“Mr Salve, this should not be the unending story,” the bench said and raised the issue of witness protection saying that the SIT is best suited 'to identify those who are the most vulnerable witnesses or who can be browbeaten tomorrow.influenced.' They may not be needed for interrogation here,” Salve said. “I am given to understand that the statements have been recorded and a lot of videos have been received and they all have been sent to forensic labs and once they (reports) come, it will be pretty clear. The state counsel said that the accused were interrogated in the police custody for three days before being sent to jail. What is the situation in this case,” it said. There are situations where the police demand the custody of the accused and the court declines and send the accused to judicial custody and there are cases in which police says that the accused is no longer required in police custody and therefore, the court has no choice but to send the accused to police custody. What is the situation in this case? We just want the facts to be clarified. “They were in police custody and as you did not seek their police remand so they were sent to judicial custody. What happened to the remaining six accused, the bench asked adding, “Did you apply to seek their police custody or they were straightway sent to judicial custody”. “Total 10 accused have been arrested and out of them, four are in police custody and the remaining six have been sent to jail in judicial custody,” the lawyer said. Because, until or unless they are interrogated you may not get any information,” the bench asked. “Today, how many of them are in judicial custody and how many of them are in police custody. The bench said it was asking questions about the first FIR and sought to know the number of accused and their status in the probe. In the lynching case, the probe is 'little difficult' as who did what is difficult to ascertain given the big crowd of farmers, he said. He said there were two crimes and in the first one, the accused drove into the farmers and in the second FIR, three of the accused, who drove into the farmers, were lynched. The process is going on my lordships,” Salve said, adding that earlier the concern was that it appeared that police were going “little soft on the accused and now they all have been arrested and now everybody is in jail.” Why have you not recorded the statements of other witnesses under 164.”
It said, “Mr Salve, you said that you (police) have examined 44 witnesses and out of them, four witnesses' statements have been recorded under section 164 (before a judicial magistrate) of CrPC. It listed the next hearing on October 26.
“No that was not required and we have just received it now.we never said anything about sealed covers,” the bench said while declining the request to hear the matter on Friday. Senior advocate Harish Salve, who appeared along with advocate Garima Prasad for the state government, said the status report has been filed in a sealed cover on Wednesday because of the impression that it was for the perusal of the court only. The bench raised the issue of filing of status report on the day of hearing with the CJI observing, “we waited till 1 am last night for any filing. Ten people, including Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra's son Ashish Mishra, have been arrested so far in connection with the case. The apex court, hearing a matter about the October 3 violence in Lakhimpur Kheri in which eight persons including four farmers were killed during a farmers' protest, was told by the state government that statements of four out of the 44 witnesses have been recorded by the judicial magistrate.
Statements under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure are recorded before a judicial magistrate and they have evidentiary value. That is the most important thing.protection to the victims as well as the witnesses,” said the bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli. “Please ask them to immediately take steps to record section 164 statements. “We think you are dragging your feet, please dispel that impression,” observed the top court, adding that the probe should not be an 'unending story' and red-flagged the issue of non-recording of statements of nearly 40 prosecution witnesses, of the total 44, before judicial magistrates under section 164 of the CrPC. IMAGE: SIT attempts to recreate the sequence of events leading to the incident in Uttar Pradesh’s Tikonia village as part of their ongoing investigation, in Lakhimpur Kheri, on October 14, 2021.