The Supreme Court today, of its own accord, took note of the reports about an assistant town planner who was killed allegedly by a hotel owner in the Kasauli district of Himachal Pradesh and also pulled up the state government for not providing adequate security to officials carrying out demolition work.
Calling it an unfortunate incident, the top court today said the women officer “wasn’t killed because of implementation of the Supreme Court order, but because of non-implementation of the law”.
The court pulled up the police for their “inaction” and asked, “What were they doing? Watching her get killed?” Around 160 policemen had gone with the demolition team “then how did he flee?”, the bench asked.
Dubbing the incident as “extremely serious”, the top court said it was quite clear that there was “absolutely no regard” for the rule of law as the public servants had gone there to do their job, and warned the government it would stop passing orders if the situation persisted.
The town planner, Shail Bala, was following an SC ruling when she ordered the demolition of illegal constructions in the hill town. Even as a team of the public works department (PWD) started pulling down a part of Narayani Guest House at Mando Matkanda, its owner Vijay Singh fired three rounds, leaving Shail Bala dead and another officer seriously injured.
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