Sajjanar, Jaya Bachchan, Swati Maliwal made party to pleas

Two separate petitions were filed in the Supreme Court on Saturday seeking an independent investigation into the extrajudicial killing of four men accused of the rape and murder of a veterinarian in Hyderabad.

The writ petition filed by Supreme Court advocate G.S. Mani sought a CBI or a special investigation team probe against Cyberbad Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar, who is a respondent in the petition.

Red herring

Mr. Mani said the encounter was a red herring, deliberately done to divert public attention away from the inability of the police to prevent such crimes against women.

Advocate M.L. Sharma, in his petition, has made Jaya Bachchan, MP, a party for “appreciating” the “encounter” and Delhi Commission of Women chairperson Swati Maliwal for publicly seeking a “quick hanging” of the accused.

The petitions, likely to be listed for hearing in the Supreme Court this week, urged the court to call for police records of the case and further order an investigation into the encounter in accordance with the 16 guidelines framed by the court in 2014 in the PUCL judgment.

The Telangana High Court has already intervened in the case. In a special session on Friday, a Bench ordered that the bodies of the four men should be preserved till 8 p.m. on December 9.

It also asked the Mahabubnagar Principal District Judge to obtain a copy of the video of the post-mortem of the four.

Police version

Going by the police version, accused Mohammed Arif, Chintakunta Chennakeshavulu, Jollu Shiva and Jollu Naveen were taken to the scene of the crime around 60 km from Hyderabad in the early hours of December 6 for a reconstruction of the crime scene.

They allegedly then grabbed the weapons of the police team and opened fire. The police retaliated and the accused died in the exchange of fire.