The Bombay High Court on Tuesday convicted and sentenced former Mumbai cop and controversial encounter specialist, Pradeep Sharma, to life imprisonment in the 2006 fake encounter of Ramnarayan Gupta. The court also upheld the conviction of 13 other accused in the case.
“Prosecution has proved that Gupta was killed by the police, by trigger-happy cops, and the same was made to look like a genuine encounter,” said a division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Gauri Godse, reported PTI.
Gupta was an alleged close aide of gangster Chhota Rajan. Out of 13 other accused, 12 are former policemen and a civilian.
Protectors of law cannot be allowed to act as criminals in uniform and “if this is permitted then it would lead to anarchy”, said the bench in its judgment.
“We find that the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that Ramnarayan was killed brutally in cold blood by the accused when he was in their custody and that to cover up the same, given it a colour of a genuine encounter,” the high court said, reported PTI.
Due to a lack of evidence, a sessions court had acquitted Sharma in 2013. The HC bench quashed the judgment. The Bombay High Court deemed the lower court’s order as “perverse and unsustainable”, highlighting glaring irregularities in the previous judgment.
From the Vashi area in neighbouring Navi Mumbai, on November 11, 2006, a team of Mumbai police picked up Ramnarayan Gupta (alias Lakkhan Bhaiya) along with his friend Anil Bheda. The team killed him near Versova in western Mumbai the same evening.
In its judgment, the high court said the cops, who are keepers of the law, had grossly misused and abused their job by abducting and killing Gupta in a fake encounter, and by giving it the colour of a genuine encounter.