NEW DELHI: The supreme Court on Friday ordered a special court for the trial of former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in the St. Kitts and Lukhabhai Pathak ‘cases and instructed lower courts not to lift the Special Protection Group (SPG) cover in court or any other custody. This, the court said, was necessary in view of threat ions to the Congress leader.

| Then, the court said, Mr. Rao “would continue to be exempted from personal appearance. “It (SPC cover) goes with the person of the protected as a shadow would to a man… The protected is a protected all the time, as long as he keeps breathing for a period of ten years, from the date he demits ‘office of the Prime Minister”, Justice Madanmohan Punchhi and Justice K. Thomas said.

The 25page judgment came on a special leave petition by the Delhi police commissioner and the SPG director against the High Court’s rejection of their plea for shifting the trial venue from the crowded Tis Hazan court. The judges directed the High Court to consider the plea afresh on the basis of a list_ of places for setting up the special _ court in the New Delhi VIP security zone. The list shall be furnished by the police and the SPG the court said. Following the apex “court directive, Delhi Chief Met Topolitan Magistrate Prem Kumar exempted Mr. Rao from personal appearance in his court and also deferred the hearing on his bail application till that date in the St. Kitts forgery case. Describing the bail application filed by Mr. Rao as “premature”, Mr. Kumar said the application could have been filed on October 14 as the High Court had granted interim bail to Mr. Rao till then.

In his two page order, Mr. Kumar, who heard Mr. Rao’s Counsel Mr. R.K. Anand and Mr. Khan for nearly 15 minutes, said he had to follow the High Court order in letter and spirit. Mr. Anand also informed the lower court about the Supreme Court judgment and argued that the exemption must be extended in this case also. The apex court bench said it was exempting Mr. Rao from appearing fully conscious of the fact that his appearance lime and time again, would put a lot of people to inconvenience, if it was insisted upon that like any other criminal, he too should appear in court in such conditions. Should the worst happen, the protected alone will not depart from the world as others too might go with him. The concerns of the appellant are therefore justified,’”” the court observed. Upon timing the High Court order against the shifting of the trial venue, the judges said it should be realized that security to a former Premier was qualitatively far above the ordinary security extended to other persons in authority before or after retirement from public service.

The security available in the courts and other places of governance can be no match or substitute to the statutory security affordable to a former Prime Minister, who under the SPG Act, along with his immediate family members forms a distinct group, the court said. In view of the special nature of the Act, only five important persons were covered under it. They were the Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda and his predecessors VP Singh, Chandra Shekar, PV Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee. The SPG. Act and a special force were set up after the assassination of former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the judges said. The will of the Parliament reflected in the Act was “bold, unequivocal, comprehensive and wide in nature nowhere permitting withdrawal, limiting or proscribing of the proximate security statutorily conferred on the protected,”’ the bench added. The judges also noted that the SPG cover was extended to former Prime Ministers and their family on the recommendations of the Justice US Verma Commission which went into the lapses in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination.

Article extracted from this publication >>  October 16, 1996