Dating App Fraud Delhi Court Finds Victim Judge Probe Officer Evasive

expressing profound anguish over the conduct of the accused, the victim, and the investigating officer.

Delhi Police had registered an e-FIR under sections 308 (extortion), 318(4) cheating, 319 (cheating by personation) and 340 (using a forged document or electronic record as genuine) against Deepak Vats on the complaint of judicial officer’s maid Diksha Devi.

Chowdhary, a member of the Haryana superior judicial service, is presently posted as additional district and sessions judge, fast track special court for trying offences under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act at Narnaul.

Dismissing the bail plea of the accused, Deepak Vats, additional sessions judge (ASJ), New Delhi (Patiala House Courts) Saurabh Partap Singh Laler in a June 9 order said this court is constrained to express its profound anguish at the state of the record in the present proceedings.

“A matter that ought to be relatively straightforward — a cyber fraud case with a clear digital money trail — has been complicated, obfuscated, and rendered murky by the conduct of all three protagonists: the accused, the victim, and the investigating officer. Each, for their own reasons, appears to be less than fully forthcoming with the court, and the casualty is the truth that it is this Court’s function to ascertain,’’ the ASJ said.

The court said that the accused Deepak Vats is playing hide and seek by filing only those portions of the electronic record that he calculates are favourable to him and carefully withholding everything that might be adverse.

Complaint filed in misleading manner: Court

“A judicial officer — a person who is herself entrusted with the solemn duty of dispensing justice, of upholding truth before the law, and of expecting others who appear before her to present the complete facts — has chosen to approach this court obliquely, through her maid’s name, rather than coming forward herself,’’ the ASJ said.

However, the court acknowledged the profound personal embarrassment and professional sensitivity that a judicial officer would have felt upon discovering that she has been ensnared in a honey trap.

“The vulnerability of a person in that situation invites understanding, not condemnation. However, the officer’s personal discomfort cannot be permitted to compromise the integrity of a criminal investigation. A complaint filed in an incomplete or misleading manner, designed to protect the victim’s identity at the cost of obscuring the facts, creates exactly the kind of evidentiary confusion that is now before this court,’’ the judge said.

‘A judge should know that path to justice requires candour’

“Until she does so, the prosecution case will remain partially constructed and will continue to invite the very challenges the accused is raising,’’ the ASJ said.

The court also said the accused Deepak Vats filed only those messages of the victim before the court that spoke of intimacy and voluntary payments. Vats did not file messages sent to the victim that might reveal inducement, coercion, false promises, or manipulation, the court said.

“He has not filed the e-cash vouchers, the exchanger’s receipts, or the gaming application records. He has refused to cooperate with the forensic examination of his phone. An accused who claims innocence and yet withholds selective evidence is not helping himself or this court,” the ASJ said

Court expresses displeasure over cop’s conduct

The ASJ said that the IOs reluctance to aggressively collect electronic evidence from the victim and complainant possibly stemmed from a hesitation to press a judicial officer in a sensitive personal matter but such an approach is misplaced.

“Status of the victim as a judicial officer should, if anything, be a reason for greater diligence, not lesser — because the integrity of the judicial system demands that the full truth emerge from a matter that involves one of its own officers,” the ASJ said.

Hitender Rao is Senior Associate Editor covering the state of Haryana. A journalist with over two decades of experience, he writes on politics, economy, migration and legal affairs with a focus on investigative journalism.Read More