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SC to examine Gujarat’s objections to sharing contents of report on ‘encounters’
A bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Ahsanuddin Amanullah in January directed portions of the report be provided to the lawyers appearing in two public interest litigations
The Supreme Court has agreed to examine in July the Gujarat government’s objections to sharing contents of a judicial committee’s report that found three out of the 22 “encounters” in the state between 2002 to 2006 to be fake. Former Supreme Court judge HS Bedi headed the committee.
A bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Ahsanuddin Amanullah in January directed portions related to the three “encounters” be redacted from the report and provided to the lawyers appearing in two public interest litigations (PILs) including of journalist BG Verghese, who passed away in 2014, and lyricist Javed Akhtar.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who appeared for Gujarat, opposed the direction. “These are an investigation and inquiry conducted under the Code of Criminal Procedure. The question is could this inquiry be shared with strangers? Let nothing be shared except with the potential accused, the concerned court, and the public prosecutor.”
The bench on Monday posted the matter for hearing on July 12. “We will list the matter for hearing as it appears there is some reservation expressed on sharing the report with the petitioners. We have to address this issue.”
The court set up the committee in 2012 while hearing the PILs questioning the genuineness of the “encounters”. The panel submitted its report in 2018 for the court to consider how to implement its findings.
The state government objected to the report claiming Bedi unilaterally signed it. It argued it cannot be taken as the report of the committee which had other members as well. Bedi filed an affidavit saying the report was shown to the other members before it was submitted.
The state government claimed the petitioners were not entitled to get the report as their PILs were “selective”. It questioned the locus of the petitioners saying they were not concerned with “encounters” in other states.
The court said, “You [the state government] are opposing the implementation of the report. We have to hear you on whether to implement the report. Assistance rendered to us cannot be from one side alone. This is why we asked you to segregate the material pertaining to the three encounters in question.”
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the petitioners, submitted that once the state accepts the report, it should register a First Information Report and ask an independent agency to conduct a further probe.
