Applicant says Gupta’s interview to a news agency was full of bias and may not be neutral in the commission
No sooner than the ink dried on the Supreme Court’s declaration of the members of the special inquiry commission to investigate the ‘encounter’ killing of gangster Vikas Dubey, one name in the new committee, has created waves.
While there has been universal acceptance of commission head, former Supreme Court judge BS Chauhan and former Allahabad High Court judge Shashi Kant Agarwal, the court’s inclusion of K.L.Gupta, for DGP of Uttar Pradesh, at the suggestion of the government, seems to have become a point of controversy.
A petition has now been filed with the top court, requesting the top court to reconstitute the judicial inquiry commission by replacing Gupta. The petition asks for the appointment of some other former DGP from Uttar Pradesh as member of the commission.
The petitioner has alleged that Gupta had told Press Trust of India that: “On face value, we should accept what the police is saying. Why do we always start with negativity and dub the police wrong? Encounters are not done, they happen.”
Thus the petitioner apprehends a real likelihood of bias in the judicial Inquiry to be done by Gupta, as he has already spoken his mind in the media. He has also suggested the names of former DGPs IC Dwivedi, S. Jaweed Ahmed, Prakash Singh.
– India Legal Bureau