Telangana HC orders cops to preserve accused bodies

Hyderabad: In a setback to the state police, the Telangana High Court on Friday night directed the Cyberabad police to preserve the bodies of the four accused who were killed in the encounter, till 6 am on Monday in the mortuary at Mahabub-nagar hospital.

A division bench comprising Justice M.S. Ramachandra Rao and Justice K. Lakshman took suo motu cognisance of a representation from a group of social activists and women’s rights activists to the High Court seeking judicial intervention into the encounter of the accused of the Disha’s gang-rape and murder.

The bench asked advocate-general B.S. Prasad to appear. After a preliminary hearing the bench directed the AG to instruct the police to preserve the bodies and handover the first report and the video-clips of the autopsy at the encounter site.

The bench posted the matter to Monday. The activists in their representation requested the court to direct the Direc-tor General of Police to preserve the bodies of the four deceased and to form a special team of forensic experts from Delhi (other than those from TS and AP) to conduct a re-postmortem.

The activists urged the High Court to constitute an independent court-monitored committee to examine various issues pertaining to the case investigation.

They prayed that a case under Section 302 IPC be booked against the police personnel who participated in this encounter and further sought a direction to the police to ensure that the guidelines promulgated in the Supreme Court guidelines in PUCL Vs. Union of India be followed while probing this case.

K. Sajaya, Sanghamitra of the National Alliance of Peoples Movement (NAMP), retired professor Padmaja Shah, social activist Devi, and G. Jhansi, V. Sandhya, B. Vijaya, Vimala, A. Suneetha, Varsha Bargav, Khaleeda Parveen, Khaneej Fatima and Sanjeev submitted the representation.