Eleven of the 18 Uttarakhand police personnel facing non-bailable warrants (NBWs) for failing to appear in court to stand trial over the 2009 fake encounter death of an MBA student, Ranbir Singh, in Dehra Dun surrendered before a city court on Tuesday and were sent to jail.
This newspaper was the first to report that NBWs had been issued against the policemen.
Special CBI judge V.K. Maheshwari, remanding them to judicial custody, allowed the plea of these 11 accused that they be kept together in jail as they are police personnel and apprehend fear from other inmates.
A total of 18 police personnel are accused in the case. The accused policemen surrendered before the special CBI judge in pursuance of the non-bailable warrants issued against them in May this year.
The accused cops who surrendered on Tuesday include then constables Satbir Singh, Sunil Saini, Chander Pal, Saurabh Nautiyal, Nagendra Nath, Vikas Chandra Baluni, Sanjay Rawat, Mohan Singh Rana, Inder Bhan Singh and Manoj Kumar and head operator at city control room Jaspal Singh Gosain.
The constables are among the 18 police personnel chargesheeted by the CBI in connection with the alleged fake encounter case.
The other accused in the case are currently in the judicial custody.
They include then inspector Santosh Jaiswal, sub-inspectors Gopal Dutt Bhatt, Rajesh Bisht, Neeraj Kumar, Nitin Chauhan and Chandra Mohan and constable Ajeet Singh.
They were arrested in the wake of evidence that 22-year-old Singh, an MBA student from Ghaziabad, was allegedly gunned down by the Uttarakhand police after being caught at Mohini Road where he and his companions were allegedly trying to commit some crime on July 3, 2009.
The case was transferred to Delhi by the Supreme Court in 2011 on the plea of Ranbir’s father. He claimed that the probe was intentionally slowed down with the influence of the local police.
The city court has fixed July 4 as the next date of hearing. The court had issued NBWs against them to ensure their presence before it.
Ranbir Singh’s father had alleged that his son, an MBA student, on July 2 had gone to Dehra Dun in search of a job, but the next day, he was informed by the media that his son was shot down by the police on pretext of being involved in some robbery and the incident was passed off as an encounter.