New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Uttar Pradesh government to bring on record the steps taken and the investigation in the custodial medical examination of Atiq Ahmed and his brother. The Supreme Court put a barrage of questions to the state government regarding the lapse in his security. Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing the UP government, said the killers had come in the guise of news photographers. A bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Dipankar Datta asked how did they know? Referring to the live shooting of Atiq and his brother on TV, the bench asked why they were not taken to the hospital in a van, why they were paraded in front of the media.
The counsel for the UP government said that as per the court order, he has to be taken for medical tests every two days, so the press knew. The government has appointed a commission to probe the matter and urged the court not to issue notice in the matter. The bench noted that the petitioner is claiming that there is a pattern. The counsel for the UP government said that Atiq and the family were involved in criminal activities for a long time.
The bench also sought a report from the UP government on the police encounter of Atiq Ahmed’s son Asad in Jhansi. Asad was killed in an encounter by a special task force of the UP Police on 13 April. The apex court has listed the matter for further hearing after three weeks. The top court was hearing a plea seeking probe into the murders of gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf. The petition sought a direction to set up an expert committee headed by a former apex court judge to probe the killings.
Advocate Vishal Tiwari moved the apex court seeking an independent expert committee and also sought a probe into the 183 encounters in Uttar Pradesh since 2017. Ahmed and his brother were shot dead by three assailants posing as journalists while they were being taken for check-up by police personnel to a medical college in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. The petition sought directions to protect the rule of law by setting up an independent expert committee headed by a former Supreme Court judge and also to investigate the 183 encounters since 2017 As stated by the Special Director General of Police (Law and Order), Uttar Pradesh.
The petitioner also sought an inquiry into the killing of Ahmed and his brother in police custody and asserted that such acts by the police pose a grave threat to democracy and the rule of law and lead to a police state. The plea states that extra-judicial killings or fake police encounters have no place under law and that in a democratic society, the police cannot be allowed to become a method of dispensing final justice, as the power of punishment rests only with the judiciary. Is contained.
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