Police careful after HC order

By S A Ishaqui

Hyderabad,Feb. 13: The recent directive of the AP High Court on encounter deaths has effectively barred the police from registering a case under Section 174 CrPC (suspicious death) after such incidents.In its significant verdict, the five member bench of the HC had asked the state government to consider encounter deaths as murders.
This means that police officers would also have to restrain themselves from giving a narrative of the encounter from their own perspective. Neither can they escape from the provisions of law by claiming self-defence at the initial stage of the investigation.
A perusal of the full text of the judgment, available with me , reveals that the bench found fault with the usual practice of the police to register the death under Section 174 of CrPC for the purpose of investigation.“We have recorded the conclusion that an inquest is not for the purpose of ascertaining the perpetrator of an offence,” said the court. “There appears no logical purpose served in enjoining that the case registered under Section 174 CrPC should be made over for investigation to an independent agency.”
The court said the practice now followed in the state was in clear deviance of the National Human Rights Commission guidelines and the provisions of standing orders 546(6) of the AP Police Manual. “It is an extravagant subversion of the rule of law,” the HC said.
The bench also felt that the failure to record and register the primary offence of the death of civilian(s) in an exchange of fire with police officers was a grave and wholly unwarranted transgression of constitutional and sovereign responsibility.
According to the court, the state was legislatively mandated to record and register a cognisable offence and thereafter set the criminal law in motion including immediately launching an investigation into the offence.
“We hold that such information shall be recorded under Section 154 CrPC, a process that ensures judicial control,” said the court.