Bombay HC Orders Probe Into Lakhan Bhaiyya Encounter Case

The Bombay High Court has ordered a probe into Lakhan Bhaiyya fake encounter case.

“It appears that the police officials may be hand in glove with Shailendra Pandey,” said a bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Anuja Prabhudessai on Tuesday, as four years later, the absconding former cop, convicted of murdering Lakhan Bhaiyya in a fake encounter case, is yet to be found.

In 2013, Pandey was convicted along with 12 other policemen of killing Ramnarayan Gupta alias Lakhan Bhaiyya in a fake encounter in 2006, by a trial court in Mumbai.

Pandey was sentenced to life imprisonment and was lodged in Taloja jail. He was granted parole for a month in November 2013, however, he got his parole extended by a month claiming that he needed to be hospitalised for an eye treatment.

Pandey then got admitted at a hospital in Andheri and in violations of parole conditions continued to stay at the hospital. Then at some point, he escaped and could not be traced since.

A petition was filed in the high court by Lakhan Bhaiyya’s brother.

He stated the police did not respond to his letter pointing to Pandey jumping parole. The petition also stated that the police failed to verify medical certificates submitted by Pandey, which were actually fake.

An FIR was finally registered in February 2014 after the jail authorities informed Andheri Police that Pandey had jumped parole.

On Thursday, the court questioned why no constables were posted at the hospital in Andheri, from where Pandey escaped. Asking the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) to investigate the lapse on part of the police, as it was a sensitive matter, it directed him to identify the officers responsible for such a lapse.

The court also questioned why no steps were taken so far by the police to trace Pandey.