A day after the police gunned him down at a Central Delhi restaurant in alleged self defence, the Delhi Police special cell struggled to justify the public slaying of businessman Manoj Vashishtha on Sunday.
This even as the Delhi Government ordered a judicial probe in the case which happens to be the first police encounter to leave a white collar criminal – who was also a father of two and primarily accused of financial irregularities — dead in full public view after being confronted by a team of armed anti-terror policemen at the Sagar Ratna restaurant in New Rajendra Nagar here.
Vashisthta’s family approached the Delhi Police with a complaint of murder and wrongful restraint against personnel belonging to its own elite special cell even as sources in the crime branch and the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) – which routinely investigate white collar crime — said Vashistha’s name 'had not popped up in records pertaining to significant financial irregularities' reported from the Capital so far.
He was also unknown, according to a source, to a network of police informers who specialised in tips pertaining to financial fraud spread ‘from Chandigarh to Chennai’. His only known reference in the Delhi Police archives, the source pointed out, pertained to a case of cheating registered in relation to a manpower racket at West Delhi’s Janakpuri police station in the year 2002.
The special cell, however, released a statement claiming that Vashishtha was involved in at least five cases of cheating – three of which were registered in Delhi between 2013 and 2014 – in addition to 50 cases pertaining to check bouncing and cheating in Punjab, Ghaziabad, Maharashtra and 12 to 13 such cases reported from Bhatinda.
“It is true that he was wanted in cases pertaining to bounced cheques and some other financial irregularities – but he wasn’t a terrorist or a gangster who deserved to be killed in cold blood,” Vashishtha’s family friend Vikram Bhati told The Hindu .
“He had even been jailed in one of these cases after which he was paying his dues to some private banks whose payments he had defaulted; there is more to his murder by the police than meets the eye and that must be probed,” Mr. Bhati said adding that the encounter was ‘evidently an extrajudicial killing’.
Pointing out that Vashishtha could have been overpowered and apprehended by the special cell team at the ‘single entry-exit’ of the hotel, a source said only two spent shells were recovered from the scene of the encounter raising a question mark on the theory which claimed that Vashishtha – who suffered a bullet injury each to his head and stomach – had opened fire at the police team.
On its part, however, the special cell claimed Vashishtha was ‘also wanted in extortion and cases of criminal intimidation’ and that its officers had acted ‘purely in self defence’.
