The Supreme Court received a plea on Sunday that sought constitution of an independent expert panel to probe the killings of gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf, ideally to be headed by a former Supreme Court judge.
Filed by Advocate Vishal Tiwari, the petition further sought inquiry into the 183 encounters that have taken place in Uttar Pradesh since 2017.
The petition stated that UP ploce has said that about 183 alleged criminals were killed in encounters in the past six years of the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led government, Asad and his accomplice.
The petition stated that the power of punishment was only vested in the Judiciary. It further said that when the police became dare devils, then the entire Rule of Law collapsed. It also said that this generated fear in the minds of people.
Talking about such bold steps, the petition said that this would turned out to be very dangerous for the Democracy and could also result in further crimes.
The PIL also asked the Supreme Court for issuing direction to unearth the fake encounters by directing the Central Bureau of Investigation for investigating evidence in the Kanpur Bikru Encounter case 2020, in which Vikas Dubey and his aides were killed by police in the encounter as the inquiry commission could not record the evidence in rebuttal of police version and has filed the inquiry report in absence of that.
The petitioner told the court that he has approached them in a matter pertaining to the Kanpur encounter of Vikas Dubey stating that a similar incident was repeated by Uttar Pradesh police while the encounter of Asad who was the son of Atiq Ahmad gangster turned politician. He also questioned the killing of Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf by private assailants when they were in police custody and were taken for medical examination.
The petition talked about how this was a blatant attack on the democracy of India and the rule of law.
It stated that although the assailants were arrested during the commission of the offence, there was no protection or retaliation by the police.
The petitioner stated that this imposed a question on the transparency and proved this matter as a pre-planned attack with no redressal for the accused.