About a month after the Supreme Court gave blanket powers to a panel led by former Supreme Court judge,Justice M B Shah,to investigate 22 police shootout deaths in Gujarat,the Narendra Modi government has revealed that it has replaced the retired judge with another of their choice,and that too,without consulting the apex court first. The Gujarat government justified in Supreme Court on Friday that it was compelled to look elsewhere after Justice Shah expressed his inability to continue as monitoring authority chairman. The states Additional Advocate General Tushar Mehta said the government then appointed Justice K R Vyas,a former Bombay High Court chief justice,in place of Justice Shah on February 23 on the very eve of the Supreme Court hearing. Last month,a Bench led by Justice Aftab Alam took the Justice Shah Committee under its wings to give it complete authority to probe the encounters,if necessary with their own select investigators,and reveal the truth behind 22 shootout deaths between 2002 and 2006. The court intervention was based on two separate petitions,one by journalist B G Verghese and another by lyricist Javed Akhtar and social activist Shabnam Hashmi,seeking an independent and fair probe into the killings. On Friday,Mehta told the Bench that the state government had to appoint Justice Vyas on short notice keeping in mind the Supreme Courts three-month deadline to the panel to complete the investigation. The irked Bench then told Mehta and senior advocate Ranjit Kumar,who is also appearing for Gujarat government,that the court should have been consulted first. You ought to have told this court first about your situation. You should have come to us,especially when we were dealing with the matter, it said. You have unnecessarily complicated the matter. You should have taken us into confidence, Justice Alam retorted,before turning to the lawyers of Verghese and Akhtar for their suggestions. Appearing for Akhtar,advocate Prashant Bhushan said the court should either consider forming a separate special investigation team or transfer the cases to the CBI,which would operate under the monitoring of a retired Supreme Court judge. In one of the encounter cases,the Chief Ministers office is directly involved, Bhushan said. Earlier,we allowed because of our confidence in Justice Shah, advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan,representing Verghese,stated. The court,however,made it clear that it would not change the basic structure of its January order. The hearing saw Bhushan suggest the names of former SC judge,Justice Sudershan Reddy,and former Delhi HC chief justice,Justice AP Shah,as panel chiefs. The court has posted the case for hearing on February 27.
