The Supreme Court on Friday appointed retired Supreme Court Judge Justice H.S. Bedi as Chairman of the Monitoring Authority to probe all cases of fake encounter deaths in Gujarat from 2003 to 2006.
Justice Bedi replaces Justice M.B. Shah. The latter has expressed his inability to undertake the probe.
A Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Desai passed the order on two petitions filed by Javed Aktar, B.G. Varghese and others seeking a CBI probe into 22 fake encounters from 2003 to 2006. The Bench asked the Monitoring Authority to probe the killings and file an interim report in three months.
The Bench did not accept the appointment of the former Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, K.R. Vyas, as notified by the State government, in place of Justice Shah. It wanted the supervision and monitoring of the investigation done by “someone whose integrity is completely beyond any question.”
“We, accordingly, deem it fit to request Justice Bedi to head and monitor the investigation of the cases of alleged fake encounter enumerated in the writ petitions,” the Bench said.
The Bench asked the State government to extend full facility and cooperation to Justice Bedi to enable him to make a meaningful, effective investigation. It made clear that all directions contained in its January 25 order would remain in operation.
When the matter was taken up, Additional Advocate-General Tushar Mehta said he and the Advocate-General were persuading Justice Shah to take up the probe and sought time till March 12.
Justice Alam told counsel: “That was wrong on your part …” When the court was inclined to pass an order, Mr. Mehta insisted that the government be given an opportunity to file at least an affidavit, pointing out that another Bench was hearing a matter relating to encounter deaths in all States. So, the court could not have one approach to Gujarat and another for other States.
Mr. Mehta wondered why rights activists should pick only one State, i.e., Gujarat. “Please stop this menace.”
Justice Alam replied: “This court will respond with the same alacrity, whether it is Gujarat or any other State. You bring a petition, we will act on it. What we are saying is your attempts are in [the] wrong direction. We are not interfering with the Monitoring Authority; we are only monitoring the mechanism.”
