Five cops awarded life term in Uttar Pradesh

LUCKNOW - A court in Uttar Pradesh Monday awarded life terms to five policemen in a six-year-old fake encounter of two friends, while reserved its order against the nine other policemen also found guilty in the crime, an official said.

“Falsely branding them as criminals, the policemen in Sep 2003 had killed the two youth-Prabhat Kumar Srivastava and Rama Shankar Sahu, who were residents of the Jharkhand,” a prosecution lawyer Vikas Shakya told IANS on telephone from Sonbhadra, some 250-km from Lucknow.

“Srivastava and Sahu were going by a same train to meet some of their relatives. Both the friends alighted at a railway platform in Sonbhadra, where from the policemen associated with the Pipri police station picked them up and later killed them, branding them as criminals,” he added.

Later, the magisterial inquiry into the encounter cannot justify it and the case was transferred to the CBCID (crime branch-criminal investigation department) inquiry was initiated into the matter).

In 2006, following the investigations a case was registered against 16 policemen, of which two never tuned up for trail and were declared as absconders by the court.

“While hearing the case the case additional session Judge, fast track, A.K. Dwivedi awarded life terms to four policemen, including a sub-inspector, while reserved the order against the nine other cops,” said Dwivedi.