Pilibhit/Nagpur: Justice in the 1991 Pilibhit fake encounter case in which 10 Sikhs were gunned down by a team of Uttar Pradesh police has been finally delivered. All 47 policemen convicted in the case have been sentenced to life imprisonment by a Special CBI court.
Terming the encounter fake, CBI Special Judge Lallu Singh had held the 47 policemen guilty on Saturday. Twenty policemen who were present in the court were sent to jail. The court has issued arrest warrants against the remaining convicts.
The original chargesheet had held 57 policemen guilty, of which 10 died during the trial that went on for 25 years.
The incident took place on July 12, 1991. A luxury bus carrying Sikh pilgrims was stopped in Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh and 10 of the passengers were offloaded. They were then divided into different groups and taken to different police station areas. All the 10 Sikhs were then killed by the policemen.
The police had then claimed that these men had criminal cases against them and claimed to have recovered arms and ammunition from their possession.
But the prosecution proved that the motive behind the killing was to get rewards for killing terrorists, said reports.
