Bengaluru: The high court imposed a cost of Rs 2 lakh on a Bengaluru woman for abusing the process of law and suppressing facts in a habeas corpus petition.A division bench of Justices Anu Sivaraman and Rajesh Rai K allocated Rs 1 lakh from the amount to Karnataka Legal Services Authority and the rest to Karnataka Police Benevolent Fund. The failure to deposit this amount would lead the registry to initiate contempt proceedings against the petitioner, the bench warned. The issue started when M Maheshwari, a resident of HAL II Stage, filed a habeas corpus petition alleging her son, M Kriplani, was missing since July 7. She withdrew the petition on July 24, stating that “certain erroneous statements have been made in the writ petition by oversight”.The woman then approached the director-general and inspector-general of police by filing a complaint dated July 29 to trace her son. As police failed to locate him, she again filed a habeas corpus petition. State public prosecutor II Vijayakumar Majage, appearing for police, submitted that cops traced Kriplani in Chennai on Aug 5 and produced him before the court on Aug 7. The public prosecutor, on Aug 18, filed a report stating the habeas corpus petition was filed by the woman solely to harass Indiranagar police and claimed the woman is a proxy set up by Kriplani. The prosecutor alleged Kriplani had abused the court’s process by filing the petition through his mother for personal vengeance against a neighbour and police personnel. Refuting these claims, the woman’s counsel cited Kriplani’s injury certificate, indicating that Indiranagar police had manhandled her son, resulting in grievous injuries. Denying these allegations, the prosecutor said at no point did police abuse or manhandle Kriplani, who was staying at Marriott Hotel, Semmanchari, Chennai. When police asked him to appear before court, he abused them. He is said to have assaulted Vinod Kumar, SI of Semmanchari police station, leading to a case being registered against him there.The division bench reviewed the materials on record and noted that Kriplani was in constant contact with his mother, sister and a friend. Additionally, one of his friends, Mahendra, communicated between July 28 and Aug 4 with counsel who’d filed the habeas corpus petition.The bench noted that Indiranagar police had conducted an inquiry into Kriplani’s complaint and issued an endorsement dated July 1. It appeared that dissatisfied with the outcome and seeking revenge against police, he, in collusion with his mother and others, filed the habeas corpus petition. The bench added there was no illegal detention of her son and that the petitioner-woman filed the habeas corpus petition with an ulterior motive by misusing the liberty granted under the Constitution. Such litigation shouldn’t be encouraged and should be deprecated by the court. Therefore, to curb frivolous and malicious invocation of habeas corpus and protect the judicial process, it is necessary to impose punitive costs on such litigants.
