The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday, April 15, issued interim orders directing the state government and police to follow the Supreme Court’s directions on post-mortems in extrajudicial killings by the police. The court was hearing a petition on the extrajudicial killing of a man accused of attempted rape and murder of a 5-year-old girl in Hubballi on April 13.
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties-Karnataka and Madhu Bhushan, a Bengaluru-based women’s rights activist, filed a writ petition in the Karnataka High Court seeking directions regarding preserving the body of the man killed by the Hubballi-Dharwad police in an alleged ‘encounter’.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice NV Anjaria and Justice KV Aravind passed interim orders directing the state police to carry out the post-mortem in accordance with the directions of the Supreme Court issued in the PUCL vs Maharashtra case.
The court directed the authorities to videograph the post-mortem and preserve the videos; preserve samples of the body parts of the victim and make them available for investigation as required. The court also directed the authorities to identify witnesses of the killing, including the police, and obtain their contact details and detailed statements.
Further, the bench told the police to determine the cause and manner of death. They also directed the police to recover and preserve evidence such as blood-stained earth, hair, fibres and threads related to the death; send the fingerprints of the deceased man for chemical analysis; recover and preserve weapons-related evidence such as projectiles, bullets and cartridges; and conduct tests to determine the presence of gunshot residue and trace metals.
On April 13, the body of a five-year-old girl was found in a shed in Hubballi, and a man named Ritesh Kumar from Bihar was accused of killing and attempting to rape her. The police caught up with him on the same day and shot him in the leg and back after he allegedly attacked them with stones. He was dead by the time he was taken to the hospital.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) took over the investigation into the killing of Ritesh Kumar on Tuesday, April 16. A team led by CID SP Venkatesh has collected documents from the Hubballi-Dharwad city police.
The petition contended that the information available in the public domain and inconsistencies in the police version raised doubts about their claims that they fired in self-defence. They said that it was suspicious how a lone unarmed man could have overpowered three police personnel who were armed.
Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocate Aditya Sondhi sought interim directions to the authorities to preserve the body so that evidence could be collected as required for the investigation. He said that evidence would be lost if the body was cremated.
Advocate General K Shashi Kiran Shetty told the court that there was no question of cremating the body. He said that if the family of the deceased man was identified, they would only be allowed to bury the body and not cremate it so that it could be exhumed if required for the investigation.
Hubballi-Dharwad Police Commissioner N Shashi Kumar has said that the city police are attempting to trace Ritesh Kumar’s family. He also said that the police are following Supreme Court guidelines on such deaths. The post mortem has been conducted at the Karnataka Medical College Hospital and Research Centre and has been videographed, Deccan Herald reported.
The writ petition in the case of Ritesh Kumar assumes significance in light of two events in the last five months in the state.
Five months ago, the Anti-Naxal Force (ANF) shot dead Maoist Vikram Gowda, allegedly after he opened fire on them. An independent fact-finding team which visited the site of the killing posed questions about the veracity of the police’s claims.
In another instance, a Banjara youth named Vithal Krishna Rathod died in Kalaburagi district allegedly in police custody. His family had alleged that the police forced them to burn the body.
