A bench of Justice Markandeya Katju and Justice CK Prasad said that police personnel as custodians of law are expected to protect people and not eliminate them as contract killers.
The Supreme Court on Monday said blood-thirsty and trigger-happy policemen who stage fake encounters deserve nothing less than death sentence for the “cold blooded murders”.
The court made this observation while directing two absconding senior Rajasthan IPS officers — Additional DGP Arvind Jain and SP Arshad — to face trial in a fake encounter killing case.
The case relates to the killing of an alleged gangster (Dara Singh) by the special operations group of the Rajasthan police on October 23, 2006.
The court directed the CBI, which is investigating the case, to arrest the two police officers if they failed to surrender.
“The same parameters will apply and the law shall take its own course,” justices Markandey Katju and CK Prasad said, coming down heavily on the ‘law unto themselves’ cops.
Dara Singh’s widow Sushila Devi said former Rajasthan minister Rajender Rathore, who is a co-accused in the case, has also absconded.
“If crimes are committed by ordinary people, ordinary punishment should be given. But if the offence is committed by policemen, much harsher punishment should be given to them because they do an act totally contrary to their duties. They should be treated as the rarest of rare offence” an anguished bench added.
According to reliable sources, the National Human Rights Commission registered at least 369 cases of alleged fake encounters across the country beginning 2008-09 till June this year.
The NHRC has resolved 98 of these cases and recommended a total monetary relief of Rs4.54 crore to the kin of the deceased in 90 of the cases where police action was found doubtful.
Uttar Pradesh tops this list of fake encounters, with nearly 120 people being killed allegedly by the state police during this period, says a recent report.
In 2010-11, the NHRC received complaints that 40 people were killed by security forces in Uttar Pradesh in alleged fake encounters. During 2008-09 and 2009-10, 71 people were killed in the state in alleged fake encounters.
Manipur had the second highest number of fake encounter cases during the period — 16 in 2008-09; 32 in 2009-10; 12 in 2010-11 and one in the first half of 2011.
There were reportedly 14 cases of fake encounter in Jammu and Kashmir in the past three years, with 11 of them having been registered in 2010-11.
Maoist-hit Chhattisgarh has reported 11 cases of fake encounter killings in the last three years, while Jharkhand and Orissa, registered 13 and 12 such cases respectively, the report says.
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