The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Special Task Force (STF) of the Gujarat police to complete its probe in three months of all the 24 alleged fake encounter killings in the state between 2003 and 2
The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Special Task Force (STF) of the Gujarat police to complete its probe in three months of all the 24 alleged fake encounter killings in the state between 2003 and 2006 when Mr Narendra Modi was the chief minister.
A three-judge bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud also asked the monitoring committee headed by Justice H.S. Bedi, retired Supreme Court judge, to submit a report in three months after the conclusion of the probe.
The bench passed this order on two petitions filed by Javed Aktar, B.G. Varghese and others for a direction to order a CBI probe into all the 24 fake encounters that had taken place in the state from 2003 to 2006. Counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that probe in respect of 22 of the 24 fake encounters had been completed and some more time is required to complete the investigation with regard to the remaining two.
Additional solicitor-general Tushar Mehta for Gujarat said in a bid to prevent fake encounters and avoid human rights violations, the Gujarat government had formed the STF to investigate the deaths in police encounters.
The STF has been given autonomy to investigate the encounters. He informed the bench that at least another three months was required to complete the probe and submit the report. Accordingly the bench granted three months and posted the matter for further hearing in February 2017.
The petitioners said, “It appears from all the incidents of fake encounters, a pattern has emerged of killing innocent people, particularly Muslims, on the pretext of them being members of the dreaded terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed and there being a conspiracy to kill the (then) chief minister Narendra Modi.”
The act of the Gujarat police in killing people in fake encounters was a serious crime and a gross violation of the rule of law and the fundamental rights of citizens. In particular, the petition said that it had now come to light that the then inspector general of police (SC/ST and Human Rights), Tirath Raj, had prepared a 20 page enquiry report indicting persons from the chief minister’s office, the director general of police and then JCP P.P. Pandey for covering up the misdeeds of Vanzara (one of the police officers arrested in the Sohrabuddin case), the then DCP crime and his men. He had also indicted Mr Vanzara for the cold-blooded killing of Sameer Khan.
