The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to order any judicial inquiry or a probe by a Special Investigation Team into the alleged fake encounter killings of top Naxalite leader Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad and a Delhi journalist Hemchandra Pandey.
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to "consider" a plea for an independent probe into the killings of top Maoist leader Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad and scribe Hemchandra Pandey in an allegedly staged gun battle by the Andhra Pradesh police, who were given clean chit by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Azad, a senior member of banned Communist Party of India-Maoist Central Committee, and Pandey, who was dubbed by the police as a Maoist, were killed in an alleged fake encounter on the intervening night of July 1-2, 2010, in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh.
Upset over 'the Republic killing its own children', the Supreme Court on Friday sought the response of the Centre and the Andhra Pradesh government on a plea for judicial probe into the killings of top Maoist leader Cherukuri Rajkumar and journalist Hemchandra Pandey in an alleged fake encounter six months ago.
