The Supreme Court on Monday issued notices to the Centre, states and union territories on a petition seeking setting up of a committee to inquire into police encounter deaths in the last 10 years and proper steps to check such extra judicial killings of innocent people.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan asked the respondents to file replies to the PIL filed by hyderabad-based advocate Ramesh Reddy, who alleged that guidelines laid down by the National Human Rights Commission in dealing with encounter killings were not being implemented.
He submitted that non-adherence to guidelines was mainly due to inadequate infrastructure available with the State Human Rights Commissions.
The petitioner’s counsel said out of the 35 states and union territories, only 16 had their human rights commissions and only 11 of them were functioning with a Chairperson.
Bihar and Jharkhand did not have a State Human Rights Commission, he said.
The counsel said since the state commissions were not properly functioning, the pendency of the cases at NHRC was rising as the affected people were directly approaching it.
The counsel said the poor state of human rights commissions in the states was reflected in NHRC's annual report for 2004-05 which had said casual approach of state machineries had resulted in rise of fake encounters.
{{/usCountry}}The counsel said the poor state of human rights commissions in the states was reflected in NHRC's annual report for 2004-05 which had said casual approach of state machineries had resulted in rise of fake encounters.
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