Allahabad High Court order in Pilibhit extra-judicial killings case merits a substantive appeal
Published on: 18 January 2023, 04:57 am
As early as 1993, the Supreme Court had castigated the Uttar Pradesh police. When the CBI authorities approached the local police as well as officers in the Home Department of the State Government, they did not receive the desired cooperation and case papers were not handed over to them.
—-
What was Allahabad High Court's recent verdict on the Pilibhit encounter case of 1991?
ON December 15, 2022, the Allahabad High Court reduced the sentence of 47 policemen for killing ten Sikh men to seven years of rigorous imprisonment. The innocent Sikhs were killed in three incidents of extrajudicial executions (EJEs) in a single night in Uttar Pradesh's Pilibhit district in 1991.
EJEs in India are euphemistically called 'encounter deaths' as part of a widespread effort at dissimulation of State responsibility and command responsibility by State actors in cases of cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians, as in this case.
The Allahabad High Court convicted the policemen of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. It set aside the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) trial court's verdict which convicted the policemen of murder and criminal conspiracy. The high court convicted them of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
“Extrajudicial executions in India are euphemistically called 'encounter deaths' as part of a widespread effort at dissimulation of State responsibility and command responsibility by State actors in cases of cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians.
The Shiromani Akali Dal, led by the Badal family and the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee met and requested Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in December 2022, to prefer an early appeal in the Supreme Court against the high court order.