The Supreme Court on Friday gave a six-month extension to the Justice V.S. Sirpurkar Commission of Inquiry probing into the Hyderabad police encounter of four men accused of the rape and murder of a veterinarian in December last.
Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad A. Bobde, heading the three-judge Bench, refused a plea made by petitioner-advocate G.S. Mani to intervene and pass directions directing to ensure and prevent custody deaths in the future.
“How can any court in the world grant such a relief, there will not be any crime... How can we ensure there is no deaths in custody - there may be heart attacks in custody”, he addressed the lawyer.
The Commission, represented by advocate K. Parameshwar, wanted an extension because the pandemic had hindered their work. The three-member panel was set up by the apex court in December with a six-month deadline.
The application filed by the Commission said it first met on February 3 and proposed to sit again on March 23 and 24 in Hyderabad. But the meeting did not materialise owing to the pandemic. The Telangana High Court had also suspended all judicial and administrative work till April 14. The pandemic situation in Hyderabad continues to be bad.
The Commission members said they lived in different cities, none of which is Hyderabad. Their work was thus hampered by travel restrictions and the quarantine regime in place. These pandemic travails of the Commission prompted the CJI on Monday to express the court’s keenness to appoint persons hailing from the same place in the inquiry commission for the Dubey case.
However, the Commission said that despite the pandemic restrictions, they had received a whopping 1365 affidavits from the Hyderabad police officers allegedly involved and the families of the accused. It had also collected the reports of the National Human Rights Commission, the Special Investigation Team, post mortem reports, etc.
The four accused - Mohammed Arif, Chintakunta Chennakeshavulu, Jollu Shiva and Jollu Naveen - were taken to the scene of the crime around 60 km from Hyderabad in the early hours of December 6 for a reconstruction of the crime scene.
The Telangana government has stuck to its version that the accused men surprised their police escort there, grabbed their guns and tried to kill the policemen to escape custody. The posse retaliated and the four were killed in the crossfiring. However, the police team sustained no injuries in the incident
