Gadoli’s family refuses to take body till Gurgaon cops are booked

Gadoli’s brother Kuldeep Singh and his sister Sudesh, who came to the city from Gurgaon a day after Gadoli was killed, have been camping near the JJ Hospital for the past 12 days

Almost a fortnight after gangster Sandeep Gadoli was shot dead in the city by a team of Gurgaon police in an alleged encounter, his family has refused to collect his body from the morgue at JJ Hospital saying unless the erring cops are booked, they will not budge.

This, despite a Bombay high court order directing them to collect Gadoli’s body from the morgue.

Gadoli’s brother Kuldeep Singh and his sister Sudesh, who came to the city from Gurgaon a day after Gadoli was killed, have been camping near the JJ Hospital for the past 12 days.

“We are ready even if it takes two years for the Mumbai police to register an FIR against all those who killed my brother. Even if doubts have been raised on my brother’s credentials, it doesn’t justify the encounter. A murder is still a murder and the guilty must be brought to book,” Sudesh said.

The Mumbai police have so far refrained from registering an FIR against the Gurgaon cops, saying they have already registered an FIR against Gadoli on the charges of attempt to murder considering that he had “also opened fire” at the Gurgaon cops and that “this FIR will be sufficient to probe all angles of the case.”

Gadoli’s counsels, meanwhile, will mention their plea before the high court on Monday, February 22.

While a bench of justice Ranjit More and justice VL Achiliya had directed the Mumbai Police on February 15 to register an FIR against all the eight members of the Gurgaon Police, who were part of the “encounter” earlier this week, the Supreme Court stayed the order.

The SC also sent back the petition to the high court bench, directing it to implead all the eight Gurgaon Police officers as a party and to give them a fair hearing.

Thus, while the petition is likely to be taken up by HC on February 22, it is unlikely that a decision on whether a second FIR must be registered in the case or not will be taken on the first day of the hearing itself.

But Gadoli’s kin say they are willing to wait. “We will continue our fight until all those involved in his murder aren’t punished. And we will stay here near the morgue because we don’t want Sandeep’s soul to feel that he has been abandoned,” Sudesh said.