An inquiry magistrate’s finding that five policemen are guilty of killing a security guard in a Badlapur sexual assault case comes months after Justice Prithviraj K Chavan raised questions about police allegations that the accused was shot in “revenge” again. he said this incident “cannot be called an encounter”.
Justice Chavan was part of a bench headed by Justice Revati Mohite-Dere that opened holes in the version of the Maharashtra police in the events that led to the death of the accused in September last year.
On Monday, the Bombay High Court was informed that the investigation by the magistrate says that if the reports of the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) are considered, the “false” allegations made by the parents of the deceased make sense. The apex court directed the Maharashtra government to register an FIR against the officials.
A 23-year-old security guard who was arrested in August last year for allegedly sexually abusing two girls at a school in Badlapur in Thane district was shot dead while being transported in a police vehicle on September 23 last year. The police said that he was killed in revenge after he took away the policeman’s service gun and fired three rounds, injuring the policeman. The police also said that the suspect was first handcuffed but after asking for a glass of water, one of his hands was released.
On September 25 last year, a high court bench revealed that “four trained police officers” were accompanying the defendant and should have tried to disarm him and subdue him first. The court asked how the policemen shot in the temple or the head of the deceased when as a standard practice or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), they should have shot in the leg in case of retaliation.
The High Court judges also asked if four trained police officers, including those who were involved in wars in the past, would not have been able to defeat the defendant who was not trained in the use of firearms, saying the death was avoidable.
In his report, the Investigating Magistrate, Ashok R Shendge, observed that based on the recreation of the scene, the four policemen could easily have handled the situation as there was little distance between them and the suspects. “The suspected car was moving, so they could not control the situation by avoiding the death of the deceased,” said the report.
Justice Chavan, who said that he had experience in using a gun, had asked if the deceased was able to open the gun. When the public prosecutor said that the weapon was unlocked and the deceased tried to pull the upper part of the magazine, Justice Chavan found it “hard to believe” and said the same required force.
The judge said that a common man cannot fire a gun unless he is trained. The state stated that it was an old gun and the deceased could have found it since the policeman was wearing a uniform and had his gun in his left waist, the judge pulled the police over for “negligence” and “carelessness”.
On November 18, the bench also found that it is “unusual” that the residue of the gun is missing from the hands of the deceased and that there are no fingerprints on the bottle he allegedly drank from.
The Magistrate’s report found that “there were no fingerprints” on the gun allegedly used by the deceased and “no remains of the gun were found on the hands, handcuffs and clothes of the deceased”. It found that the use of force by the police was wrong and the police’s claim of self-defense was suspect.
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