By Mubasshir Mushtaq
NEW DELHI
In a landmark ruling on extra-judicial killing, a special court on Monday awarded life imprisonment to 17 policemen who were convicted on Friday for killing a 22-year-old management student in the north Indian city of Dehradun.
The judge JPS Malik from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Friday convicted 18 policemen for gunning down MBA student Ranbir Singh who the police claim was attempting to commit a crime. The court ruled that the police staged the encounter and they dismissed the criminal charge on Singh as bogus.
The Federal agency CBI charged 18 policemen in December 2009 for murder, kidnapping, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence.
The special court found seven policemen guilty of murder, 10 policemen were convicted for conspiring to murder and one policeman was found guilty of framing false evidence.
The 'fake encounter' case was transferred by the Supreme Court to Delhi on the plea of Singh’s father.
Extra-judicial killings, popularly known as “police encounters”, were commonly practiced in India a decade ago in order to eliminate gangsters, mafia dons and hardened criminals.
A series of convictions of top police officers, especially in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, has seen the cessation of the encounters by the police.
www.aa.com.tr/en
