SC panel terms vet killers’ encounter ‘fake’ : It also recommended that the 10 policemen concerned be tried for murder

R. Balaji   |   TT  |  New Delhi   |    21.05.22  :A Supreme Court-appointed panel on Friday said the encounter killings of four accused in a case of gang rape and murder of a veterinarian on the outskirts of Hyderabad in 2019 was fake.

The panel also recommended that the 10 policemen concerned be tried for murder.

The report, which was submitted before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana, also quoted the family members of the four accused — Mohd Arif, Jollu Shiva, Jollu Naveen and Chintakunta Chennakesavulu — claiming that they were all juveniles.

The Supreme Court rejected the Telangana government’s request to keep sealed the report of the three-member panel, headed by former apex court judge Justice V.S. Sirpurkar, and ordered it to be forwarded to Telangana High Court for further action.

The commission, which also included former Bombay High Court judge Justice Rekha P. Sondur Baldota and ex-IPS officer D.R. Kaarthikeyan, in its 387-page report had elaborately dealt with the purported inconsistencies in Hyderabad police’s version of the incident to point out that the four men were shot dead from a close range and there were no indications of any encounter to justify the claim.

Some of the key findings and recommendations of the commission are:

•  The police’s claim that the suspects were taken from Central Prison, Cherlapally, to the safe house till the incident resulting in their death “is thoroughly false and unacceptable”.
•  The alleged interrogation reports do not contain anything barring some details of phone numbers of the deceased suspects and their family members. Thus, the alleged interrogation by Venkata Reddy, assistant investigating officer, cannot be accepted as true.
•  The confession statement of the suspect recorded at Shadnagar police station on November 29, 2019, that “on the evening at about 6pm a girl aged about 20 to 25 years parked her scooty near their lorry and boarded a car near the tollgate and went away and all the four deceased suspects hatched a plan to rape her and that after she left they deflated the rear tyre and that after she returned, they offered to get the tyre punctured” is not true. Hence, it is to be concluded that the deceased suspects did not make any confessional statement at the safe house on December 5, 2019, and December 6, 2019.
•  Even otherwise, the credibility of the only independent witnesses is in serious doubt. Their evidence is found to be discrepant in many important respects.
•  It is also strange that no steps have been taken to have the alleged articles identified by the family members of the victim. SW-2 (state witness), the victim’s sister, has categorically stated before the commission that she was not summoned by the police after the incident on December 6, 2019. The record would show that till the time of examination of SW-2, the articles allegedly recovered were not shown to the family members of the victim for identification.
• Claim of the police that suspects threw mud on their faces and snatched their weapons, resulting in the firing by police in self-defence is unbelievable and false.
•  Moreover, once they escaped and started running, it would be highly improbable that they would fire towards the police while running.