Encounter: PILs seeking to book police for murder dismissed

Madras High Court today dismissed a batch of PILs seeking to book police personnel on murder charges in connection with the "encounter killing" of five bank robbery case suspects here last year.
A division bench comprising Justice Elipe Dharma Rao and Justice Aruna Jagadeesan said the petitioners have filed the PILs without any personal knowledge and based on hearsay evidence and media reports, which cannot take the place of substantive proof.
The petitioners, including city advocate and Director of Prisoners Right Forum P Pugalenthi, had alleged that police never wanted to investigate the bank robberies and were bent on killing the suspects.

They had sought a direction to register a case under IPC section 302 (murder) against six police personnel allegedly involved in the incident at a thickly populated locality in Velachery here on February 22, 2012.
The police action came following investigation into two daring daylight bank robberies by armed gangsters in the city within a month since January 23 last year.
According to police, they were forced to return fire after the suspects, holed up in a house, refused to open the doors and fired at them indiscriminately. The deceased hailed from West Bengal and Bihar.