Hyderabad: Following sudden encounter of the four ‘allegedly’ accused in rape and murder of a veterinary doctor, on wee hours of Friday, civil rights activists filed a writ petition to seek judicial intervention into the reported encounter.
The Telangana High court on Friday directed the government to preserve the bodies of the four men till Monday, December 9.
The postmortem of the bodies was conducted at Mahaboobnagar District Hospital under the supervision of the Superintendent of the Hospital and a team of forensic experts from Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad.
Responding to the writ petition Court has directed that the dead bodies of the four deceased be preserved till 8 pm on Monday.
The High Court has further directed officials to submit a video recording of the post-mortem of all accused, in a CD to the Principal District Judge, Mahaboobnagar, who will be submitting it to the Registrar General of the HC Telangana by Saturday evening as directed by the HC.
“It would be a fallacy to even imagine that some kind of justice has been served by abandoning all due process and committing such killings. Is it permissible for police personnel to play judge, jury, and executioner and mete out fatal justice in this manner? Is the ‘satisfying of the collective conscience’ in such a brazenly unlawful and murderous way healthy for a democracy? This is an absolute violation of rule of law and constitutional guarantees,” the petition noted.
The activists also said, “It is clear that all the four accused/suspects were in police custody, thus completely unarmed, and in all probabilities handcuffed. The recreation of the events at the crime scene at 3 am in the morning raises further serious concerns into these extra-judicial killings.” Cyberabad Commissioner VC Sajjanar, however, clarified on Friday that the accused were not handcuffed.
On Friday, the four accused were killed when they were taken to Chatanpally to recover the phone, wallet and power bank of the victim, Disha.