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Judge rules Bombay police's two encounters were 'fake'

Principal Sessions Judge A S Aguiar of the city civil and sessions court, Bombay, who probed into two police encounters in which alleged gangsters Sada Pawle and Vijay Tandel, and a peanut vendor Abu Sayma alias Javed Fawda were brutally killed, today stated that they cannot be said to be genuine encounters.

Judge Aguiar was directed last year by a division bench of the Bombay high court, comprising Justices Ajit Shah and J A Patil, to hold an inquiry into the killing of three persons following public interest litigations filed by the Samajwadi Party into the death of Abu Sayma, and another by the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights and another voluntary organisation demanding a probe into the death of Sada Pawle and Vijay Tandel.

The petitioners alleged that these two encounters were staged by the Bombay police and were 'fake encounters'. They also urged the Bombay high court to hold an inquiry into the incident by a sitting judge of the high court or the Central Bureau of Investigation. They also urged that the officers involved should be booked under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and a offence of murder should be registered, and families of victims should be adequately compensated.

Alleged henchmen of the Arun Gawli gang, Sada Pawle and Vijay Tandel were killed in a police encounter on September 26, 1997, near Rajawadi hospital in north-east Bombay by assistant police inspector Vijay Salaskar and his men. Another victim, Javed Fawda was killed on midnight of August 27-28, 1997, near a hotel in South Bombay by police inspector Vasant Dhoble and officers and men of the crime branch, CID.

After thorough cross-examination and recording of evidences lasting over four months, Judge Aguiar submitted the report running into 223 pages to the Bombay high court under a sealed cover. The matter had earlier come up before second division bench comprising Justices N R Arumugam and Vishnu Sahay last month.

During the arguments senior counsel V R Manohar, appearing on behalf of the Bombay police and advocate Majeed Memon urged that the report may be released. However, the bench called the additional registrar of Bombay high court and ordered that the report be opened. Till today the report was kept confidential and finally was made public.

During the recording of evidences, Vijay Tandel's sister and Sada Pawle's wife turned hostile and retracted from their earlier affidavits, but a ticket collector, Baldev Singh, who is a key witness in the encounter, stuck to his affidavit and delivered evidence against Bombay police.

Meanwhile, the sister of Abu Sayma, Rubinabi, also delivered evidences against the city police and submitted that her brother was picked up from a mosque outside his residence at Behrampada at Bandra in north-west Bombay. There were witnesses also who saw plainclothes person dragging Abu Sayma in a white Ambassador car. The police claimed that Abu Sayma came near a hotel at Ballard Pier to commit some offence, and the officers who had prior information about his whereabouts, asked him to surrender. But he fired on the police party and in retaliation the police also opened fired in which he was killed.

Majeed Memon said he would urge the police to arrest the officers involved in the encounter under Section 302 of the IPC.

UNI

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