Supreme Court: A bench of SA Bobde, CJ and SA Nazeer and Sanjiv Khanna, JJ has said it was considering to appoint a former Supreme Court judge to enquire into the encounter killings of four accused persons in the sensational gangrape-and-murder case of a veterinarian in Telangana. The court said that it was conscious of the fact that the Telangana High Court had taken note of the matter but,
“We propose to appoint a former Supreme Court judge to enquire into it,”
It clarified that the former Supreme Court judge, who would enquire into the incident, would sit in Delhi.
Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi and advocate Krishnakumar Singh, appearing for the Telangana government, said it had followed the directions laid down by the Supreme Court for an enquiry into encounters and had already referred the case to the state CID.
The bench has now posted the PILs, seeking an independent SIT probe into the encounter, for hearing on Thursday.
Brief background:
- The Telangana veterinarian was gang-raped and killed by four people before they burnt her body in Telangana’s Shamshabad on November 27. Her charred body was recovered a day later.
- 4 accused, all lorry workers, in their 20s, were arrested the next day.
- On Thursday night, all the four men were taken out of the Cherlapally Central Jail by a seven-member police team in a bus. The cops wanted to reconstruct events .
- In the early hours of December 6, the 4 accused were killed in a police encounter. According to the police, the men, who were apparently not handcuffed, tried escaping. It is also being claimed that the accused men snatched one of the policemen’s guns and fired upon the cops. Hence, the policemen were forced to open fire which resulted into the encounter. The legality the police action is now under a scanner before the Supreme Court as well as the Telangana High Court.
(With inputs from PTI)