A city court on Saturday reserved its order on the sentencing of 17 Uttarakhand police personnel convicted in the fake encounter killing of an MBA graduate with CBI demanding death for seven of them.
Special CBI Judge JPS Malik will pronounce the order on June 9 in the case in which all the 18 accused policemen were convicted on Friday in the July 3, 2009 fake encounter in which 22-year-old Ranbir Singh of Ghaziabad was killed in a jungle near Dehradun.
One of the accused was allowed to walk free from jail as he has already served the period of sentence for a lesser offence during the pendency of the trial.
During the argument on quantum of sentence, Senior Public Prosecutor Brajesh Kumar Shukla, appearing for CBI, demanded death sentence for seven convicted under the offence of Section 302 (murder) of IPC saying that the police personnel behaved in a “predatory manner”, which falls under the act of “rarest of rare”.
“They (police) were the protectors of law but they behaved in a predatory manner. They should have given protection to the victim, but they killed him in a fake encounter... Pandemonium can’t be allowed to be prevailed. In a case where fake encounter is proved, the situation is rarest of rare and death penalty should be awarded,” Shukla said.
During the course of arguments on sentencing, the prosecution also requested the court to impose heavy fine on the convicts and compensation should be given to the victim’s parents. Meanwhile, apprehending violence among 17 Uttarakhand cops convicted in the case, the court asked police to provide “high security” to them during transit between jail and court. “If you are apprehending some untoward incident, then provide high security by deploying additional police forces. There is no need of bringing them here in handcuffs,” Special CBI judge JPS Malik said.