Hyderabad HC tells Telangana govt to file counter affidavit in Nalgonda encounter

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday directed the Telangana government, to file a counter affidavit within a week on a petition by the father of an alleged terror suspect, seeking registration of a criminal case in connection with the killing of his son and four others in police custody.

Viquar Ahmed, an alleged terrorist, and his four associates were killed near Alair in Nalgonda district while being brought to a Hyderabad court from a prison in Warangal on April 7.

After hearing arguments by the defence counsel, the High Court asked Additional Advocate General whether police had registered a case on the complaint filed by Viquar's father Mohammed Ahmed.

Mohammed Ahmed, in his petition filed on Wednesday, had sought registration of an FIR against the police personnel responsible for the killings and transfer of the case to CBI.

Earlier, he had on April 11 lodged a complaint at Alair police station accusing the police of killing his son and others in a "fake encounter" and sought action against them. The police had, however, only made a General Diary (GD) entry following the complaint.

The petitioner's counsel Raghunath submitted before the court that the postmortem on the bodies was conducted in a "hasty manner" and sought court's direction for exhuming the bodies for a fresh autopsy.

Responding to his demand, the court asked AAG to file a counter affidavit and posted the matter to April 23 after asking him about whether any case had been registered on the complaint, the status of investigation and if the post-mortem had been conducted properly.

AAG informed the court that a special investigation team has been set up for probing the incident.