NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday decided to set up a team of retired High Court judges namely Justices Geeta Mittal, Shalini P Joshi and Asha Menon to consider diverse aspects of humanitarian nature, including measures for relief, rehabilitation, rebuilding homes and places of worship in the violence-hit Manipur.
The top court also indicated to appoint ex-Maharashtra DGP Dattatrey Padsalgikar to oversee police probes.
A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra proposed including five or six deputy SP rank officers from different States in the CBI probe team for investigating about 11 cases of rape and sexual assault cases, including parading of two women naked on May 4, 2023.
The bench indicated the broad contours and outlines of the order proposed to be passed by Monday evening, after hearing Attorney General R Venkatramani for the Centre and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta for the Manipur government and other counsel.
Manipur DGP Rajiv Singh was present in the hearing before the court to answer queries on violence in the state and measures taken so far, besides bifurcation of cases for the purposes of effective investigation.
The bench clarified that the court will not supplant the CBI since it is probing the investigating the FIRs transferred to it by the state government.
The Manipur government said it would constitute six SITs comprising senior police officials for six districts to probe offences caused after the ethnic clashes between Kuki and Meiteis.
The court ordered that for each SIT, there would be a inspector level police officer, brought from outside the state.
"But to ensure faith in rule of law," the bench said it is proposing to direct that there shall be five or six officers of rank at least Dy SP who will be brought into CBI from various states, and these officers to be brought on deputation to the CBI to oversee the investigation into these FIRs.
Justice Mittal is former Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court, and Justice Joshi, a former Bombay High Court judge and Justice Menon, a former Delhi High Court judge.
On August 1, the Supreme Court had sought personal presence of state police chief on Monday to provide details of actions taken in over 6,000 FIRs lodged in the state.
The court said if law and order machinery is unable to protect the people what are they left with, and where they would go
It found the investigation as "tardy and lethargic" and lapse between occurence of the offences and recoding of the statements of the victims.
A status report filed by the state government stated that150 deaths have occurred in the violence-hit state, which included 59 deaths between May 3 and May 5. It said 28 persons lost their lives between May 27 and May 29, while there were over 5000 cases of arson, and 502 people were injured in the violence.
