HC rejects biased8217; Aguiar report

MUMBAI, FEBRUARY 25: A division bench of the Bombay High Court today rejected the Aguiar Committee report in its totality calling it bi...

MUMBAI, FEBRUARY 25: A division bench of the Bombay High Court today rejected the Aguiar Committee report in its totality calling it 8220;biased8221; and ruled that the police encounter in which Sada Pawle and Vijay Tandel were killed on the afternoon of September 26, 1997 was genuine. Judge Aguiar, who was asked by the High Court to conduct a probe into the encounter killings of Jawed Fawda, Sada Pawle and Vijay Tandel, had indicted Mumbai police for staging encounters and had said that they had killed Sada Pawle and Vijay Tandel in cold blood.

While delivering its order for the fourth consecutive day today in a group of petitions accusing Mumbai police of staging encounters to eliminate gangsters, the division bench of Justice N Arumugham and Justice Ranjana Desai said Judge A S Aguiar should have conducted the inquiry 8220;informally8221; and not like a 8220;trial.8221;

The court today dismissed all prayers of the three petitioners 8211; Samajwadi Party, Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights CPDR and Peoples8217;Union for Civil Liberties PUCL 8211; except one, that is the setting up of the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission. The court asked the State Government to take immediate steps in this direction.

Punching holes in the Aguiar Committee report the HC bench questioned why the judge had not summoned important witnesses like senior officers connected directly with encounters to depose before him. The court also objected to his over-reliance on the witness Baldev Singh, despite his Baldev Singh changing his version of the encounter thrice in the court. Baldev Singh had initially filed an affidavit along with Sada Pawle8217;s brother Anand, Anand8217;s wife Anita and sister Hausabai saying that they were all present in the car when Sada Pawle and Vijay Tandel were dragged out and shot by a police team led by Asst. Inspector Vijay Salaskar. However, later all four of them retracted their affidavits. While the three stuck to their retractions when they appeared before the court, Baldev changed his stand again andstuck to the contents of his first affidavit. The HC ruled the evidence given by Baldev Singh was totally false and that he was not present at all when the encounter took place. The high court today also issued a set of guidelines to police to be followed during encounters: n If the police gets a tip-off regarding the criminal movements of a gangster, a diary entry should be made. If a senior officer gets a tip-off, he should put it down in a separate diary.

The First Information Report FIR should be registered immediately without any delay and it should be submitted to the respective court under whose jurisdiction the offence has been committed.

After registering the FIR, the investigating staff should guard the place of encounter till the preparation of spot-panchnama, spot inspection and spot recovery panchnama.

Fingerprints of the gangster who is killed in an encounter should be preserved by the concerned police officers, proper care should be taken after preservation and theprints should be then forwarded to the chemical analyser who can then match the fingerprints with that of the dead body. n Materials collected at the place of offence should be mentioned in the recovery panchnama which should be then forwarded to the appropriate court.

A rough sketch of the place of offence should be drawn by the police or by the survey departments. Inquest panchnama should be sent to the appropriate court without any delay.The court also pointed out that if a person is shot and injured, his statement should be recorded in front of a magistrate if possible or by a medical officer.