The Bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and R Mahadevan upheld the Bombay High Court’s conviction of Sharma, who subsequently withdrew his plea.
NEW DELHI: On Monday (Aug 5) : The Supreme Court refused to suspend the conviction of former Police Officer Pradeep Sharma, who was found guilty in a fake encounter case, thus barring him from contesting the upcoming Maharashtra Legislative Assembly polls.
READ ALSO: SC Seeks Gujarat Government’s Response on Bail Plea of Retired IAS Officer Pradeep Sharma
The Bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and R Mahadevan upheld the Bombay High Court’s conviction of Sharma, who subsequently withdrew his plea.
BACKGROUND OF THE CASE
Sharma was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Bombay High Court on March 19 for his involvement in the 2006 fake encounter killing of Ramnarayan Gupta, also known as Lakhan Bhaiya, a suspected member of Chhota Rajan’s gang. Gupta and his friend were apprehended on November 11, 2006, in a Mumbai suburb, and Gupta was killed the same day in a staged encounter.
The High Court (HC) on March 19 directed Sharma to surrender within three weeks after reversing his 2013 acquittal in the 2006 case and upholding the conviction of 13 others.
The Supreme Court (SC) bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and Prashant Kumar Mishra heard Sharma’s legal team, including senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, Siddharth Luthra, and advocate Subash Jadhav. They argued that the HC did not consider Sharma’s absence from the alleged site in Andheri.
Rohatgi contended that the prosecution never brought the alleged witness to court to testify and had acquitted most of the civilians attributed with the role of abducting Lakhanbhaiya and Anil Bheda, who was later found dead during the trial.
Rohatgi also argued that the empty cartridge found did not match the batch of bullets from Sharma’s service revolver, which the HC claimed was used to kill Gupta.
Yug Choudhry, counsel for the victim’s brother, Ramprasad Gupta, an advocate who had filed the ‘fake encounter’ FIR, opposed Sharma’s plea and cited other pending criminal cases against Sharma, including the 2021 explosives threat case near Antilla in Mumbai.
Despite these arguments, Sharma was granted bail by the SC, according to Rohatgi.
Sharma’s appeal described Gupta as a “dreaded criminal” involved in allegedly 10 cases. The HC had stated that the cases against Gupta did not give the police officers a license to kill.
The HC division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Gauri Godse concluded that the police officers’ act was “clearly an act of murder, a cold-blooded murder,” and deemed Sharma’s acquittal by the Mumbai sessions court as “perverse.”
The HC held that the “police officers, who are protectors of law, grossly misused and abused their position by abducting and killing Ramnarayan in a fake encounter, disguising it as a genuine encounter, and by abducting Anil Bheda and wrongfully confining him for almost a month.”
An FIR was registered in 2009 after a special investigation team (SIT) determined that a rival had paid the police to kill Gupta, following a High Court directive to file an FIR. Despite a sessions court acquitting Sharma in July 2013 after a five-year trial, 21 others, including 13 police personnel, were convicted. The State government appealed the acquittal, and the High Court eventually overturned the sessions court’s decision, convicting Sharma.
The Supreme Court sought the Maharashtra Government’s response to Sharma’s appeal against the High Court’s verdict in April and granted him bail. However, the Supreme Court refused to suspend his conviction, leading Sharma to withdraw his plea.
Sharma, who runs an NGO and is a retired police officer, had previously contested elections. He was also in the news for his 2021 arrest by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the Antilia bomb threat and the murder of businessman Mansukh Hiren, for which he was granted bail by the Supreme Court in August 2023.
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