Atiq Ahmed murder: Plea in Supreme Court seeks judicial committee

A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a probe by a judicial committee headed by a retired judge into the murder of gangster Atiq Ahmed.

The plea seeks a committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to probe the murder of Atiq and his brother Ashraf. Both were murdered by three men who had posed as journalists on the night of April 15.

The plea filed by advocate Vishal Tiwari also prayed that the committee should probe the 183 encounters that have taken place in Uttar Pradesh since 2017. He also sought a directive to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the probe into the alleged fake encounter of gangster Vikas Dubey.

"Such highlighted actions are a severe threat to the democracy and rule of law, such acts are establishments of anarchy and prima facie development of police state. The Extra judicial killing or fake police encounters have been very badly condemned under the law. In a democratic society the police cannot be allowed to become a mode of delivering final justice or to become a punishing Authority. The power of punishment is only vested in the Judiciary. The police when becomes DARE DEVILS than the entire Rule of law collapses and generates the fear in the mind of C people against police which is very dangerous for the Democracy and this also results into further crime", the petition states.

The petition also said that the Supreme Court must address the violation of right to life and liberty and also the fact that public interest at large is being affected.

"Murder in any police custody of a person is a very serious act and indicates the failure of police system, there might be 2 aspects that either the Atiq Ashraf murder was a crime committed by some other gangsters or it was a conspiracy involving the system ... The concern of this litigation is not to any Atiq or Ashraf murder but a murder which was carried out in a police custody especially when the entire things were very sensitive,"the petition said.

Atiq Ahmed was a Member of Parliament between 2004-2009. Prior to this he was an MLA.