The Supreme Court has reserved its verdict on the issue of laying down guidelines for probe into cases of encounter deaths and extra-judicial killings. A bench, headed by Chief Justice RM Lodha, has taken on record responses of the Centre, state governments, union territories and National Human Rights Commission for framing the guidelines to deal with the issues of encounter killings. The petition was filed by NGO, People’s Union for Civil Liberties’ (PUCL) which, along with NHRC, had also suggested the setting up a separate and independent probe agency under NHRC or the state human rights commission to probe every encounter killings. The petitioner also contended that unless proved beyond doubt that an encounter is genuine, no officer should be promoted or rewarded and compensation money for dependents of every fake encounter killing should be equivalent to the reward money given to the police in such operations.