Reconstitute Dubey probe panel, SC urged

NEW DELHI: Advocates-cum-PIL petitioners on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking reconstitution of the Justice B S Chauhan commission set up to inquire into the encounter killings of gangster Vikas Dubey and his aides and sought substitution of two of its members saying their continuation would create doubts about the fairness of the inquiry.
The petitioners, Anoop Prakash Awasthi and Ghanshyam Upadhyay, said commission member and ex-DGP K L Gupta had given statements to the media immediately after the July 10 encounter killing of Dubey that the police should not be doubted all the time. He had purportedly said, “On face value, we should accept what the police are saying. Why do we always start with negativity and dub the police wrong? Encounters are not done, they happen.”
Upadhyay claimed that Justice S K Agarwal, who was first appointed by the UP government as a one-member judicial commission to inquire into the July 2 killing of eight policemen and subsequent encounter killings of Dubey and his associates, was unfit to be in a commission of inquiry as he had resigned as a judge from Allahabad high court protesting his transfer to Jharkhand high court.
Awasthi and Upadhyay sought replacement of Justice Agarwal and Gupta by suitable persons to enable the public to have faith in the Justice Chauhan commission’s inquiry into the incidents.