Day after Hyderabad encounter, activists and lawyers gun for top cop Sajjanar

2 lawyers petitioned SC, seeking Sajjanar's arrest to prevent tampering with evidence

Sajjanar PTI Cyberabad Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar | PTI

Activists and lawyers have knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court, Telangana High Court and National Human Rights Commission to look into the encounter killing of the four people accused in the murder and rape of veterinary doctor Disha (name changed) in Hyderabad.

Early on Friday morning, Mohammad Arif, Chennakeshavulu, Naveen and Shiva were gunned down by the Cyberabad Police at Chatanpally where they were taken for recovering the objects belonging to the victim and to recreate the crime scene. According to Cyberabad Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar, the police team accompanying the accused was forced to open fire after the latter snatched weapons and attacked them.

Though many lauded the police action, some lawyers, intellectuals and civil society activists called the incident a staged encounter and a custodial death.

On Friday, a number of well-known women’s rights activists came together to file a petition in the High Court of Telangana. Calling the encounter an extra-judicial killing, the activists sought that an independent panel of autopsy surgeons should conduct the postmortems.

“It would be a fallacy to even imagine that some kind of justice has been served by abandoning all due process and committing such killings. Is it permissible for police personnel to play judge, jury, executioner and mete out fatal justice in this manner? Is the satisfying of the collective conscience in such a brazenly unlawful and murderous way healthy for a democracy? This is absolute violation of rule of law and constitutional guarantees,” read the petition filed in the High Court of Telangana.

The petitioners appealed to the High Court of Telangana to preserve the bodies of the accused and also direct police to register FIRs and prosecute all the policemen who were involved in the encounter.

Responding to the petition, a bench of the High Court of Telangana directed the state government to preserve the bodies till Monday night as the hearing of the case is slated for Monday. The bench also ordered the video recording of the postmortems to be submitted to the registrar of the court by Saturday evening.

A team from the National Human Rights Commission reached Hyderabad on Saturday morning to probe the matter, conduct a spot inquiry and file a report.

Chennai-based activist Henri Tiphagne petitioned the NHRC to send observers immediately to ascertain ground facts surrounding the encounter.

Tiphagne requested the NHRC to direct its investigation team to examine the FIRs registered in the case, daily diary register of the relevant police station of the day of the incident and call record data of the mobile phones of the officers involved in the encounter.

Gunratan Sadavarte and Jayshree, Mumbai-based lawyers and members of The Ambedkarite Advocates Group, have moved the Supreme Court, requesting its intervention in booking FIR and arresting Commissioner Sajjanar and other policemen involved in the encounter, so that they do not destroy the evidence of the “custodial murder”. The lawyers also appealed to the chief justice of India to direct the CBI or an investigative agency from Maharashtra to probe the encounter.

In Delhi, Supreme Court advocates G.S. Mani and Pradeep Kumar Yadav filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court on Saturday morning, seeking action against police personnel who were involved in the encounter killing of the four accused in Telangana.