New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the probe into the encounter of gangster Vikas Dubey would be held in public domain, and, as a result, there would be a sufficient safeguard to the way the inquiry is held.
A bench, headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, dismissed a plea filed by advocate Ghanshyam Upadhyay seeking to disband the three-member inquiry commission, headed by Justice B.S. Chauhan (retd), tasked to investigate the extrajudicial killing of Dubey by the Uttar Pradesh Police.
The top court said: “The enquiry held would be in public domain and the petitioner has already been granted the liberty of participating therein. The report of the enquiry is ordered to be filed in the petitions which were filed before this court. Therefore, there would be a sufficient safeguard to the manner in which the inquiry would be held.”
The bench also pulled up Upadhyay, saying: “We find that the petitioner has been raising unnecessary apprehensions and repeated applications are being filed which in fact is hampering the process of inquiry.”
Rejecting the allegation bias made by the petitioner, the apex court said: “The allegations of bias made by him against the members of the Commission merely on the basis of newspaper reports and nothing more, are liable to be rejected outright.”
The bench added that even in a case where the petitioner before the court was a person against whom the Commission of Inquiry was constituted, the court applied strict standards for testing the allegation of personal bias against the Inquiry Commission.
The top court also noted that the allegations that the brother of the chairman of the Commission is a legislator belonging to or supporting the party in power and that the member of the Commission is related to the Inspector General of Police, Kanpur Range, are not sufficient to come to the conclusion that it would lead to bias or conflict of interest.
