![]() ![]() Then, there are the encounters themselves. According to the police’s own account, their most celebrated encounter cop was actually a crook, offering his services to property dealers and using his gun to build up a vast fortune. In Delhi, the Rajbir Singh murder is still fresh in everybody’s minds. ![]() They would kill the gangsters, accept the pay-off and then receive public service medals. It is widely accepted that the underworld worked out that rather than hire assassins to bump off rivals, it was easier to just pay off police inspectors. In Bombay, such encounter specialists as Daya Naik have been accused of amassing crores through extortion and by functioning as hit-men for hire. We now have enough evidence that the whole encounter strategy has gone badly wrong. But in reality, our policemen bump off who they like - all in the name of the battle against terror. Outwardly, we pay lip service to habeas corpus and conduct television debates on the need for detention laws. I know it sounds illiberal, brutal and callous but it is still better than the situation that now prevails. If a terrorist was responsible (in their estimation) for more than three murders, they killed him. Though nobody will talk about this openly for fear of prosecution, the Punjab police were said to have a rule. It has to be done within the police force and it has to be supervised by senior officers. How can any state pass laws or publish a rule book dictating the circumstances under which it is permissible to bump suspects off? More recently, the Bombay police used encounters against the organised underworld.īut here’s my question: if encounters are such an important part of the battle against terrorism then should we let them take place, unchecked and unregulated, without any kind of internal supervision at all? In the 1980s, terrorism in the Punjab collapsed only after the police adopted a bullet for bullet policy and bumped off terror suspects. The Indian state used extra-judicial killings to rid the ravines of Chambal of dacoits and to crush the Naxalite movement in the 1960s. And certainly it is true that encounters have proved to be an effective way of imposing law and order. We justify this to ourselves by arguing that there is no alternative. And as long as the person is not well connected and the encounter takes place far from public view (not in Barakhamba Road, certainly) we really don’t give a damn. Simply put, the police can kill anybody they want. As long as somebody else gets the job done, we are content to sleep peacefully at night.Īs a consequence, there are no rules, no guidelines and no ethics when it comes to encounters. They are an integral and frequently used component of our battle against terrorism (and now, ordinary crime as well) but we refuse to confront the reality of the killings that are carried out in our name. I return, in this column, to the subject of encounters year after year because they constitute the vast grey area in our policing. So were the cops who shot the businessmen guilty of murder? Or were they simply guilty of mistaken identity? We know that the police are lying but we choose to look away. We think that it is an unpleasant but unavoidable part of the battle against organised crime or terrorism. We know also that in many so-called encounters, the victims are killed even before they have a chance to resist. Suppose they had actually shot the criminals they were after.īy now most of us accept that the police routinely kill suspects. Supposing the cops had not got the wrong car. What were we complaining about? Our objections were framed in human rights terms: who gave the police the license to kill? etc.īut few of us asked the obvious questions. I am no supporter of people who kill innocent businessmen and then plant weapons on their bodies but our response to that encounter worried me. They were convicted and I think some are still in jail.Īll of us in the media sat back satisfied that justice had finally been done. The policemen who had taken part in the encounter were arrested and charged with murder. They were not without influence so, bit by bit, the real story tumbled out. ![]() Relatives of the murdered men barged into a press conference that was being addressed by the police commissioner and protested angrily. One of the policemen shot himself and the Delhi police argued that its men had acted in self-defence. Of course, the cops were not going to admit that. The men the police had killed were entirely innocent. It was the wrong car which, co-incidentally, just happened to fit the description. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |