SHILLONG: The High Court of Meghalaya has granted interim bail to the headman, Daniel Khongsit and the secretary, Donstan Khonglah of Bakur village, Dawki, West Jaintia Hills who were allegedly involved in the assault and tonsuring of a woman recently.
The interim bail is till the next date of hearing on July 24.
Upon hearing the counsels for both the parties on Thursday and without going into the merit of the case on the contention and submission of the senior counsel for the petitioners for which the case diary is to be perused to know the progress and status of the investigation, the Judge, W Diengdoh, said that the court is inclined to call for the status report and case diary before proceeding further.
Considering the submission of the parties, the court asked the investigation officer to file the latest status report besides producing the case diary during the next date of hearing.
Earlier, during the hearing on Thursday, the senior counsel, N Dutta along with P Nongbri, counsel on behalf of the petitioners, have pointed out that though the court had on June 30 rejected the bail plea, in due course, the petitioners came to be in possession of some relevant and vital information particularly by way of RTI application from the concerned authorities and also from facts which are now under public domain, which would be considered new in the case.
Dutta has submitted that the IO had not carried out the investigation in a fair manner, whereby exculpatory evidence concerning the petitioners were not placed before the court. The role of the complainant in Dawki police station case has been cited by the senior counsel to show that the complainant had acted in a vengeful manner while filing the complaint on June 4 allegedly for the incident which occurred on May 31 claiming that she was assaulted and her head was shaved, but apparently on June 2, she had visited the doctor at Dawki PHC who has stated that at the time of examination, there were no injuries on her body and she was diagnosed only for general weakness for which medicine was prescribed for her. The doctor had also stated that he does not remember whether her hair was shaved.