High court says probe how encounter convict escaped

MUMBAI: The

Bombay high court

on Thursday asked the police to explain why no steps had been taken to trace an escaped convict in the “fake encounter” case of alleged gangster

Ramnarayan Gupta

alias

Lakhan Bhaiya

.

The court also wanted to know what had led to the escape of Shailendra Pandey. A bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Anuja Prabhudessai asked

DCP

(zone 10) Vinayak Deshmukh to investigate the escape.

In July 2013, a city court had convicted 21 people, including 13 police officials, of killing Gupta alias Lakhan Bhaiya in a

fake encounter

in 2006.

The judges observed that the police appeared to be “hand in glove” in the matter.

Pandey was serving a life sentence when he was granted parole for a month on November 2, 2013. Pandey got the parole extended by a few days as he said there was an “urgent need” of hospital admission for eye treatment. Later he was found to have escaped from the hospital.

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