The CBI on Saturday demanded death penalty for seven of the 17 Uttarakhand Police officers convicted of murder in the fake encounter killing of an MBA graduate the day before.
Special CBI judge J P S Malik reserved his order on sentencing for June 9 in the case of the extrajudicial killing of 22-year old Ranbir Singh, in which 17 accused policemen were convicted on Friday. Singh was killed on July 3, 2009, in a fake encounter staged by the cops in a jungle near Dehradun.
Senior public prosecutor Brajesh Kumar Shukla demanded death sentence for seven officers pointing out that the incident was a “cold-blooded murder in which bullets were pumped into the victim’s body from close range”. The death penalty would deter other policemen from following suit, he added.
Defence counsel RM Tufail, appearing for 13 of the convicts, said that they had no criminal history, nor was this a case of ‘supari’ killings (such as the 2006 murder of real estate agent Ramnarayan Gupta.) This case didn’t fall into the category of the “rarest of the rare,” he argued.
The court had on Friday held seven of the 18 policemen, whom the CBI had chargesheeted in July 2009, of killing of the victim, who had gone to Dehradun to take up a job in July 2009.
{{/usCountry}}The court had on Friday held seven of the 18 policemen, whom the CBI had chargesheeted in July 2009, of killing of the victim, who had gone to Dehradun to take up a job in July 2009.
{{/usCountry}}Ten were sentenced for related charges, while one was freed on time already served.