Badlapur sexual assault: Hard to believe that Akshay Shinde snatched pistol: HC

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Wednesday raised serious doubts about the Thane police’s claims that Akshay Shinde, who was arrested for sexually assaulting two girls in a Badlapur school last month, snatched a policeman’s pistol and opened fire before he was shot dead on Monday. The court insisted that the probe into the encounter be impartial and thorough.
“This is hard to believe. Prima facie, this cannot be trusted. A layman cannot fire a pistol unlike a revolver which any Tom, Dick and Harry can use,” said the division bench of justice Revati Mohite Dere and Justice Prithviraj Chavan while hearing a petition filed by Shinde’s father Anna Shinde, seeking a court-monitored probe by a special investigation team (SIT) into his son’s death.
The court also wondered why Shinde wasn’t overpowered by the four police officers who were in the van with him. “He wasn’t of huge built or a strong man. This is very difficult to accept. This cannot be termed as an encounter,” the judges said and also asked why police inspector Sanjay Shinde fired the bullet at Shinde’s head and not at his legs, especially when he claimed to have fired in self-defence.
“Does a trained officer not know where to fire the bullet? Four officers couldn’t overpower the weak accused. How is that possible?” the court asked.
Justice Chavan said a weak man cannot load a pistol. “It takes a lot of strength to load a pistol,” said the judge, asking public prosecutor Hiten Venegaonkar if he had ever fired a pistol. “I have used it 100 times, so I know this,” the judge added.
According to Thane police’s version of the events of Monday evening, Shinde snatched the service pistol of assistant police inspector Nilesh More and fired three rounds, one of which hit the API on his thigh, while he was being brought from Taloja jail to Thane crime branch. The police claimed that police inspector Sanjay Shinde retaliated by firing a round which hit the accused on his temporal region and exited from the other side of his head.
When the judges said that it is not easy to unlock and open fire from a pistol, Venegaonkar clarified that Shinde did not pull the safety latch. “It got popped during the scuffle (between the 24-year-old and API More),” Venegaonkar said.
Responding to another court query as to why Shinde was not handcuffed when he was an accused in a very sensitive case, the prosecutor clarified that he was initially handcuffed when he was taken out of Taloja jail. But they were removed when he asked for water on the way.
After reading the post-mortem report, the judges said that the bullet that hit the deceased appeared to be fired from point blank range and apart from the bullet injuries, there were multiple abrasions on him and therefore it was necessary to determine the age of the abrasion marks.
While observing that the incident “did not look like an encounter”, the court also clarified that it wasn’t casting doubts but merely trying to look at the incident from all possible angles. The judges called for an impartial and thorough probe into the incident.
The court also directed the investigating agencies to make sure that the CCTV footage from Taloja Jail to Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj Hospital, where Shinde was declared dead, and the call detail records of all concerned were preserved by the police.
The judges, however, expressed concern over failure of the forensic experts to pick up fingerprints from API More’s service pistol – allegedly used by the slain accused. “How is it said that the officer could not lift fingerprints from the pistol,” the judges asked. “There is a procedure for lifting fingerprints. How can you state she couldn’t lift, without stating the procedure being followed?”
On being asked by the court about what action had been taken in the matter, Venegaonkar said that an accidental death report and a first information report against Akshay Shinde had been filed in the matter so far.
The developments came on a day chief minister Eknath Shinde defended the police and said officers shot Shinde in self-defence. The Opposition has alleged that the encounter was a bid to shield the management of the school where the rapes occurred. The high court was hearing a petition by Shinde’s father Anna Shinde, who alleged his son was killed in a fake encounter.
His counsel, advocate Amit Katarnaware pointed out that around an hour before the Thane crime branch took his custody, Anna Shinde and his wife met Akshay at Taloja jail and the deceased had asked them to send him some money to buy food in prison. The counsel for the father stated that this did not show the deceased’s violent state of mind.
Katarnaware said that the state-appointed SIT filed a chargesheet in the second POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) case registered against Shinde a day prior to the incident and that they killed him in the fake encounter with an intention to save the main culprits of the POCSO case.
The high court’s sharp observations are likely to add to the swirling controversy around the Badlapur rape, and now the encounter death.
The sexual assault cases sent shock waves across Maharashtra last month, when Badlapur East police arrested Shinde, who was part of the cleaning staff at the school, for sexually assaulting two four-year-old kindergarten girls in the school premises. The incident, along with the school management’s negligence and the Badlapur police’s delay in registering an FIR, became a flashpoint for thousands of protestors to erupt on the streets and the railway tracks in Badlapur on August 20.
A third case against Shinde was initially registered in Boisar, and was transferred to the Badlapur police station last week. A 23-year-old woman in her complaint stated that she married Shinde in 2021, who forced her to have “unnatural sex” with him.