KSHRC finds M'luru cops guilty of fake encounter; recommends CID probe

Mangaluru: The Karnataka State Human Rights Commission (KSHRC) has found that the encounter which took place nine years back in which the police claimed to have shot dead a history-sheeter is to be a fake encounter and has recommended for a through probe by the Criminal Investigation Depatment (CID).

On October 10 2009, a Mangaluru Rural police station constable Sunil Kumar had shot and killed Sardar aka Babu near Swarnagiri Layout. Kumar was accompanined by the then SI Prakash and two others identified as Giridhar Shetty and Paul Praveen D’Souza, whom the KSHRC has termed as witnesses.

The police report

As per the report submitted by the then Mangaluru SP, on the day of the incident at around 7:30pm in the evening, SI Prakash had received as a tipoff from a trusted source that two escapees from Vijayapura jail and three others would be meeting in his jurisdiction in a Maruti Swift car (KA 02 MC 3170).

Consequently, Prakash, Kumar, Shetty and D’souza went to Swarnagiri Layout and spotted the car at 8:05 pm. They attempted to block the car by parking their van at a distance; however the driver tried to escape. The man (Sardar) sitting besides the driver, reportedly opened fire at Kumar and in self-defence, Kumar shot him.

Investigation

But, during investigation, KSHRC found that the postmortem report mentioned 2 bullet wounds on Sardar’s corpse along with other injuries. Hence, the commission noted that though the police report claimed that Kumar had fired only one shot, there were two bullet wounds found on the mortal remains of the deceased. The wounds are on the left side of the chest and the other in his abdomen. Also the police have failed to give a credible explanation for the anomaly.

Besides, the Firearms Examination Certificate (No. FAS-212/2009) submitted along with the FSL report showed Sardar was fired at from a distance of 12 to 24 inches, which was much closer than the police claim.

The order

The order observed that the station in-charge, inspector Sunil Kumar has failed to follow procedure after the death of Sardar and that the then SP and jurisdictional DySP had failed to report the crime. The order advised initiation of disciplinary action against all these officers for dereliction of duty. It also asked the government to start a CID probe into the fake encounter to prosecute the offenders.

The order further asked the governemtn to compensate Sardar’s family with Rs. 2 lakh which should be recovered from the salaries of the involved cops.