The Rajasthan Police's role in the encounter of gangster Anandpal will be investigated, a special court in Jodhpur ruled today, rejecting the CBI's closure report of 2020. The four police officers who took part in the encounter will be investigated for murder, the court said.
On July 24, 2017, Anandpal was killed in a village in Churu, in what the police claimed was an encounter.
The gangster, who was hiding in a second floor room of a house, had fired on the police team with automatic weapons. He died in retaliatory firing, the police has contended.
As the matter became controversial, then Vasundhara Raje government asked the CBI to investigate. The CBI upheld the police report. But Anand Pal's family, led by his wife Raj Kanwar, filed a petition in the Jodhpur court against the agency's closure report.
After seven years, the court has rejected the closure report in view of the evidence presented by the family.
Medical evidence suggested that Anandpal's body bore injures indicating beating. The bullet wounds, 11 of them, indicated that he was shot from close range.
The police had suggested they never went to the terrace where Anandpal was hiding.
But Anandpal's lawyer presented his brother Rupinder as a key witness.
Rupinder had led the police team to his brother's hideout to get him arrested. He told the court that he went to the terrace with the police and asked Anandpal to surrender. At the time, his brother was unharmed, but later he was beaten and shot, Rupinder has claimed.
Anandpal’s story has gripped Rajasthan for nearly three decades. The son of a police constable, Anandpal wanted to be a teacher, but got into student politics and then into crime. He had contested two panchayat elections — one for a panchayat samiti post and later for Pradhan.
His entry into politics led him to confrontations with local politicians, the police and in the caste faultlines of Rajasthan, he began to emerge as something of a Robin Hood.
There were more than three dozen cases of murder and extortion against Anandpal. He escaped from police custody in September 2015 while returning from a court hearing to Ajmer high security jail.
It led to a two-year manhunt. Anandpal carried the highest reward ever for any gangster in Rajasthan — Rs 5 lakh, and when the police finally gunned him down on July 24, 2017, there was a huge public outcry.
His family refused to cremate his body and it had to be kept in a freezer for over three weeks as the government tried to handle the political protests that followed .
Finally the Vasundhara Raje government handed over the investigation to the CBI. But today, a Jodhpur court rejected the closure report of the case.
Now with four police officers under scanner for the encounter, the gangster is back in news.
Rajasthan's home minister Jawahar Singh Bedam has so far refused to respond to the court's decision. The next hearing of the case is on October 16.