Supreme Court rejected the plea of 9 Punjab cops to cancel murder charges in a 2015 fake encounter case. The Court said firing on a civilian in plain clothes is not a part of police duty.
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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court of India said that police officers cannot claim protection under official duty when they surround a civilian car in plain clothes and shoot the person inside. The Court said such actions are not related to maintaining law and order or arresting anyone legally.
This important decision came as the Court dismissed the request of nine Punjab police officers who wanted the murder charges against them dropped in connection with a 2015 fake encounter case.
The Supreme Court bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta also brought back the charge of destroying evidence against the then Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Parampal Singh. He was accused of ordering the removal of the car’s number plate after the firing incident.
“It has been held that the cloak of official duty cannot be extended to acts intended to thwart justice,”
-the Court clearly said. It also added that the accused police officers, including DCP Parampal Singh, do not need prior government permission to be prosecuted.
This ruling was given by the Supreme Court on April 29 and has now been uploaded on the official website. The order supports the earlier decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court dated May 20, 2019, which also refused to cancel the case against the nine policemen.
The Court dismissed the argument made by the police officers that they were protected under Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). This section usually requires special permission to prosecute government officers for actions done during official work. But the Court said that this rule does not apply here.
“Equally untenable is the submission that cognisance was barred for want of sanction under Section 197 CrPC. The petitioners stand accused of surrounding a civilian vehicle in plain clothes and jointly firing upon its occupant. Such conduct, by its very nature, bears no reasonable nexus to the duties of maintaining public order or effecting lawful arrest,”
-the bench said.
The Court explained that just using official weapons or saying they were doing their job is not enough to make such illegal actions acceptable.
In the specific case of DCP Parampal Singh, the Court said if the charge of removing the vehicle’s number plate is true, then it shows a clear intention to destroy evidence.
“Where the very accusation is suppression of evidence, the nexus is absent on the face of the record,”
-it said.
According to the complaint, on June 16, 2015, around 6:30 PM, a police team wearing plain clothes stopped a white Hyundai i-20 car on Verka-Batala Road in Amritsar. The police team came in three vehicles—a Bolero, an Innova, and a Verna—and fired at the i-20 from a very close distance. The driver, Mukhjit Singh alias Mukha, died on the spot.
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The complaint also said that two people saw the firing happen, including the person who filed the complaint. Their statements were officially recorded under Section 200 of the CrPC during the early inquiry.
Later, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed after senior police officers stepped in. The SIT said that the police officers’ claim of self-defence, mentioned in the FIR, was false. The SIT also recovered CCTV footage showing how the police vehicles came together and surrounded the i-20 car, confirming the chain of events.
Justice Vikram Nath, writing the judgment, said that both the magistrate’s order summoning the accused and the session court’s order of framing charges were based on solid initial evidence of a planned gun attack.
“No error of law or perversity of approach is shown,”
-the court held, while rejecting the appeals of the accused police officers.
In another related matter, the Supreme Court accepted a separate appeal from complainant Princepal Singh. He had challenged the High Court’s decision that had earlier cancelled the complaint and the summoning order against DCP Parampal Singh in the evidence tampering case.
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