Lucknow: In the famous gangster Vikas Dubey encounter case, the state government constituted a judicial commission and an SIT on Monday. One was headed by retired Judge of the High Court SK Aggarwal while the other was headed by Additional Chief Secretary Sanjay Bhusareddy. Under these circumstances, Chief Justice of India Sharad Arvind Bobde, who was hearing the case on Monday, described the killing of police officers and the encounter of the gangster as the failure of the system and said that he would conduct an inquiry by a retired judge of the Supreme Court and former DGP.
The Supreme Court order is expected to increase problems for the UP government. This has enquired by the judicial commission and the SIT redundant. ETV Bharat interviewed eminent jurists about this who said the inquiry under the Supreme Court’s supervision would bring in transparency and expose the failure of the system before the people.
The government has set up two inquiry commissions into the encounter of Vikash Dubey. One by an SIT under the chairmanship of Sanjay Bhusareddy and the other by a retired High Court judge.
Referring to the one-man commission, the Supreme Court observed if a retired Supreme Court judge and a retired DGP could be included in the commission. This was suggested to widen the scope of the inquiry commission and satisfy both the police and the public that the inquiry would now be impartial and truth would come out as there have been allegations that the gangster was bumped off by the police. The police had claimed the gangster was trying to escape. The expanded inquiry commission would make things clear in a judicial manner.
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According to the Supreme Court, the person should have been arrested and then placed before the court for hearing and sentence. It was wrong that the police killed him before all this.
The government claimed that he was killed while trying to escape from custody. The government justified the setting of a judicial commission to bring out the truth said the Jurist Akhilesh Kumar Kalra.
The Supreme Court has set up a panel comprising a retired judge of the Supreme Court and a former DGP. This has brought to nought whatever the government has done so far. Now whatever the Supreme Court-appointed panel would report would be considered final. The government can extend the help of the commission appointed by it to the Supreme Court panel. There have been several such cases in the past when PILs were filed either in the Supreme Court of the High Court. As a pre-emptive step, the government appoints its own commission of inquiry headed by a retired judge. However, if the Supreme Court does not find it to be satisfactory, it sets up its own panel of inquiry.
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In the present encounter case too, the Supreme Court ordered a magisterial inquiry. There is a magisterial inquiry into all encounter cases. In this case, too a judicial commission headed by retired judge SK Agrawal was set up but the Supreme Court found it inadequate. Now the Supreme Court has sought the name of retired Supreme Court judges and of retired DGPs who have served at the centre. It will be difficult to manage them and so their inquiry report would be truthful. The entire country knows how the encounter of Vikas Dubey was carried out. The police assumed the role of the judiciary in the encounter. Hence the Supreme Court took cognizance.
It has been observed in the last couple of years how encounters follow the script of a Bollywood movie. The script is always the same that the man was trying to escape and was killed in an exchange of fire between the accused and the policemen. In most of such cases, the encounters are fake, said Jurist B K Singh.
Passing such comments, the Supreme Court has recommended the inclusion of a retired judge of the Apex Court and a former DGP into the inquiry commission and asked the state government for a response. This raises doubts on the state government if it is trying to save the culprits. There has been a complete flouting of the process of law. There has been an attempt to justify the killing of the gangster on the ground that he had killed policemen. However, there is a rule of law in the country, and no one can be killed in the name of encounter. By raising questions and demanding a report from the government, the Supreme Court has questioned the style of functioning of the government, said Jurist Prince Lenin.
