A man was arrested in Badlapur. He was accused of sexually molesting two girls in a school owned and run by a board of trustees that were close to BJP.
The police, initially, did not take any action against the accused and did not file an FIR against the accused or the school management.
The parents of the school were outraged, they protested and when the protests did not yield any results, they blocked the local trains at Badlapur. The issue came to a head and the accused was arrested. The trustees of the school disappeared and were on a run.
The incident happened on 12-13th August and the arrest happened on 20th August.
Devendra Fadnavis was the Home Minister of Maharashtra when this incident happened.
Then on 23rd September, the police took the custody of the accused from the jail where he was housed and were driving him to another jail, when Akshay Shinde allegedly snatched a gun from a police officer and fired three rounds. He ended up injuring one officer before he was killed in the ‘encounter’.
The father of the accused approached the Bombay High Court and said that his son had been killed in a ‘fake encounter’ and that an investigation should be done immediately, otherwise the evidence will be destroyed by the police.
The police team had already destroyed all evidence. After the alleged shoot-out, they took the vehicle to their police station and washed it removing all evidence. The shoot out happened at a deserted stretch of road, where there is no CCTV coverage. This stretch seems to be a favorite with Maharashtra Police for such activities.
The case is being heard in the Bombay High Court. The CID (Crime Investigation Department) of Maharashtra Police is doing the investigation and as expected, does not seem to have done a proper investigation. Their investigation has drawn the ire of the judges. Apparently, all evidence has not been submitted to the court.
The judges had already expressed their apprehension of this being a ‘fake-encounter’ as the primary story fell into how the police normally does these extra-judicial killings.
Here was a man, accused nevertheless, but he was ‘executed’, thus subverting the normal course of justice. There will be many who will take the side of the police and say that the police did well in getting rid of the criminal but there is a danger, a grave danger in such operations. If you happen to be an accused, you may be ‘executed’ without you getting a chance to present your side of the story, defend yourself, and therein lies the danger.
The justice system has been subverted by the police team. That is a dangerous thing to happen. It deprives a human of a judicial trial.
Even Ajmal Kasab, the terrorist who carried the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai in 2008 was given a long trial and was awarded the death penalty in due course of time.
Police needs to be taken to task for doing anything that subverts the normal course of justice. Hopefully the judges will take the case, that of ‘fake-encounter’ to its logical conclusion.
What was also disturbing was that posters claiming that Devendra Fadnavis had taken the ‘revenge’ sprung up within hours in the town of Badlapur, showing him wielding a gun, suggesting that he had done his part of cleaning up the society.
