Act, advocate Sharma told the court that the police had preserved both the viscera and the blood sample of the victim for forensic tests.

The forensic lab in its viscera examination report said there was no poisonous content in the food and denied it ever received blood sample from the police, said Sharma.

The advocate added on the basis of viscera examination report, the police quietly decided to cancel the FIR in the case and prepared a cancellation report for the same, but kept sitting on it till 2010 and gave it to the court only after it asked for it.

On court orders earlier, the police had launched a probe to unravel as to how the cancellation report kept pending with the police station for so long.

On the advocate's submissions, the court has asked police now to apprise it of its findings into the mystery of keeping the FIR cancellation report with it for over eight years without submitting it to the court.

The court also asked the SHO of Cantt police station to explain the mystery of victim's blood sample, which went missing.