Atiq Ahmed killing: Plea before Supreme Court seeks probe by judicial committee

A plea has been filed before the Supreme Court seeking a probe by a judicial committee headed by a retired judge of the apex court into the murder of gangster turned politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf Ahmed when they were in police custody. .The petitioner advocate Vishal Tiwari has also prayed that the committee should probe the 183 'encounters' that have occurred in Uttar Pradesh since 2017.Further, the petitioner has also sought the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the probe in 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 petitioner submitted..The top court must intervene to address the violation of the right to life and liberty, and the fact that public interest at large is being affected, it was stressed."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 plea said.Gangster-turned politician Ahmed was a Member of Parliament between 2004-2009. He was an MLA for 15 years prior to that.