Karkardooma court here has asked the Delhi Police to avoid using antiquated words and phrases like laaparwahi , gaflat and tezraftaari in the chargesheet they file in every road accident case.
The police officers are looking for synonyms of the Urdu words highlighted by the court. Laaparwahi, gaflat and tezraftaari are Urdu words which means carelessness, neglect and speeding respectively.
Reflection of intolerance
The court has asked that these words are repeatedly used by Delhi police personnel while filing chargesheet in cases of road accidents and it needed to be changed.
The police can use synonyms for these words.
“It is just a reflection of intolerance in our society, and such nonsense is created in the name of linguistic purity. The languages are created by the people for their usage,” said Sohail Hashmi, historian and documentary film-maker. He added that like in the word laaparwahi — la is Arabic and parwahi is Persian.
A Delhi police officer said that these words are mentioned in the India Penal Code (IPC) and they are using these words because they have been defined in the IPC. He added that IPC Section 279 deals with rash driving and its Hindi translation is laaparwahi .
“We are drafting a reply to the order passed by the judge. The DCP concerned has been instructed to file a suitable reply,” a senior police officer said.
However, lawyers said that no court can instruct the investigating officer (IO) over the usage of words as these words are mentioned in the IPC book and are easy to understand by public. “It is not right to direct police officers over the use of words which are easy to understand by public. The IO put the words in the chargesheet as mentioned by the complainant in the FIR,” said Neeraj, secretary of Patiala court bar association.
A few days ago, the Delhi High Court had pointed out “errors of syntax, semantics and spellings” in a portion of an FIR filed in July in New Delhi district.
