By IANS,
New Delhi : A city court Wednesday issued summons to 13 Delhi Police officials for their role in an alleged staged shootout here in 2002 in which a man wanted in several cases was killed.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjeev Jain asked the 13 police officials to appear before him Sep 10.
The court initiated action on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) report in February that the government refused to prosecute the 13 police oficials despite strong evidence.
While filing the report in the court and seeking closure of the case, the CBI said that the accused officials killed Rupender alias Kanu Jat in a manner to show that he had died in an exchange of fire with the police team.
The CBI took up the probe following the Delhi High Court’s orders and requested the city police chief to sanction the prosecution of Vinay Tyagi, Atul Tyagi, Satish Rana (then sub-inspectors), Satinder Singh, Neeraj Kumar, Nagender (then head constables), Prem Pal Singh, Rajkumar, Hari Om, Naresh Pal, Sudhir Kumar, Rustam Ahmad and Upender (then constables).
But “the lieutenant governor of Delhi did not find it a fit case for grant of sanction to prosecute the accused”, the CBI said in its report to the court, filed under Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) section 173.
As per the FIR filed by the policemen, they raided a house in east Delhi’s Pandav Nagar on Jan 11, 2002, following a tip-off that Rupender alias Kanu Jat, wanted in several cases in Ghaziabad and Delhi, was hiding there. At the house, Rupender fired shots at them, which forced the police team to fire back in self-defence, the FIR said.
Rupender was killed in the retaliatory fire, the police claimed.
The CBI probe found neither gunshot residue on Rupender’s hands nor did they find his fingerprints on the revolver allegedly recovered from him. They also got to know that that Rupender’s body was found on the ground with his hands up.
“It is established that the accused have killed Rupender to show that he died in an encounter,” the CBI alleged.
The agency then moved an application under CrPC Section 197, seeking sanction to prosecute the policemen, but filed the report closing the case after failing to get the government’s sanction.