The Supreme court has installed a three-member inquiry commission on Thursday with the view of conducting the probe into the Hyderabad encounter case in which the four accused with the connection to the gangrape and murder case of a 26-year-old female doctor were shot dead, exactly one day after it had proposed to constitute an inquiry commission headed by the former Apex court Justice.

The Apex court, after resuming its hearing on the two public interest litigations that demanded the directive from the court to form an independent commission to probe the killings, had appointed a three-member commission headed by former Justice of the Supreme Court V S Sirpurkar to initiate the investigations into the encounter and the other two members of the commission are former Justice of Bombay High court Rekha Baldota and former CBI director Karthikeyan.

In its directive, the Supreme court bench headed by Chief Justice of India S A Bobde had instructed the inquiry commission to finish the probe in six months and table the final report before the court. By stalling all the legal grounds and proceedings that were set up by the Telangana High court and the National Human Rights Commission, the Apex court had ordered the courts across the country not to hear the petitions which have been filed with regard to the Hyderabad encounter case.

The directive of the Apex court comes nearly a fortnight after the female doctor was murdered in the outskirts of Hyderabad. One of the Public Interest Litigations was filed by advocate G S Mani in which he stated that the alleged encounter was carried out with the motive of diverting the attention of the public from the inabilities of the police department to protect the women from such heinous crimes. Through his petition, he sought the directive from the Supreme court to constitute a CBI investigation or to install a special investigation to probe the killings and to interrogate V.C. Sajjanar, the police commissioner of Cyberabad who played a central role in the encounter and who is also the respondent in the petition. 

The Cyberabad police and the Telangana government had justified the encounter by citing it as a retaliatory and self-defense move after two of the accused had allegedly fired at the police by extorting the weapons from the team that had caused severe injuries to two policemen.

On December 6th, 2019 Hyderabad police department had encountered and shot dead the four accused of the case after they were reportedly attempted to evade the investigations and the bodies of the accused would be preserved till December 13th in the state-run Gandhi hospital in Hyderabad. On November 27th, a 26-year-old female Hyderabad Veterinary doctor was reportedly gang-raped and brutally murdered by these four accused who belong to Narayanpet district. Following the crime, they had allegedly carried the body and set ablaze at Chatanpally village, a few kilometers away from the place where she was killed.

Also read: https://thenewstuff.in/hyd-encounter-apex-court-proposes-probe-headed-former-justice