Fri,Dec,7 2012:New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Centre whether Rs 5 lakh compensation awarded by National Human Rights Commission to the family was the cost of killing a person in a fake encounter.
A bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana P Desai was worried by the blatant breach of the constitutional scheme of things where erring armed forces personnel and trigger-happy policemen went unpunished after payment of compensation to the victim’s family. “Even in a proven case of fake encounter, all that a person gets is Rs 5 lakh,” the bench said.
It said the NHRC’s report on 1,671 complaints of fake encounters, in which it found 191 to be true, was distressing to say the least.
Appearing for PIL petitioners from Manipur, who had alleged over 1,500 extra-judicial killings by armed forces personnel and police in the last three decades and sought withdrawal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), senior advocate Colin Gonsalves said it appeared as if payment of Rs 5 lakh gave the license to kill a person in cold blood.
The court was informed that most fake encounter cases were pending in the Guwahati high court after completion of the magisterial inquiry. The bench asked, “What does the HC do to ensure matter (such fake encounters) does not occur in future?”
Gonsalves said even after magisterial inquiries in 10 cases proved these to be fake encounters, the HC did not order prosecution of the accused. One of the 10 victims of fake encounter was a 12-year-old boy who was allegedly shot point blank outside his house and another a 19-year-old whose body was found in a mutilated state. For the Union government, additional solicitor general Paras Kuhad said of the 1,500-odd complaints of fake encounter cases, there was “not a single which was concluded as a case of fake encounter”. When the court wondered how a 12-year-old could be a militant and killed in this manner, Kuhad narrated an incident where militants kidnapped students from a school, trained them for furthering militancy and it was later found how young boys were part of the banned group.
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