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Bengaluru, Feb 14: In a major embarrassment to the police, the Karnataka High Court has termed as illegal the prohibitory orders imposed under Section 144 of CrPC by the City Police Commissioner in December 2019 in the light of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in Bengaluru.

The orders were passed “without application of mind” and without following due procedures, the court noted. Giving reasons for upholding the arguments of the petitioners that there was no application of mind by the Police Commissioner (Bhaskar Rao) before imposing restrictions, a division bench of the High Court said he had not recorded the reasons, except reproducing the contents of letters addressed to him by the Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCPs). 

The state government had contended that prohibitory orders were passed based on reports submitted by the DCPs who expressed apprehension about anti-social elements creating law and order problems and damaging public property by taking advantage of the anti-CAA protests.  

The High Court bench said the Police Commissioner should have conducted inquiry as stated by the Supreme Court to check the reasons cited by the DCPs who submitted identical reports. Except for this, there were no facts laid out by the Police Commissioner, the court said.

“There is complete absence of reasons. If the order indicated that the Police Commissioner was satisfied by the apprehension of DCPs, it would have been another matter,” it said.  

“The apex court has held that it must record the reasons for imposition of restrictions and there has to be a formation of opinion by the district magistrate. Only then can  the extraordinary powers conferred on the district magistrate can be exercised. This procedure was not followed. Hence, exercise of power under Section 144 by the commissioner, as district magistrate, was not at all legal”, the bench said. 

“We hold that the order dated December 18, 2019 is illegal and cannot stand judicial scrutiny in terms of the apex court’s orders in the Ramlila Maidan case and Anuradha Bhasin case,” the HC bench said while upholding the arguments of Prof Ravivarma Kumar, who appeared for some of the petitioners.   

Partly allowing a batch of public interest petitions questioning the imposition of prohibitory orders and cancelling the permission granted for protesters in the city, the bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Hemant Chandangoudar observed that, unfortunately, in the present case, there was no indication of application of mind in passing prohibitory orders.

The bench said the observation was confined to this order only and it cannot be applicable in general. If there is a similar situation (necessitating imposition of restrictions), the state is not helpless, the court said.

Bengaluru, Jul 10: With 2,313 more people testing positive for coronavirus in Karnataka in the last 24 hours, its overall tally of patients rose to 33,418 on Friday, health officials said.

57 patients died in Karnataka in the last 24 hours, with majority (27) of them from Bengaluru, taking the state''s death toll to 543, the officials added.

Bengaluru accounted for 1,447 or 63 per cent of the new COVID-19 cases, spiking its tally to 15,329, out of which 11,687 are active cases.

The city alone accounts for 46 per cent of all the cases in the state.

As many as 45 deaths had Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) as a common symptom.

Among the new cases, excluding Bengaluru, Dakshina Kannada accounted for 139 infections, followed by Vijayapura (89), Ballari (66), Kalaburagi (58), Yadgir and Mysuru (51 each) among others.

On Friday, a record 1,003 patients got discharged, 601 of them in Bengaluru alone with the total number of discharges rising up to 13,836.

Until now, Karnataka has tested 7.79 lakh samples for Covid, out of which 7.28 lakh tested negative.

Despite the record number of discharges, patients in ICU rose to 472.

Of the 33,418 cases, 19,035 are active in the state.

Kasaragod, Jul 8: The meeting of Kasaragod district-level corona control core committee has resolved to make pass mandatory for vehicles to bring vegetables and fruits to Kasaragod from Dakshina Kannada and other parts of Karnataka.

Pass will be issued by RTO. Employees, including the driver of the vehicle, must visit the nearest primary health facility once in seven days and undergo a health check and submit a medical officer's certificate.

District Collector Dr D Sajith Babu, who presided over the meeting, said that only those vegetable and fruit vehicles that produce medical officer's certificate and RTO's passes will be allowed to cross the border.

Meeting, the RTO has decided to convene an emergency meeting of vegetable and fruit merchants.