Nine Police Officers Indicted In Three Fake Gujarat Encounters From 2002 To 2006 By Justice HS Bedi Panel
The Justice H S Bedi committee has indicted nine police officers including three of inspector ranks in fake encounter probe conducted by the panel.
The Justice H S Bedi committee has indicted nine police officers including three of inspector ranks in fake encounter probe conducted by the panel.
The panel identified three persons mainly Sameer Khan, Kasam Jafar and Haji Haji Ismail who were killed in fake encounters conducted by the Gujarat police officers between 2002 and 2006.
The committee has recommended prosecution in three out of 17 cases that were investigated by it. However, IPS officers have been excluded.
Justice H S Bedi, a former Supreme Court judge was appointed by the court as the chairman of the monitoring committee probing 17 encounter cases from 2002 to 2006 in Gujarat and the panel had submitted its report to the top court in a sealed cover in February last year.
Photo: Justice H.S Bedi
The Gujarat government had filed a plea to maintain confidentiality of the final report of the committee but on January 09, a bench headed by the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi rejected it. He even ordered that the report be shared with the petitioners including poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar.
The committee has recommended the prosecution of two inspectors K M Vaghela and T A Barot for the offence of Sameer Khan¡¯s murder and other relevant offences.
According to the police, Sameer along with his cousin had stabbed a police constable, who had died on the spot in May 1996. While his cousin was arrested, he had fled from spot.
The police had alleged that later he went to Pakistan and took training from terror organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and re-entered India via Nepal.
Photo: Representative Image
The report noted that as per police, after the 2002 Akshardham Mandir attack, Sameer was directed by a Pakistan-based JeM operative to go to Ahmedabad and kill the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
It noted that Sameer was arrested by the Crime Branch in a case related to waging war against the country and when he was taken at the spot where the constable was stabbed in 1996, he snatched the loaded revolver of inspector Vaghela and fired at him and ran away.
As per police, the other two inspectors -- Tarun Barot and A A Chauhan (since dead) -- fired at him and he was later taken to a hospital but was declared dead.
However, the panel has found that he was killed in a fake encounter by the police. Sameer¡¯s family has therefore, been given a compensation of Rs 10 lakh.
In Kasam Jafar¡¯s case, the police had alleged that he was picked alongwith 17 other persons from a hotel in Ahmedabad on April 13, 2006.
Photo: Representative Image
According to police, Jafar was being taken to a police station and during the transit, he escaped from custody and a day later, his body was recovered underneath a bridge.
¡°The effort of the police officers to dub the deceased and his companions as criminals has also not been successful as no evidence whatsover has been produced to show that they had been involved in any crime. The very detention on the April 13, 2006, from Royal Hotel was thus not justified,¡± Justice Bedi said in his report.
In Haji Haji Ismail¡¯s case too, the panel noted that ¡°firing on the deceased was from a distance of two feet or less completely falsifying the police version and being suggestive of a custodial killing.¡±
The panel recommended prosecution of five policemen in this case -- inspector K G Erda and sub-inspectors L B Monpara, J M Yadav, S K Shah and Prag P Vyas.
