Manipur Killings: SC dismisses plea of Army Officers seeking recusal of Justices Madan Lokur and UU Lalit

The Supreme Court Bench of Justices Madan Lokur and UU Lalit today dismissed the application seeking their recusal from hearing the Manipur Encounter Killings case..The Bench said that there was no material that would warrant recusal of the Judges and any remarks made during the hearing of the case were not intended to compromise the investigation..The independence of the investigating agency and the Investigating officers has been stressed upon in the judgment penned by Justice Lokur and it is stated,“The upshot of this discussion is that there can be no interference in investigation and the courts cannot brook any interference in the judicial process.”Finding the claims made by the applicants to be unjustified, the Court has clarified that it is only in extraordinary circumstances that Constitutional Courts monitor the investigation and added,“[T]he apprehension expressed by the applicants/petitioners that due to the observations said to have been made by this Court there would be interference in the investigation by the SIT all interference it the due judicial process by the courses not real or justified.”Dealing with the issue of apprehension of prejudice based on the remarks said to have been made by the Court during the course of the hearing, the judgment makes it clear that the SIT constituted for investigating these cases is independent and cannot be swayed.“We do not find any basis for any such apprehension… Observations made by this Court or any court for that matter cannot impact on the investigations as long as they are conducted by professionals and we have no doubt that the SIT does consist of professionals who will not be swayed by any observations made by this Court.”The judgment also goes on to say that the submission made regarding security forces losing morale on account of certain observations made by the Court was “an overboard submission”.“In our opinion, it should be clear to everyone that officers and personnel of the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the State Police are made of much sterner stuff than is sought to be projected and they can hardly be demoralised by observations said to have been made by anybody. It is unfortunate that a bogey of demoralization of the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the State Police is being raised. We are unable to comprehend the reason for this.”Suggesting that some Court observations may demoralise the security personnel would go to suggest a weakness in them, the Court noted saying that this argument was stretched to the vanishing point. Further, there was no material to support this “theory”, it is said..Hundreds of Armymen had approached the Apex Court seeking recusal of Justices Madan Lokur and UU Lalit from hearing the case revolving around the alleged extra-judicial killings in Manipur. The Application filed by Armymen had sought for the matter to be heard by a different Bench..The application was initially mentioned before the then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and was subsequently heard by the same Bench whose recusal was sought by the applicant Army officials..Senior Counsel and former Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, during the hearing of the matter, had contended that certain remarks made by the Court during the proceedings of the main case were prejudicial to the investigation going on against certain Army officials and is detrimental to the morale of the forces..This submission also saw support in the Centre’s stand with Attorney General KK Venugopal adding that the Court’s remarks where phrases like “murderers according to CBI chargesheet” were used while referring to the accused officials were creating apprehension in the minds of the forces regarding the ‘assumption of guilt’ in the case..The claims, however, were strongly refuted by the Amicus Curiae Menaka Guruswamy and Senior Counsel Colin Gonsalves representing the petitioners who highlighted before the Court that as opposed to what was submitted by the applicants, it was not the Court that termed or branded the accused persons as “murderers”..The Court had merely asked the then CBI Director Alok Verma regarding the failure of the agency in arresting the persons who “according to the CBI charge sheet are murderers” and have been booked for serious charges of murder, criminal conspiracy and tampering with evidence..The case concerning the extra-judicial killings in Manipur had been heard by this Bench. The same Bench had ordered for the investigation in the cases to be expedited and completed in a time-bound fashion. This Bench had also pulled up the CBI for its snail-paced investigation, delay in the filing charge sheets, failure to meet the deadlines set by the Court as well as its failure to arrest persons accused of serious charges..Read Judgment: