The report of the Supreme Court-appointed inquiry commission, which probed the extra judicial killing of the four accused in the case of gang rape and murder of a veterinarian in Hyderabad in December 2019, was made public on May 20, Friday. The four accused – Mohammad Arif, Jollu Shiva, Jollu Naveen and Chintakunta Chennakeshavulu – were killed in police firing on the morning of December 6, 2019, about a week after they were arrested on November 29. At the time the accused were killed, police had claimed that the suspects threw sticks and stones at them. They claimed that two of the suspects snatched their guns and opened fire at the police, forcing them to open fire in retaliation. After its probe, the Supreme Court-appointed panel found most of the police version to be “concocted” and “unbelievable”.
At the time of the incident, police had claimed that the four suspects were taken to the Chatanpally underpass where Disha’s body was burnt, for evidence collection. They were brought there from a guest house being used as a safe house. Police claimed they had confessed that they had hidden a few articles that belonged to Disha in some bushes at some distance from the place where her body had been burnt, and had been brought there to show this place. From the confession recorded at the safe house to the alleged escape attempt by the suspects at Chatanpally, the Justice Sirpurkar Commission report has found many discrepancies in the police versions.
After their arrest on November 29, the four deceased suspects had their confessional statements recorded at Shadnagar police station and sent to judicial custody. Later, when police custody was granted for ten days, they were taken to a safe house on December 5, 2019, in view of the threat to them from the angry public who had previously tried to attack the accused. While the suspects were brought to the safe house by the police with the contention that their long interrogation was necessary to find out if they were involved in other similar offences, the report raised doubt if the second set of confessional statements were really recorded after interrogation.
While the case diary and affidavits of several police officers mention that the four suspects were interrogated by ACP (Assistant Commissioner of Police) V Surender, the panel found that the ACP did not visit the safe house for 21 hours after the suspects were taken there, According to the Commission’s report, the ACP stated that he didn’t interrogate the suspects even after he arrived there but only introduced them to the panchas or independent witnesses, who recorded their confessional statements.
While the police later claimed that the interrogation was done by another police officer, an Assistant Investigating Officer named Venkata Reddy, the panel did not accept these claims as true, as there weren’t sufficient records of a detailed interrogation. The panel thus found that the suspects were never interrogated at the safe house, concluding that the very reason set out to bring the suspects to the safe house was fake.
The panel questioned the need to have entered the agricultural fields to recover Disha’s articles, which the police claimed was the purpose of the visit. The report also concluded that based on the distance of the scene from the highway (about 500 metres) and the difficulty in traversing the land, it was not likely that the suspects would have taken the time to move there to hide the articles after allegedly disposing of Disha’s body.
There were also discrepancies when it came to the specific details of the actual recovery of the articles – Disha’s cell phone, power bank, wristwatch and a wire said to have been found in a polythene cover. The report said that the claim that these articles were recovered from the same scene was “not at all established.”
The report also noted it to be strange that no steps were taken to have the alleged articles identified by Disha’s family members. Disha’s sister told the Commission that she was not summoned by the police after the December 6 deaths. J Surender Reddy, the investigating officer probing the reported encounter killings, said that he had verified with Disha’s sister that the alleged recovered articles belong to Disha. However, the Commission found he had not recorded Disha’s sister’s statement in this regard. According to the panel report, Surender Reddy also said that the suspects’ fingerprints were not found on the alleged articles of Disha and that the articles were not sent for forensic examination.
Moreover, then Cyberabad Commissioner of Police VC Sajjanar said in a press conference held on December 6 at the scene of the encounter that Disha’s articles were recovered from behind the bushes. But when later asked about this by the Commission, he said that it is “erroneous.”
The police had alleged that at the site of the killings at Chatanpally, the suspects tried to escape by first throwing mud on the police personnel present. This claim was found to be absent from the statements of some of the police officers present. The panel also noted that it would be strange to throw soil into the police team’s eyes and try to escape, considering the significant number of armed policemen (10 of them) present.
The photos and videos of the location showed that it was fallow land covered with weeds, and picking up enough soil to throw into the police officers’ eyes would be impossible, the Commission report said. Besides, there was no mention of soil in the inquest report, and it wasn’t found on the police uniforms and in the hands of the deceased suspects. The panel concluded that this part of the police version is “absolutely unbelievable”, and an “embellishment … introduced only to give a plausible explanation that the deceased suspects could escape from the custody of such a contingent of armed police party.”
Following the incident, Commissioner Sajjanar had said that two police officers named Aravind Goud and Venkateshwarulu were seriously injured, including on their heads. The panel also found “multiple contradictions and absurdities” in these claims of injuries.
While the case diary first said both the officers suffered bleeding injuries, the police have since taken the stand that only one police officer suffered a bleeding injury. The police had alleged that one of the suspects Jollu Shiva beat Aravind Goud with a stick, and that Jollu Naveen beat Venkateshwarlu with stones. Both injured police officers were said to have been shifted to the Shadnagar Community Health Centre and then to CARE Hospital. The size of the laceration injury on Venkateshwarlu’s forehead was recorded as 2 cm in the original medicolegal register, and as 3 cm x 1 cm in the medicolegal certificate issued by the same doctor. Corrections were made in the medicolegal register in the entries related to Aravind Goud.
There were discrepancies in the time they were admitted to Care Hospital, and no X-ray films or CT scans of the injured policemen were produced before the Commission. While Aravind Goud had allegedly suffered a shoulder injury, his discharge summary records that CT scans of his abdomen and brain have been taken, with no reference to any radiological examination of the shoulder.
The injuries suffered by Venkateshwarlu on his forehead were on the left according to some medical records and on right according to some other records. The injuries weren’t serious enough to even warrant admission to a hospital, the report said.
While police claimed that the blood-stained clothes of the injured policemen were seized at Care Hospital on December 7, the seizure memo shows that they were seized at the scene of the incident on December 6. But the doctor who first treated the two of them said that the clothes of the injured policemen were not at all stained with blood.
While both police officers claimed to have passed out from the injuries, they also stated before the Magistrate that even though they were unconscious, they could hear firing and siren sounds. If they were so critically injured, they would have been shifted from the scene of the incident immediately in an ambulance, but in reality, they were only shifted later in a police vehicle, the panel noted.
“For all the circumstances stated above, we find that the claim that the deceased suspects assaulted the policemen, that the two policemen sustained injuries as a result and that they were treated at hospitals is false,” the report said.
Inconsistent statements from the police officers make the allegation of snatching of pistols from the policemen by Arif and Chennakeshavulu unbelievable, the report said. Venkateshwarlu, who is alleged to have carried his 9mm pistol in a black pouch, claimed that the pistol was snatched leaving the pouch intact on his belt. The pouch, however, was later recorded as being recovered in multiple statements from different places. Not only was it unlikely that they snatched the pistols, but considering how complicated they were to use, it was not possible that the suspects could have operated them in those circumstances, the report said.
Stating that it appeared likely that the gunshot residue collected from the hands of the suspects could’ve been planted, the report said, “For all these reasons, it has to be held that the deceased suspects could not have fired those pistols and in fact did not fire the pistols.”
The Commission also found it improbable that the suspects would have fired toward the police officers while running away from them simultaneously, as alleged by the police. Even if they could operate the firearms, their aim would only be to escape. They would not stand and enter into an exchange of fire with the police. Therefore, it has to be held that the deceased suspects could not have fired and run away simultaneously,” the report said.
The police have also tried to project that Jollu Shiva and Naveen might have died from indiscriminate firing by Arif and Chennakeshavulu, who are alleged to have seized the pistols. “This version is made untenable both by the fact that all the injuries to the deceased are all above waist on the vital organs and all the entry wounds are on the front side and exit wounds are on the back side,” the report said. It added that forensic reports showed that the injuries were caused by “high velocity copper jacketed rounds”. While the bullets of the 9mm pistols allegedly seized by the suspects were not “high velocity”, those in the weapons with the police party were.
The bodies of the four suspects were found lying in the four corners of a trapezium, with Shiva and Naveen, who were unarmed according to the police in the front, and Arif and Chennakeshavulu with pistols at the back. When asked by the tribunal if the other two (Shiva and Naveen) stood there waiting to be shot instead of running away, ACP V Surender, the leader of the police party, replied, “I cannot say.” The panel said this response illustrates the “artificiality of the narration of the firing incident” by the police and their “helplessness … to give a rational answer.”
The panel, therefore, concluded that the deceased suspects did not open fire on each other or the police party, but died from bullets fired by the police party.
The panel noted many inconsistencies in the statements given by police officers over the command given by ACP V Surender to open fire – whether he did not give any command, or asked the others to fire into the air or in the direction of sound “to divert attention” and apprehend the suspects. This makes it unclear whether the firing of the police was in self-defence, to apprehend the deceased suspects or to open retaliatory fire, the panel noted. Noting that the nature of firing would substantially differ depending on the purpose, the report said that all the four deceased had gunshot wounds in their upper torso and head, “lending credence to the possibility that clear aim was taken at the deceased who were visible.”
Noting various discrepancies over the distance of firing, and the number of bullets and cartridges recovered from the scene, the panel concluded that “it cannot be said that the police party fired in self-defence or in a bid to re-arrest the deceased suspects.”
Concluding that the suspects did not commit any offences on December 6, that they didn’t snatch police weapons or try to escape custody, or try to assault or fire at the police officers, the Commission said “there did not arise any occasion for exercising the right of private defence” by the police officers who killed the four accused. “In our considered opinion, the accused were deliberately fired upon with the intent to cause their death and with the knowledge that the firing would invariably result in the death of the deceased suspect,” the report said.
The Commission also found that the constitutional and statutory rights of the suspects appear to have been violated at the time of their arrest and remand to judicial and police custody in many ways. The relatives of the accused had claimed that they were minors at the time of their arrest and death. While Arif was 26 at the time of the incident, according to the dates of birth in their school admission registers, Shiva was 17, and Chennakeshavulu and Naveen were only 15 years old when they were arrested and killed.
All four suspects were treated as adults in all the procedures followed by the police, although they knew that at least two of them were minors, the Commission found. The headmaster of the school where Shiva and Chennakeshavulu had studied told the Commission that three or four days after the Disha incident (which happened on November 27), a few policemen including a Sub-Inspector from Shamshabad visited the school at night, checked the records and even took photos of the admissions register. “This clearly suggests that the police were well aware about the school records of Jollu Shiva and Chennakeshavulu and yet have not recorded the age of the deceased persons according to the admission registers at any given point of time,” the report said.
The panel found inconsistencies in the statements of the two panchas at the safe house. In their affidavits to the Commission and judicial magistrate, both the witnesses were found to have mentioned facts which were not found in the alleged confessional statements recorded at the safe house in their presence on December 5 and 6, but were found in the previous confessional statement recorded at the Shadnagar police station on November 29.
The panel concluded that this suggests that the suspects did not make any confessional statement at the safe house, and that the two panchas – the only independent witnesses – were tutored by someone based on the confessions recorded at the police station. The panel also found these two witnesses to have made many other inconsistent and self-contradictory statements, and called them “not at all creditworthy.”