Judgment

RANGANATH MISRA, J. :- The appeal is under Article 134(a) with leave from the Calcutta High Court and is directed against the judgment of a Division Bench of that Court dated September 27, 1983. The Special Leave Petition is under Article 136 of the Constitution and is also directed against the same decision. Both these matters are thus connected and arise out of the incident relating to the death of two young boys of Barrackpore area near Calcutta. This Judgment of ours will dispose of both the matters.

2. Two letters, one by one Sampat Lal, respondent 1 in the criminal appeal and another by respondents 1(a) to 1(n), both dated June 1, 1983, were received by the learned Acting Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court. The letter sent by Sampat Lal alleged that two young boys by names Tirthankar Das Sharma and Sanjib Chatterjee, living in Barrackpore area, were missing since the afternoon of March 2, 1983. Information was given at the local police station late at night on the same day and wide publicity was given over the television and the radio of the fact that the two boys were missing but no information about their whereabouts was received till April 5, 1983. On that day it transpired that dead bodies of two boys had been found from the railway track near Pandua railway station and they had been disposed of by the local police without taking any steps for their identification. Verification of the photographs maintained by the Railway Police at Bandel and the wearing apparel of the two boys kept at the police station clearly indicated that the dead bodies were of the two missing boys. The letter alleged that the parents of the two boys had approached several authorities including the. Chief Minister of the State. Without taking any serious notice of the matter, the Chief Minister was alleged to have made a statement to the effect even before completion of the investigation that it was a case of suicide. From the reports published in a Bengali newspaper it appeared that the two boys had been murdered. The letter further alleged that the local police had been threatening the parents of the deceased and other people living in the locality. The local people were, therefore, feeling insecure and had lost confidence in the administration. They wanted that investigation should be conducted by an independent machinery which would command confidence and be acceptable to the local people. They also asked for adequate protection to be given to the residents of the area.

3. In the second letter similar allegations were made but certain details not given in the first letter were given regarding the incident and the following relief was claimed :

"Hence on behalf of residents of Barrackpore our humble prayer to the Honourable Chief Justice is that the Government should instruct some neutral organisation like C. B. I., to investigate in search of unnatural death and solve the mystery to satisfy the people of this area and the soul of State. This is apparent from delay in investigation, its incidents and inflow of publicity that when some neutral active investigation the reason of such death or who is the murderer or what is the real mystery cannot be known definitely. After C. B. I. or some such organisation conducts the investigation, we the residents of Barrackpore promise to help them with heart and soul. Our humble submission is that you may kindly accept our requests and try to stop the police from this negligence in investigation and also stop them from submitting motivated false informations and also we submit that through, neutral investigation the real mystery should be exposed to our contention. In case the police or some persons have some kind of motivation behind this the Honourable Court may take a role to set a precedence by ordering investigation into that."

(Translated from the original letter in Bengali).

4. On June 6, 1983, the learned Acting Chief Justice directed the letters to be treated as a writ petition and aske