Hyderabad rape and murder case: Lawyers to visit encounter site

Hyderabad: A section of the legal fraternity has launched a virulent attack against the state police and termed the so-called ‘encounter’ of the four gang-rape and murder accused in the city outskirts as ‘extrajudicial killing’.

High Court advocate Nargis Afshan said that this was not ‘instant justice’ but absence of justice.

“We’re not going to make women safer by abandoning the rule of law,” she said adding that though the offence was heinous, ‘encounter’ was not a judicious alternative.

“There is judiciary in the country.  Moreover, a special court was established by the High Court of Telangana for a speedy trial of this particular case. What then was the need for police to take law into their own hands”, she wondered.

“If the police acts this way which our Constitution does not recognise, then there is no need for judiciary, judges, and lawyers. Even the criminal justice system in the country adopts preventive and reformative theories of punishment and retributive punishment. A 2014 ruling of the Supreme Court has clarified that “retribution has no constitutional value” in India.

Advocate Narayana Rao said the concocted story as pieced together by police officials raised many doubts. In an earlier incident, police killed five undertrials in an encounter at Alair. At that time also, the police had stated that the accused were trying to snatch weapons from cops. He asked it is not clear why the accused were taken to the spot for reconstruction of the scene in the dark and that too without adequate force.

He said they would visit the encounter spot on Saturday to ascertain circumstances that led to the encounter.