The Supreme Court on Tuesday, 14 July, allowed the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to file his response to the pleas seeking a probe into the alleged police encounter of gangster Vikas Dubey by Monday, 20 July, and listed the matter for hearing on that date.
The Chief Justice of India, SA Bobde, also said that they might be inclined to appoint a retired Supreme Court judge to look into the matter.
According to Live Law, petitioner Ghanshyam Upadhyay had requested that a retired judge be asked to monitor the probe.
The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court had, on Monday, dismissed a petition seeking the constitution of a judicial commission to probe the alleged encounter of gangster Dubey.
According to LiveLaw, the reason, as noted by the court, was that the UP Government had already set up a Special Investigation Team and a Judicial Commission to look into the matter.
Dubey was allegedly killed in a police encounter in Kanpur on 10 July. He was a history-sheeter and the prime accused in the murder of eight police personnel in a shoot-out at Kanpur’s Bikaru village.
According to LiveLaw, the UP government had, on Saturday, constituted a Special Investigating Team (SIT) to probe the police involvement in Dubey’s criminal network.
On Sunday, according to an Indian Express report, a single-member commission was formed by the UP government to investigate all incidents linked to Dubey.
Reportedly, the bench, comprising of Justices Pankaj Kumar Jaiswal and Karunesh Singh Pawar, rendered the petition “infructuous” after being informed by Additional Advocate General VK Shahi about it.
According to The Indian Express, Additional Advocate General VK Shahi said:
“I informed the court that the government has already formed a one-member judicial commission under Justice (retired) Sashi Kant Agarwal to inquire into the matter. The government has also constituted a Special Investigating Team headed by an Additional Chief Secretary rank officer of the state. Apart from this, we are following Supreme Court guidelines in PUCL case and thus the writ petition lost its efficacy.”
Nandita Bharti, an advocate, had filed the petition seeking the formation of a Judicial Commission headed by a former or a sitting judge and in keeping with the guidelines framed by the Supreme Court in ‘PUCL and Another vs State of Maharashtra and Others’.
According to the LiveLaw report, she had also asked the court to direct the UP government to frame appropriate guidelines regarding the governing, planning and carrying out of encounters.
VK Shahi also told The Indian Express that the petitioner submitted in court that after the constitution of a Judicial Commission, the present writ petition becomes an infraction. She, therefore, sought permission to withdraw the present writ petition and liberty to file a new one.
(With inputs from Live Law, The Indian Express, The Hindu)
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