SC grants bail to ex-cop Pradeep Sharma in 2006 fake encounter case
New Delhi, May 11: The Supreme Court has granted bail to former Mumbai Police officer Pradeep Sharma, awarded life sentence in the 2006 fake encounter killing case of gangster Ramnarayan Gupta alias Lakkhan Bhaiya..
A bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and Prashant Kumar Mishra, while passing the order on Friday, noted the submission of the lawyer for the Maharashtra government that the state had no objection to the court granting bail to Sharma.
Senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Sidharth Luthra appeared for Sharma, while senior advocate R Basant represented the complainant and opposed the former officer's bail application.
The top court had earlier on April 8 said he need not surrender till further orders to undergo the life sentence awarded to him in the case.
While admitting Sharma's appeal against the March 19 Bombay High Court verdict, the bench had said, "It is a case of reversal of acquittal by the high court, where the appeal is filed by the appellant. The statutory appeal is admitted for hearing. Issue notice on bail plea. The high court has directed him for surrender in three weeks. Till the next date of hearing, he need not surrender."
Sharma, who along with the likes of Daya Nayak, Vijay Salaskar and Ravindra Angre was part of a dreaded squad of Mumbai police that took on the city's underworld in the 1990s and 2000s and killed scores of alleged criminals, has challenged the Bombay High Court order which sentenced him to life imprisonment in the fake encounter killing of Ramnarayan Gupta, an alleged close aide of gangster Chhota Rajan.
On March 19, the high court had upheld the conviction and life sentence imposed on 13 other accused-12 former policemen and a civilian.
It said the "protectors/guardians of law cannot be permitted to act as criminals in uniform and if this is permitted then it would lead to anarchy".
The court noted that the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt the abduction, wrongful confinement and killing of Gupta in a fake encounter with "credible, cogent and legally admissible evidence".
It, however, quashed the 2013 judgement passed by a sessions court acquitting Sharma due to the lack of evidence and termed it "perverse and unsustainable".
The high court had convicted Sharma of all charges, including criminal conspiracy, murder, kidnapping and wrongful confinement, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Sharma is also an accused in the of killing of businessman Mansukh Hiren to whom the SUV used in the Antilia bomb scare case was traced. Hiren had, however, reported to police that the vehicle had been stolen days before the incident. His body was found floating in a creek off a Mumbai suburb a few days after the incident.
On November 11, 2006, a police team picked up Ramnarayan Gupta alias Lakkhan Bhaiya from Vashi in Navi Mumbai along with his friend Anil Bheda, and killed him in a staged encounter near Versova in western Mumbai the same evening.
Gupta's associate Anil Bheda was released from custody in December 2006.
However, in July 2011, a few days before he was scheduled to depose in court, Bheda was also allegedly abducted and killed. The state CID is probing the case.
Taking note of Bheda's case, the high court had said till date, the CID has not taken any steps to conclude the investigation and trace the perpetrators.
Twenty-two individuals, including 13 policemen, were initially charged in the Ramnarayan Gupta fake encounter killing case.
Following a trial, the sessions court in 2013 found 21 of the accused guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment. Two of the convicted individuals died while in custody.
Those convicted filed appeals in the high court, while Gupta's brother Ramprasad appealed against Sharma's acquittal.
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Huge turnout amidst SIR shadow caps ballistic battle for Bengal
Kolkata (PTI): The West Bengal assembly polls ended on Wednesday with what the election watchdog said was the state's highest-ever voter turnout of 92.84 per cent, leading to mouth-watering anticipation ahead of the announcement of results on Monday as both contenders sounded sanguine about their victory prospects.
Wednesday's second phase saw a 92.48 per cent turnout. The concluding phase covering 142 constituencies in south Bengal appears poised to match the first phase's record voter participation of 93.19 per cent by the time final numbers are collated.
The figures put the combined poll percentage over the two-phases at 92.84 per cent. The first phase of polling was held on April 23.
"This is the highest-ever recorded poll participation since Independence in West Bengal," it said.
The capital Kolkata recorded a turnout of 88.59 per cent, with Purba Bardhaman district topping the charts at 93.78 per cent.
The scale of participation sent out an overarching political message — practically every single eligible voter in the state felt personally invested in the electoral process and its outcome. They turned out in numbers large enough to make every narrative contested and every claim of momentum politically loaded. If the first phase tested whether the BJP could retain its north Bengal citadel, the second and final round was always the real battle for the saffron party on whether it could breach the ruling TMC’s southern fortress of Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas and Purba Bardhaman.
At the centre of the larger political fight stood Bhabanipur, no longer merely a south Kolkata constituency but Banerjee’s political refuge, her emotional home turf and the BJP’s chosen psychological battlefield.
Banerjee, 71, seeking a fourth consecutive term after 15 years in power, faced Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari in a prestige battle widely seen as a symbolic rematch of Nandigram, where Adhikari had defeated her in 2021 after crossing over from the TMC to the BJP.
Five years later, the duel shifted to Banerjee’s own bastion. For the TMC, retaining Bhabanipur is about protecting the chief minister’s authority in her own backyard. For the BJP, breaching it would puncture the aura of invincibility around Bengal’s most powerful political figure.
The constituency witnessed nearly 87 per cent polling, sharply up from around 61 per cent in the 2021 assembly polls and 57 per cent in the bypoll that brought Banerjee back to the House.
Banerjee – who usually votes later in the day and prefers staying indoors on the day of polls – broke convention and hit the ground before 8 am, moving through Chetla, Padmapukur and Chakraberia areas following complaints of alleged intimidation of local TMC leaders.
As she sat outside a booth amid heavy deployment of central forces, Adhikari arrived there and declared, "I will not allow any hooliganism." He opposed Banerjee moving around with "50-60 people" with her.
Banerjee accused the BJP of trying to "rig" the election by using central forces, election observers and officials.
"The BJP wants to rig this election. Polls in Bengal are usually peaceful. Is there a goonda raj here?" she said, alleging intimidation of TMC polling agents and late-night visits by CRPF personnel to party workers’ homes.
"The atrocities by the central forces are unprecedented. What is happening is not at all free and fair polls. But despite all this, we have full faith that we will win," she said after casting her vote.
Adhikari dismissed the charges as "frustration", claiming Banerjee had realised that "not a single vote was coming her way".
Tension flared again in Kalighat when Adhikari visited another booth, and TMC workers raised slogans against him. Police resorted to a lathi-charge to disperse the crowd as BJP supporters answered with counter-slogans. Reports of sporadic tension were also received from some other areas amid sights of long queues at polling stations, booth-level flare-ups, and political bickering.
In Kolkata's Entally, BJP candidate Priyanka Tibrewal alleged that the TMC's polling agents tried to assault her after she objected to overcrowding inside a booth and a lack of voter privacy.
In Panihati, BJP candidate and the R G Kar victim's mother, Ratna Debnath, faced protests, while her party colleague in Basanti, Bikash Sardar, alleged that "200 to 250 TMC goons" attacked his vehicle and assaulted his driver.
The TMC, meanwhile, accused the central forces of exercising brute force on the general voters at Falta's Belsingha village, especially women, who were beaten up during a move to disperse a crowd from near a polling station.The party also alleged CAPF high-handedness on women and a four-year-old child at Sathachhia in Howrah and on villagers at Ausgram in Purba Bardhaman district.
"In the name of ensuring security, central force jawans are not sparing even women who were brutally lathi-charged. TMC protests this highhandedness of the male jawans who exercised brute force on unarmed villagers. We draw the EC's attention to such illegal actions of the CAPF and ask the poll body to issue cease-and-desist orders against such use of force. We believe, people of Bengal will respond to this on EVMs," Anirban Banerjee, party spokesperson, said.
The BJP alleged that in several polling stations in Falta, the option to vote for the party was blocked using a tape over EVM poll buttons, and demanded repolls in the affected booths.
The state’s Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said repolling was likely to be announced in booths where EVMs were found tampered with. However, the order will only be issued after authorities receive reports from the district election officer or election observers regarding allegations of EVM tampering, such as using tapes or a blot of ink, he said.
