New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to set up a committee headed by a retired judge of top court to probe alleged police atrocities on the students of Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act that provides for citizenship to non-Muslim illegal migrants from neighbouring Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Refusing to set up a committee on the lines of one it had set up to inquire into encounter killings in Hyderabad, a Bench of Chief Justice S.A.Bobde, Justice B.R.Gavai and Justice Surya Kant, however, asked the aggrieved petitioners to approach the high court as incidents being pointed out had happened at different places, different steps were taken with different consequences. Expressing faith in the Chief Justices of the high courts, CJI Bobde said that the Supreme Court was not a fact-finding court and said let the high courts do the job of fact-finding by appointing a committee to be headed by a former judge of the top court or the high court.
CJI Bobde said, “Each of these incidents has taken place at different places, different steps were taken, there were different consequences” and it would be too enormous a task for one committee to look into all of them. The court did not entertain either plea for ‘no arrest of the students’ till the high courts heard the matter.
Urging the court to hear the matter, the court was told that “there is a commonality in the situation. Protests are being held across the country, escalating and snowballing every hour”.
