Judge's car as ambulance: MP CM directs DGP to probe; asks if dacoity law on ABVP men justifiable

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav ordered a probe after two ABVP functionaries were arrested for snatching the car of a high court judge from its driver outside Gwalior railway station to shift an ailing train passenger to a hospital.

The chief minister has instructed the Director General of Police (DGP) to conduct a probe after the matter came to his notice, an official said on Saturday.

The DGP has been asked to look into whether the registration of a case under Indian Penal Code sections related to dacoity was justified because the students had no criminal background, he said.

”Considering the entire circumstances, it would be appropriate to take a suitable action after investigation. The decision to investigate this case has been taken,” Yadav said.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’s Gwalior secretary Himanshu Shrotriya (22) and deputy secretary Sukrit Sharma (24) were arrested on Monday under the MP Dakaiti Aur Vyapharan Prabhavit Kshetra Adhiniyam, an anti-dacoity law, police said. Earlier, speaking on the issue, Sandeep Vaishnav, the ABVP’s MP unit secretary, had defended the duo saying they were trying to help a man whose health condition was deteriorating rapidly and that they did not know the car belonged to a high court judge.

Some ABVP men, who were travelling from Delhi to Gwalior on a train, saw a passenger’s health becoming serious. They passed on the information to other ABVP functionaries at Gwalior station. The activists deboarded the sick man at Gwalior station, but no ambulance reached for his help for around 25 minutes, he said.

As the man’s health condition was deteriorating, the ABVP activists rushed him to a hospital in a car parked outside the station but he died, Vaishnav said. As per Gwalior’s Inderganj City Superintendent of Police Ashok Jadon, the deceased was identified as Ranjeet Singh (68), the vice-chancellor of a private university in Uttar Pradesh’s Jhansi. He died of cardiac failure according to a preliminary postmortem report, Jadon had said.

The ABVP is the students’ wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Earlier on Friday, former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had written to Madhya Pradesh High Court Chief Justice Ravi Malimath seeking forgiveness for two ABVP functionaries.

Their bail was rejected on Wednesday and they are in judicial custody at present.

In his letter written to Justice Malimath on Friday, Chouhan said, ”As it is a different sort of crime committed for a holy cause and done on humanitarian grounds for saving life, it is worth forgiving. The intention of Himanshu Shrotriya (22) and Sukrit Sharma (24) was not to commit a crime. So keeping in view their future they should be forgiven.” While denying them bail, a special court judge for dacoity cases, Sanjay Goyal, had observed that one seeks help with politeness and not with force.

The judge, citing the police diary in the incident, said an ambulance, which is the ideal vehicle for such purposes, had arrived to ferry the ailing man.