Delayed Police Probe, Struggle With Courts: How a Father's 8-year Search Led Him To Son's Killer

In June 2015, Gurugram’s Jitender Chaudhary’s son was killed in a car accident and the driver fled the accident site. 8 years later, the unfortunate father successfully chased down his son’s killer and brought them to justice.

Chaudhary’s search began from the accident site in Sector 57 near Railway Vihar in Gurugram. The Wazirabad-brd businessman found a broken side mirror and a metal part, which was possibly from a car’s rear.

According to a Times of India report, the victim’s father carried out a thorough investigation starting from the broken car rear to all the car workshops and service centres near the accident spot and in the vicinity to find out if the car that hit his son had come to replace them.

Though he got no leads one of the mechanics confirmed to him the side mirror belonged to a Maruti Suzuki Swift VDi. Jitender then approached Maruti for help and after months of pushing, he was able to find the registration number of the vehicle that would in turn help identify the accused.

“After several months of pursuing the case with the company, I finally managed to find out the registration number of the car and its owner with the help of the batch number printed on the rear of the mirror. I handed over the car’s parts, along with the registration number (which was not mentioned in the FIR), to the investigation officer later that year,” the publication quoted Chaudhary as saying.

However, Chaudhary claims that the police took no action and frustrated, he moved to a local court in January 2016, filing a petition under Section 156(3) of the CrPC under which a magistrate can order an investigation of an offence.

After the investigation, the police submitted the case report to the court in April, saying the accused was “untraced”. But Jitender received no information about it. The report was accepted by the court on July 27.

The victim’s father then filed two complaints regarding the status of the investigation but to no avail. Then Covid-19 struck and his pursuit of justice risked getting derailed.

However, Chaudhary didn’t give up and moved court again in January 2023, this time seeking action against the owner of the vehicle that hit his son.

After examining the case the police found that accepting the “untraced” report without giving notice to the complainant was unlawful and that the complainant lost faith in the police due to constant delays and negligence of the officers which is why he had to bring the investigation to the court.

Despite the court’s direction, the probe wasn’t carried out and police submitted a reply saying the investigating officer was unavailable as he had gone to Uttarakhand.

The court then rebuked the investigating officers at the Sector 56 police station and found that they deliberately didn’t investigate the matter fairly in the first place, destroying evidence. The court also ordered a departmental inquiry against the police officers concerned.

Years of justice finally yielded some fruit and the police finally filed a chargesheet against the vehicle’s owner, Gyan Chand, last week.

“Eight years of struggle have borne some fruit. After a series of shoddy probes and lapses, I hope that the man who killed my son is finally arrested and brought to justice soon,” Chaudhary told TOI