Supreme Court on Friday permitted that five reports of a panel headed by its former judge, Justice H.S. Bedi, which looked into the cases of 22 alleged fake encounter killings in Gujarat between 2002 and 2006, be supplied to the parties involved in the matter.
A bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked the apex court registry to supply the reports within a week to the parties who are connected with the matter and posted the case for final hearing from August 14.
The apex court on March 2, 2012 had appointed its retired judge, Justice H.S. Bedi as the chairman of the monitoring authority looking into the cases of alleged fake encounter killings, during the four year period in Gujarat, purportedly showing a pattern that people from the minority community were targeted as terrorists.
The Court had brushed aside the allegation of the Gujarat government that it was “selectively” targetted on human rights issue and the same yardstick was not applied in dealing with cases of alleged encounter killings in other states.
“You bring human rights violations from other states. You will find we will respond with same alacrity,” a bench headed by Justice Aftab Alam had said while appointing Justice Bedi as the chairman of the monitoring authority.
Later, the state government filed a petition in the apex court to bring into its ambit the encounter killings in all states and the plea is pending before another bench.
Since taking over the task, Justice Bedi filed five reports in sealed cover before the apex court, which had wanted the supervision and monitoring of the investigation to be done by “someone whose integrity is completely beyond any question”.
The bench headed by Justice Aftab Alam (since retired) had rejected the Gujarat government’s plea seeking time to sort out the issue of appointment of chairman.
