High Court seeks details of complaints against police

The High Court on Wednesday directed the State government to submit details of complaints registered against police personnel during 2014-2015. 

The state government submitted to the court that for the year 2013-2014, as many as 106 complaints were received against the police and nearly 25 have been disposed of.

Justice AN Venugopala Gowda, expressing displeasure over State government's ‘disinterest’ in setting up the Police Complaints Authority, said he would refer the matter to the Supreme Court with a letter for non-compliance of the apex court orders.

The bench observed, “Forget implementation of the Supreme Court order of setting up a police complaints authority, the State government does not even have the will to establish it.”  He said the state police complaints authority has been inactive despite several directions being issued for its implementation. The bench directed the government to submit details about the number of complaints registered against the police and adjourned the hearing to March 31.

‘Quash film award list’

The High Court on Wednesday ordered notice to the State government in a petition filed by the makers of the Kannada movie 'Billion Dollar Baby', who have contended that the State awards committee acted with malafide intentions and that their movie deserved the Best Children Film award. 

‘Baanaadi’ directed by Nagaraja Kote and produced by Dhruti Cinema, was adjudged as Best Children Film for 2014.  The petitioner, Sri Sai Balaji Combines, has said that the awards committee didn’t do any qualitative analysis while selecting Baanaadi movie for the award. The petitioner has contended that a clip of Billion Dollar Baby has been copied by the makers of Baanaadi in their movie.  Billion Dollar Baby is a better movie than the one chosen by the committee for the award, the petitioner argued.

The petition has sought directions from the court to quash the award list and to restrain the government from conferring the State award on the makers of the film ‘Baanaadi’. Justice A S Bopanna ordered notice in the matter and adjourned the hearing.