PIL on re-appointment of encounter accused cops: HC seeks

The Gujarat High Court today asked the state government to furnish details of the contractual appointment of two retired police officers who are accused in Ishrat Jahan and other alleged fake encounter cases after a PIL challenged their appointment.
A division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi asked government pleader Manisha Luvkumar to seek instructions from the government over the appointments of N K Amin and Tarun Barot, both accused in encounter cases, for a tenure of one year on contractual basis after their retirement.
The court, while hearing the PIL filed by retired IPS officer Rahul Sharma, rejected the petitioner's request to grant interim stay against their appointments, and kept the matter for further hearing on November 16.

Sharma said in his petition that the two officers have "criminal antecedents, and their appointment to senior positions in the police force is not conducive to general public interest."
Amin was chargesheeted in two alleged fake encounter cases--one of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, Kauserbi, and Tulsi Prajapati, and the other of Ishrat Janah, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillay, Amjadali Akabarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar-- the petitioner said.
He was arrested in both the cases and served eight years in jail since August 2007, and was discharged in the first case, while the Ishrat Jahan case against him is still pending before the trial court, Sharma said.

After getting bail in August 2015, the state government posted him as SP Mahisagar, and after he superannuated on Aug 31, 2016, he was reappointed on contractual basis as SP of Mahisagar, "against the existing rules," Sharma said.

Barot, also an accused in two alleged fake encounter cases of Ishrat Jahan and Sadiq Jamal, was charge sheeted and arrested in both the cases and released on bail in June 2015, the petitioner said.
He superannuated in 2014 while still in jail, the petitioner said, but the government appointed him on October 13, 2016 as DSP Western Railway, vadodara, for a year on contractual terms.

"The aforesaid contractual appointments of retired police officers with criminal antecedents is not in the interest of a healthy police administration...They are against the provisions of the Gujarat Police Act as also contrary to the directions issued through various circulars of the government of Gujarat," the petitioner claimed.