NEW DELHI, June 11: The Delhi High Court today asked CBI to verify the contention of 1997 Connaught Place shooting case convict and former ACP S S Rathi, who has sought parole for submitting his thesis and to appear in LLM degree exams commencing from June 26.
A bench of Justice Gita Mittal pulled up Delhi government for its delay in deciding the request for parole by Rathi, who is serving life term along with nine other policemen for killing two businessmen in a fake encounter at Connaught Place here.
“On May 13, 2014, he (Rathi) writes to Delhi government. It does nothing. If the government had done something, decided his request, none of us would have been here.”
The court also expressed displeasure over the agency counsel seeking more time to conduct the verification on the ground that the institute from where Rathi is doing his course is located in Imphal, Nagaland.
“CBI today can’t say they can’t verify in a day. They are the premier investigating agency in the country. Let them at least try. This is obnoxious, the amount of time being wasted on listing,” the court said.
Advocate P K Sharma, appearing for CBI, contended that since the details of the exam and whether Rathi is appearing in the same have to be obtained from Kohima University, the agency requires a week’s time.
He also contended that Rathi should not have waited till the last moment to move the court for parole and should have done so earlier, when he knew his exams were to start from June 26.
The court, however, asked CBI to try and submit its status report by June 13.
It also allowed Rathi’s interim application to prepone the hearing of his parole plea and listed the matter for further hearing on June 13.
Meanwhile, Delhi police in its status report has said that Rathi is appearing for the exams scheduled to commence from June 26.
The Supreme Court had in 2012 upheld the conviction and life sentence of 10 Delhi Police officials, including Rathi, for killing two businessmen in a fake encounter at Connaught Place in 1997.
A Delhi court had in 2007 awarded life term to Rathi and other nine policemen in the case. Later, their conviction was upheld by the Delhi High Court.
The other policemen convicted are Sub Inspector Ashok Rana, head constables Shiv Kumar, Tejpal Singh, and Mahavir Singh and constables Sumer Singh, Subhash Chand, Sunil Kumar and Kothari Ram.
The probe in the case was conducted by CBI which accused the ten policemen of “indiscriminately” firing at the victims without any provocation near the Statesman House building at Connaught Place on March 31, 1997. (PTI)
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