HYDERABAD: Senior counsel D Prakash Reddy, amicus curiae in the Disha encounter case, on Monday, said that the three-member Sirpurkar Commission of inquiry after going into the brutal assassination of the four accused in the case felt that it was nothing more than a blatant effort to overthrow the legal system and insisted that the court’s authority cannot be usurped by the police.
He said before the division bench of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice N Tukaramji of Telangana High Court that the commission of inquiry had said in its report that the Telangana police cannot be trusted with the inquiry because of the SIT’s cover-up, which only serves to demonstrate that there is a conspiracy at work. Self-defence cannot be raised during the inquiry. It is a matter that will be decided at trial.
Given the commission of inquiry’s damning findings, it is only fair that the inquiry is carried out by a SIT made up of fair and unbiased officials from outside the State, and that it be under the court’s supervision, he said. Prakash Reddy informed the court that Disha, a young doctor, was discovered burned on the morning of November 28, 2019. Soon after, the police detained four individuals they believed were responsible for Disha’s murder and rape.
When they were escorted out to retrieve Disha’s belongings on the morning of December 6, 2019, 10 armed police officers opened fire on them. The cops stated that they had to shoot them out of necessity for protection.
The three-member Sirpurkar Commission, which the Supreme Court appointed, had recommended filing an FIR against the 10 police officers involved in the encounter since it did not believe the encounter of the four suspects. The amicus curiae emphasised that the commission’s findings were adequate to create a cognizable offence against the then police officers.
He maintained that the Supreme Court had ordered FIRs to be lodged in situations where commissions of inquiry had advised action against police implicated in encounter deaths. He cited Supreme Court judgments in the PUCL vs State of Andhra Pradesh, Manipur encounters case to support his claim. The police booked a case under Section 307 of IPC against the dead persons later that the case will be closed by stating that the accused persons were no more. This is not correct. The cases must be booked against 10 police officers after the death of four accused under Section 302 IPC r/w section 34.
Prakash Reddy said that there was no thorough inquiry at all, pointing to the SIT’s ‘biased’ probe and errors in every area of the investigations. The SIT ignored the numerous inconsistencies surrounding the retrieval of Disha’s belongings, the inability to positively identify the four accused, the wilful oversight of failing to gather CCTV video, the loss of the medical records of the injured police officers, and other issues. The commission’s conclusion that the truck owner who had named the four deceased suspects was a coached witness who could not be believed was brought to the court’s notice.
Regarding the issue of three of the defendants being minors, the senior counsel brought to the court’s attention the commission’s report that the likelihood of their youth was recognised by the police who had looked through the school records. Before the encounter, the police visited the school, spoke with the headmaster, and looked over the student records and took photos. However, the SIT chose not to look into this information.
The findings of the commission were presented to the court, and they made reference to the investigating agency’s falsification and suppression of evidence. Why the Special Investigation Team failed to pay attention to the gathering of CCTV video at the police station, at Ravi Guest House, or on the route travelled by the police team was an issue that the commission had frequently raised, he said.
‘CONSPIRACY AT WORK’
Senior counsel D Prakash told the court that the commission of inquiry had said in its report that the Telangana police cannot be trusted with the inquiry because of the SIT’s cover-up, which only serves to demonstrate that there is a conspiracy at work