Apex Court Rejects Bail For Cops In Mumbai Encounter
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: In a chilling message to cops specialising in fake encounters, the Supreme Court on Friday said they were cold-blooded murderers who deserve one punishment — death penalty.
“Cases where a fake encounter is proved against policemen in a trial, they must be given death sentence, treating it as the rarest of rare cases,” said a bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra. The bench made this observation while rejecting bail to Mumbai policemen involved in the fake encounter at Nana-Nani Park at Versova, which involved ‘encounter specialist’ police inspector Pradip Sharma and others.
Justice Katju, writing the judgment for the bench, said: “Encounter philosophy is a criminal philosophy, and all people must know this. Trigger-happy policemen who think they can kill people in the name of encounter and get away with it should know that the gallows await them.” No policeman can take the plea of “being ordered by the superior officer” to hide behind the fake encounter crime, it said.
“In the Nuremburg trials, the Nazi war criminals took the plea that ‘orders are orders’, nevertheless they were hanged. If a policeman is given an illegal order by any superior to do a ‘fake encounter’, it is his duty to refuse to carry out such illegal order, otherwise he will be charged for murder, and if found guilty sentenced to death,” the court said. “Fake encounters are nothing but cold-blooded, brutal murders by persons who are supposed to uphold the law. If the offence is committed by policemen, much harsher punishment should be given to them because they do an act totally contrary to their duties,” it said.
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