HYDERABAD: A division bench of Telangana High Court on Monday issued notices to the State government and the police for filing counter affidavits in a PIL seeking to constitute a special investigation team (SIT) to probe 36 ‘honour killings’ in the State and to submit a report to the court.
The bench was dealing with a PIL filed by U Sambasiva Rao, social activist and coordinator of Telangana State Bahujan Resistance Forum, alleging failure of the State administration and the police in curtailing ‘honour killings’. Petitioner’s counsel V Raghunath told the court that about 36 honour killings took place in the State, but the police had failed to contain such killings.
Though the victims approached the police prior to the killings, their plea was ignored, he pointed out and cited the incidents that took place in Nalgonda (Pranay case), Karimnagar (Naresh) and Nizamabad (G Kumar). After hearing the case, the bench issued notices to home secretary, DGP, Rachakonda CP, district collectors of Warangal and Rangareddy for filing counter affidavits on the issue and posted the matter to July 22 for further hearing.