UP yet to receive NHRC notice on fake encounter case

Lucknow, Aug 16 (UNI) The Uttar Pradesh government today said it was yet to receive the notice of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on the much-publicised September, 2006 fake encounter in which a criminal was allegedly shot dead by cops even as he was surrendering.

Secretary (Home) Javeed Ahmed said the government was yet to receive any notice from the Human Rights body.

Meanwhile, taking serious note of the fake encounter episode in Allahabad last year, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati had yesterday ordered a CB-CID probe to nail down the policemen involved in the crime.

State Director General of Police(DGP) Vikram Singh said here that the CM has ordered the CB-CID probe and has directed the investigating agency to submit their report within 30 days.

''Government has taken the issue very seriously and the guilty policemen and officials would not be spared'', Mr Singh said.

The government has also sought the original video footage of the crime, shown by different private news channel since Tuesday night.

The controversial video showns how a criminal Pintu Mishra was shot dead by the policemen at Civil Lines in Allahabad on September 19, 2006 even after he surrendered before them.

In the incident, three criminals hailing from Varanasi -- Jitendra Mishra, Vinay and Pintu Mishra-- had come to Allahabad to kill another criminal Sujit Pandey, lodged in the Naini central jail.

On the tip off, the civil lines police tried to arrest them near the bus station but the criminal attacked the policemen and in the encounter a constable Ashok Pandey and criminal Jitendra were killed.

Pintu and Vinay fled away from the scene but later Pintu was cornered by the police and the fake encounter took place. However, Vinay was still at large.

At the time of the incident, Rahul Srivastava was the Circle Officer(CO) of Civil Lines police station, while Akhilesh Melhotra was the DIG(Allahabad range) and Subrat Tripathi was IG(Allahabad Zone).

UNI