Man let off as shirt has no pocket to hold ‘stolen cellphone’

THE lack of a front shirt pocket has led to the acquittal of an Uttam Nagar resident, charged by the police with two cases of snatchings in Dwarka.

According to the police, the accused, Pramod Kumar, was arrested at Dwarka’s Sector 6 market last week on “suspicion”. The police claim that they found a stolen mobile phone in Kumar’s front shirt pocket, and produced him before the court the next day. Only to be told that the shirt Kumar was wearing had no pockets at all.

When Metropolitan Magistrate Sunil Choudhary questioned the police whether Kumar was arrested in the same shirt that he was wearing in court, the investigating officer (IO) affirmed it was so. Then, asked by the court whether he was wearing the same set of clothes that he was arrested in the previous day, Kumar said, “Sir, they are the same clothes.”

He also said that the police did not give him any food, so “will they give me clothes?”

Metropolitan Magistrate Choudhary said, “The accused has been falsely implicated in the matter, and (is) accordingly released.”

The police framed charges against Kumar in another case of purse snatching in Dwarka during his one-day custody. The police also submitted a disclosure statement in the court. In it, Kumar admitted to stealing the cellphone from Sector 6 market and later snatching a woman’s purse.

Dismissing both cases, the court pulled up police for shoddy and contradictory submissions. A copy of the notice has also been sent to police chief K K Paul “for necessary compliance under intimation to this court”.

- ExpressIndia

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