The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Police encounters: Bench concludes arguments

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Tuesday, Mar 18, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Police encounters: Bench concludes arguments

Legal Correspondent

Hyderabad: The arguments in a batch of writ petitions, regarding registering of cases against policemen who participate in armed conflicts wherein alleged extremists die, have concluded on Monday. The Bench of five judges which heard the arguments declared that the judgment will be delivered later.

The Bench comprised Justice G. Raghu Ram, Justice V.V.S.Rao, Justice R.Subhash Reddy, Justice Ramesh Ranga Nathan and Justice G. Bhavanai Prasad.

The controversy was regarding the cases which are being registered against the police who participate in these encounters.

Initially a Division Bench which dealt with the encounter of Madhusudhan Raj case nearly a decade ago, said that a case of murder has to be registered.

When a civil rights activist filed a case seeking a sweeping direction to register cases of murder in all the encounter cases another Division Bench declined to give the relief.

Later on, yet another Division Bench referred the issue to a Bench of three judges.

Attack on Parliament

The Three-Judge Bench said that every encounter case cannot be termed as murder case and referred to attack on Parliament wherein the police killed the intruders and said that in such cases, the policemen cannot be tried for murder.

Police Officers Association impleaded in the case and argued that every case of encounter cannot be registered as murder and each police officer cannot be forced to face trial to his peril.

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