Officer-in-charge of Paliaganj Police Station Vivekanand Singh and constable Sandeep Kumar have been placed under suspension for gunning down Army jawan Amitesh alias Madhukar Sharma in a recent fake encounter.Patna SP (Rural) Amit Kumar said three other constables of the Paliaganj Police Station have been removed from duty. The investigating officer has also been told to arrest the five policemen who were involved in the fake encounter.According to sources, Kumar personally supervised the case and found that the five policemen were guilty of killing Sharma on February 4 in a village bylane. The SP’s report also said that the policemen chased the jawan thinking he was a criminal and planning to rob a bank in the neighbourhood. Kumar also said the jawan was shot from close range and in order to make the encounter appear genuine, a country-made revolver was kept at the place of occurence.Sources said that the guilty policemen would now be prosecuted for murder and for fabricating false evidence.The report said that police confronted the jawan while he was riding a stolen motorcycle with two other persons. The two managed to run away and have not been traced till now. Police are set to prosecute them for the motorcycle theft, sources said.Though the police inquiry has established that the jawan was innocent, the state government has still not announced any financial compensation or assistance for his family.In the last two encounters in which the police at Majhaul in Begusarai and Patna killed five innocent persons, the state had immediately paid up Rs 5 lakh each to the families.The military has also already ordered its own independent inquiry into the encounter. Sub Area Commander Brig K. Samantha had said that the police personnel involved in the encounter will be interrogated.Meanwhile, in the Majhaul encounter, police are going to arrest DySP of Manjhaul Maheshwar Mahato and his two bodyguards for killing two innocent persons in an alleged fake encounter in the last week of December.The preliminary inquiry, based on the accounts of eyewitnesses including the three persons who were injured in the firing, found the DySP and bodyguards guilty. The SP of Begusarai, at the time of the incident, had described the Majhaul killing as ‘‘cold-blooded murder’’ (in his first report sent to the home commissioner soon after the killing).
