A new ray of hope
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: April 05, 2013 -
In a significant development, the Supreme Court-appointed independent inquiry committee has pronounced that all the six cases of alleged encounter killings in Manipur under its probe were fake.
Placing its final report before a bench of the apex court comprising Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai on April 4, the three-member inquiry committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Santosh Hegde as Chairman with former Chief Election Commission J M Lyngdoh and Dr Ajay Kumar Singh, IPS retired DGP and IGP of Karnataka has categorically pointed out that the six cases are not genuine encounters and the victims, including a 12-year old boy, did not even have any criminal records, thus none of the six cases qualify as encounters and they are all fake.
The report of the committee has also made it clear that the guidelines laid down for personnel of Armed Forces by the apex court in the Naga People’s Movement case have not been followed anywhere as they are confined to papers only when armed forces conduct operations, and many of the personnel cross-examined did not even know which ‘areas’ fell under the category of Disturbed Areas Act.
What is even more interesting is that the committee report has noted succinctly that the Union Government should be blamed more than the State Government for the situation prevailing in Manipur.
Even though the final judgment and other appropriate directions to be passed by the Supreme Court on the basis of the committee report have to be waited till April 9 when the next hearing would be conducted, the report of the apex court-appointed probe panel must have definitely come as a big blow to the Government and the Armed Forces personnel being deployed in Manipur.
But for the families of thousands of victims of extra-judicial killings who have been crying for justice for the last many years, it is definitely a great victory. Even if the final judgment of the apex court is still awaited, the journey so far must have restored the faith of many people that justice indeed could be possible through the democratic system.
After all, the Supreme Court has appointed the committee to probe into the six selected cases of extrajudicial killings out of around 1,528 such cases listed by the petitioners after numerous magisterial inquiries instituted and conducted in the past could do nothing to mend the broken hearts and homes of thousands of people.
The report of the probe committee now lying before a bench of the apex court would also surely open up new window of opportunity and provide a ray of hope to these broken hearts and homes.
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