New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday provided a four-point blueprint to the CBI's SIT and directed it to expedite the probe into alleged extra-judicial killings and fake encounters by the Army, Assam Rifles and police in Manipur which had come under the scanner of the NHRC, Gauhati High Court and some commissions of inquiry.
The apex court said the special investigation team (SIT) should first complete the ongoing probe in 13 cases of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), followed by the matters related to judicial inquiry and those on which the high court had given its findings.
Thereafter, the SIT should take up the matters which were earlier dealt with by the a commission headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Santosh Hegde and then the matters relating to commissions of inquiry should be probed, a bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and U U Lalit said. "We require the SIT to complete the investigation with regard to cases of NHRC and file report under section 173 CrPC," the bench said while making it clear that it does not mean that investigation in other cases would not be expedited.
"We have asked the Joint Director of the SIT (who is in charge) to expedite the cases related to NHRC," the bench said, adding "thereafter the SIT will look into the cases of judicial inquiries and high court followed by cases of the Justice Hegde commission and finally SIT will look into the commission of inquiry cases".
It also allowed CBI's plea to add five more officers in the SIT to probe these cases and asked Manipur's standing counsel to request the high court there to give the documents and records of the cases dealt with by it earlier to the SIT so that they could proceed with the investigation.
The top court, which posted the matter for further hearing on April 16, asked the Manipur government and its police to make available the records of these cases to the SIT.