Jaipur:<\/strong> The Rajasthan High Court has ruled that recovered gold and silver ornaments cannot be kept in police or court custody merely because the claimant has no purchase bills, particularly when the articles were reported stolen by the claimant herself, were clearly described in the FIR and were subsequently identified by her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Justice Anil Kumar Upman, allowing petition filed by Seema Soni, directed the trial court to release the recovered ornaments to her on supurdgi, subject to appropriate conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The case arose from FIR at Police Station Vaishali Nagar, Alwar, following Soni\u2019s complaint regarding theft of her ornaments. During investigation, police recovered the jewellery along with the vehicle Registration Certificate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the trial court had released the original RC to Soni, it refused to hand over the gold and silver ornaments on supurdgi, primarily because she had not produced documentary proof or purchase bills establishing ownership. The revisional court subsequently upheld that decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The High Court, however, found the approach unreasonable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Court noted that the FIR itself contained a clear description of the stolen ornaments, the petitioner had identified the recovered articles during investigation, and the prosecution’s case was that the jewellery recovered from the accused was the same property stolen from the petitioner\u2019s house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Importantly, no other person had claimed ownership of the recovered ornaments. Relying on the Supreme Court\u2019s judgment in Sunderbhai Ambalal Desai v. State of Gujarat, the High Court reiterated that seized articles may be released on appropriate terms and conditions rather than being allowed to remain in custody unnecessarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Court accordingly set aside both the trial court and revisional court orders to the extent they refused release of the gold and silver ornaments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The petition was accordingly allowed and disposed of by the High Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Court Sets Aside Orders Refusing Release of Gold-Silver Ornaments; Says Absence of Purchase Bills Cannot Be Sole Ground When No One Else Claims Ownership Jaipur: The Rajasthan High Court has ruled that recovered gold and silver ornaments cannot be kept in police or court custody merely because the claimant has no purchase bills, particularly when … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wppp_is_locked":false,"_wppp_selected_plans":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,29],"tags":[2164,203,2158,320,48,2165,2161,2160,43,2162,2166,2167,2163,1875,2159],"class_list":["post-9406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rajasthan-high-court","category-top-stories","tag-court-custody","tag-fir","tag-gold-jewellery","tag-justice-anil-kumar-upman","tag-legal-news","tag-police-custody","tag-property-release","tag-purchase-bills","tag-rajasthan-high-court","tag-recovered-jewellery","tag-seized-property","tag-silver-jewellery","tag-stolen-jewellery","tag-sunderbhai-ambalal-desai","tag-supurdgi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9408,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9406\/revisions\/9408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawsandlegals.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Court observed that in such circumstances, the absence of invoices or purchase bills\u2014particularly where the jewellery was stated to be ancestral in nature\u2014could not by itself justify refusing its release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u2018No Useful Purpose Served By Keeping Jewellery In Custody\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n