The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Uttar Pradesh Government to submit a status report on the steps taken after the killing of gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf in Prayagraj.
“Why were they not taken to the ambulance right from the entry gate to the hospital? Why were they paraded?” the SC asked the government.
A bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Dipankar Datta also requested a report from the UP government on Ahmad’s son Asad’s police encounter in Jhansi. On April 13, Asad was killed in an encounter with a UP Police special task force (ST) team.
Two days later, Ahmad and Ashraf were shot dead at point-blank range by three men posing as journalists while being escorted by police to a medical college in Prayagraj for a health check-up.
The Supreme Court was hearing a petition filed by advocate Vishal Tiwari, who requested an investigation into the 183 encounters that have occurred in Uttar Pradesh since 2017.
Tiwari’s plea, in which he accused the state of Uttar Pradesh of violating the rule of law and engaging in oppressive police brutality, stated that extrajudicial killings of fake encounters have been severely condemned under the law. “Only the Judiciary has the power of punishment.” “When the police become daredevils, the entire rule of law collapses and generates fear in the minds of the public against the police, which is very dangerous for democracy and also results in additional crime,” the plea stated.
Tiwari argued in his plea that such actions posed a serious threat to democracy and the rule of law, as well as the establishment of anarchy and the presumptive development of the police state. “In a democratic society, the police cannot be allowed to become a mode of delivering final justice or a punishing Authority,” the statement added.
