Supreme Court dismisses plea to disband panel probing Vikas Dubey’s death

Judge cannot be considered biased merely because his relatives are members of political party in power, says Bench

Vikas Dubey. File Photo.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea to disband an inquiry commission chaired by former Supreme Court judge B.S. Chauhan to look into the Uttar Pradesh Police encounter of history-sheeter Vikas Dubey.

A Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad A. Bobde rejected the application by Mumbai-based advocate Ghanshyam Upadhyay, who referred to articles published about relatives of Justice Chauhan being part of the ruling BJP in the State.

‘Conflict of interest’

Mr. Upadhyay had said there was a conflict of interest involved if Justice Chauhan continued on the Commission. The petition said the Commission would be biased in favour of the police.

“The enquiry held would be in public domain and the petitioner has already been granted the liberty of participating therein. The report of the enquiry is ordered to be filed in the petitions which were filed before this Court. Therefore, there would be sufficient safeguard to the manner in which the inquiry would be held”, the three-judge Bench led by CJI said.

It peremptorily dismissed allegations of bias, saying a judge, and no less than a retired judge of the Supreme Court, cannot be put under a shadow of doubt merely because there is a media report that his relatives are members of a political party in power.

“This court, in a series of decisions, has repeatedly held that the newspaper item without any further proof is of no evidentiary value”, the Bench explained.

In a previous hearing, the CJI told Mr. Upadhyay, “there are judges whose father, brothers, relatives, etc, are Members of Parliament... If your relatives belong to a party, that means you are biased?”

The other members of the Commission are Justice (retd.) Shashi Kant Agarwal and former Uttar Pradesh DGP K L Gupta.

Dubey was gunned down while allegedly trying to escape from custody when the vehicle carrying him in the police convoy met with an accident. He and his henchmen were hunted down for ambushing a police team and killing eight personnel.