Supreme Court grants six more months to probe Hyderabad encounter

A three-judge Division Bench headed by Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde and comprising of Justice A S Bopanna and Justice V. Ramasubramaniam, disposed off the plea filed by K K Parmeshwar on behalf of the commission and gave them six more months to file the final investigation report.

During the hearing, the petitioner stated that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the commission meetings could not be regularised, as three members of the commission reside in different parts of the country, while the place of investigation is in a completely different area.

It was also argued that the three members of the commission are very old, so they were more prone to get infected from the coronavirus. "This delayed the investigation", the petitioner averred. The commission further requested a time of at least six months more to file its final report, which the Court accepted.

Meanwhile, Pradeep Yadav, counsel for one of the petitioners, urged the Court to ensure that there is no future custodial death in any part of the country. To this, Justice Bobde said that how a court can ensure that in future no one will be killed in custody. Some people also die a natural death in custody.

"You are a lawyer and you have a huge responsibility as a lawyer. How can we ensure that there will be no death in custody", Justice Bobde said.

Notably, a 26-year-old veterinary doctor was brutally raped and murdered by four people in November 2019. All the suspects were arrested and killed in an encounter in December that year.

The encounter raised suspicions and a three-member inquiry commission headed by former Apex Court Judge VS Sirpurkar was constituted to investigate the killings. The commission also included former Bombay High Court Judge Rekha P. Sundar Baldota and former Director of Central Bureau of Investigation DR Karthikeyan.