The Hindu : New Delhi News : Accused Delhi cops look Westward

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 20, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

Accused Delhi cops look Westward

Prashant Pandey

NEW DELHI: Coming from a police force that likes to compare itself with its counterparts in the West, the accused Delhi policemen in the Connaught Place shooting incident had also looked Westward in a bid to get reprieve from the court.

During the trial, counsel for accused Inspector Anil Kumar, S. P. Ahluwalia, had placed before the court the instance in which the British police had gunned down a Brazilian man suspecting him to be a terrorist after the serial bomb blasts in London in 2006. The police had done so without any provocation.

Counsel had pointed out that while the Government had apologised for the incident, the shooting did not come in the way of promotion of the officers and that they were not prosecuted.

Mr. Ahluwalia had gone on to argue that “India was facing height of terrorism then…the police officers were trained to fire in a fraction of seconds”. Therefore, the firing resorted to by the accused was only “due to misjudgement of whole situation”.

Counsel had also placed before the court another instance from the US in which policemen had killed a person without provocation thinking him to be a criminal.

All the policemen were acquitted on the ground that when the person took out a wallet from the pocket of his trousers, the accused policemen thought he was going to take out a weapon and fire at them. But while convicting Inspector Kumar along with Assistant Commissioner of Police S. S. Rathi and nine other Delhi policemen this past Tuesday, Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar rejected the defence arguments on two grounds.

The Judge categorically observed that “in both the instances the police officers involved in the shooting did not plant any weapon upon the persons killed by them…In the present case Jagjeet Singh and Pradeep Goel were killed because accused persons had conspired to kill Mohammad Yaseen.”

In the Connaught Place shooting, it was amply proved that firearms were planted on the victims to give credence to the theory that first the occupants fired from inside the car and then the police retaliated. The court also said even a hardened criminal or a terrorist enjoyed the protections provided under Article 21 of the Constitution.

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