Chennai, June 10 (PTI) Repeating its earlier stand, the Madras High Court on Friday insisted that the Police Complaints Committee must be headed by a retired judge of the High Court.

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Wondering as to what was the difficulty in constituting the panel as stipulated by the Supreme Court, the first bench of Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice N Mala observed that there would be no point in nominating a police officer and a bureaucrat as the heads of the panel, which would deal with complaints against the police personnel.

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"Are you afraid of making the authority headed by a retired judge of the High Court," the bench asked.

Earlier, Advocate-General R Shanmugasundaram told the judges that the State-level committee has been constituted with the Home Secretary as its head and the DGP and others as its members. The district-level panels would be headed by the respective Collectors and the SPs, he added.

When the PIL petitions from A G Mourya, IPS, a retired police officer and Saravanan Dakshinamurthy came up for further hearing today, petitioners' senior counsel Satish Parasaran stated that Tamil Nadu had recorded a very high number of custodial death cases but the conviction rate was very poor. It was almost nil, he added.

The custodial deaths reflected the 'madness' of the police personnel, the bench said. Under the garb of policing, they themselves create gangsters, who involve in serious crimes such as murders at police stations and land grabbings. To put an end to this, a body like the Police Complaints Authority must be headed by independent retired judges, the bench added.

The CJ also said in the open court that he had received a letter requesting him to take up the death of Vignesh at the Secretariat police station case, but did not do so as Chief Minister MK Stalin himself had ordered a probe against the police personnel involved in the matter.

After expressing its hope that the State government would take appropriate action to make the complaints committee headed by retired judges, the bench adjourned the matter till June 20.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)