The Supreme Court on Tuesday rapped an advocate for questioning sanctity of Justice B S Chauhan-headed Inquiry Commission, formed by the Uttar Pradesh government to probe gangster Vikas Dubey encounter case. The advocate had raised concerns about the fairness of the probe as brother of former top court's judge is an MLC of the ruling BJP party.
A bench presided over by Chief Justice said there are judges whose relatives are in Parliament. Are they not fair? There are judges whose father is an MP. They are not fair judges? Is belonging to a political party an illegal act, the bench asked advocate petitioner Ghanshyam Upadhyay.
The lawyer pointed out several articles, raising doubts about fairness of the inquiry commission headed by Justice Chauhan.
"We will not cast aspersion on a former judge of this court on the basis of a newspaper report," the bench said.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Uttar Pradesh government, contended that the plea contained derogatory materials.
The counsel then pointed out Uttar Pradesh was fast becoming a state of encounters. They were upsetting the entire legal system. There was an encounter of one Rakesh Pandey a few days ago, he said.
On this, the bench said these were irrelevant materials as thousand of crime would happen in a state, questioned what it had to do with the present matter on setting up the inquiry commission.
The court, however, asked the counsel to give suggestions in writings and reserved its order.
On July 22, the top court had approved a proposal by Uttar Pradesh government to allow Justice Chauhan to head the inquiry panel to probe into incidents of July 2 leading to killings of eight policemen in Kanpur and subsequent encounter of gangster Dubey, who faced 64 criminal cases, and his henchmen till July 10.
On a suggestion by the court, the state government had then reconstituted the previously-formed panel headed by former judge of Allahabad High Court, Justice Sashi Kant Agarwal. It had also included former DGP K L Gupta in the panel.