State government had alleged that Gujarat was being ‘selectively targeted’ by some groups in matter of encounters.
The Supreme Court on Monday sought to know the stands of the Centre and all the state governments on a plea for an independent probe into all cases of alleged fake encounters in the country in the past 10 years. A bench comprising justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Desai issued notices to the Union and the state governments and sought their reply on a petition filed by the Gujarat government.
The Gujarat government had filed a petition before the Supreme Court seeking a probe into all the encounters that had taken place after the year 2000 in all states of the country. The state government had alleged that Gujarat had been ‘selectively targeted’ by certain groups with vested interest.
The state government had sought the court’s intervention to make uniform guidelines to ensure that no was killed by trigger-happy policemen and also to protect honest police officers. It is pertinent to note that, last year, the Apex Court had formed a special committee under the chairmanship of former Supreme Court judge, Justice HS Bedi, to probe all encounter cases that had taken place in the state between 2002 and 2007.
The apex court had ordered a probe into alleged fake encounters in the state on two petitions filed by veteran journalist BG Verghese and film lyricist Javed Akhtar respectively. The petitioners had alleged that there was a pattern in the encounter killings that had taken place in Gujarat in which only people of a particular community were targeted.
Earlier, the bench had given the state government the liberty to file a separate petition on the issue of investigation of fake encounters when Gujarat had complained that only the Narendra Modi government was being singled out for encounter killings.
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