In his over eight years as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath has repeatedly signalled a profound disregard for constitutional constraints and for the rule of law. His government has deployed bulldozers for retributive targeting of Muslim properties without any judicial process. Through this, the Yogi government has created an incendiary template adopted by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments countrywide.
The Yogi government has been savage in its crushing of dissent. The CM remains vitriolic in his hate speech targeting India’s Muslims. He has closed 20,000 criminal cases including those of hate speech, hate crimes, and the communal carnage of Muzaffarnagar in 2013. These include crimes of his own hate speech, as a Member of Parliament.
And then there is his resort to “encounters” on a staggering scale. “Encounters” is popular jargon for extrajudicial shootings by the police or other uniformed security forces that kill, injure, and sometimes permanently disable persons.
The magnitude of these shootouts announced proudly by the UP government is stunning. Its professed numbers work out to roughly one extrajudicial shooting every five hours in over eight years since Adityanath took office as the CM in 2017. One person is killed in these shootouts every fortnight throughout these eight years.
The sheer scale of bloodletting by uniformed forces without any legal process makes this probably the neglected headline story of the defiance of law and the constitution with impunity by state authorities in the Adityanath regime.
Boasting About Bloodshed
This mammoth scale of extrajudicial police shootouts is all the more remarkable because these murders and injuries are not executed in the shadows. On the contrary, this is something that the CM and senior officials of the state government regularly boast about as evidence of brave, decisive, masculinist governance.
After a staggering 430 “encounters” in merely six months, which translated to close to one encounter every 12 hours, Adityanath boasted,
"Today, the people are secure and safe. The police used to be scared that if we act against criminals, we will be acted against. We have changed that. The police are leading from the front."
Such proud announcements of official data by the UP government became cause for annual celebration and self-congratulation. In 2021, for instance, just before Republic Day, the state’s chief secretary asked district magistrates to popularise the phrase “Ab tak 3,000” to describe the number of “encounters” committed by the Adityanath government until then. In 2023, the Additional Director-General (Law and Order) of the UP Police, Prashant Kumar, spoke of these extrajudicial shootings as a badge of honour. He described this collective police action to the Hindustan Times newspaper as a “befitting reply to criminals”.
The UP government on 14 October 2025 announced, “Since the Yogi government assumed office, the police have maintained a zero-tolerance policy toward crime. Over the past eight and a half years, 256 hardened criminals have been eliminated in encounters. 15,726 encounters were conducted, 31,960 criminals arrested and 10,324 injured,” reads the government statement.
It is not as though extrajudicial shootings are unique to Adityanath’s UP. Sadly, the Constitution, the statute books, and the courts at every level have been powerless—or have chosen to be powerless—in controlling or punishing such state murders. These have been commonplace in many parts of the country in past decades.
In UP, under CM Vishwanath Pratap Singh (later to become India’s Prime Minister), such “encounters” were mounted in the stated ground of controlling dacoity; in Bombay of controlling the mafia; in the northeastern states, Kashmir, and Punjab of controlling militancy; and states of east and central India and Andhra Pradesh of controlling Maoist uprisings.
Yet, Adityanath’s eight-year campaign of extrajudicial killings is distinct from these in at least two ways. These I describe below.
Operation ‘Langda’ and the Rise of the ‘Half-Encounter’
One departure from the past is that for the first time among such “encounter” campaigns, the aim of the police in most shootouts is not to kill but to permanently disable, by shooting the victim in the knees and legs.
I have served in many districts of central India, and observed that in the past when such extrajudicial shootings occurred, the police would take great care to ensure that no witness is left alive. This is because of the danger that a surviving witness could testify about the true facts of the shootings and expose the police officers to criminal charges of murder.
However, under Adityanath, this caution has been manifestly set aside. In 15,000 plus shootouts, we see 256 men killed (an unconscionably large number in itself, but tiny as compared to the stunning number of police shootouts). The giveaway figure is of 10,000 plus “injuries” that were reported by the state government.
I have seen first-hand in Western UP what these injuries are. The targeted man is not killed, instead he is shot in the legs, sometimes in both his knees. The person is thrown by this into great physical pain, and usually lifelong disability. The popular codeword for this campaign is Operation Langda (or Operation Lame).
The injured man is then charged with heinous crimes and thrown into prison. The purpose of this new innovation in the practice of extrajudicial shootouts is clearly performative state hate, to reduce the targeted person, his family, and by extension the community to which he belongs into a lifelong state of disability, shame, and criminalisation.
There is also a defiant challenge to constitutional justice and legal process with an unprecedented assurance of impunity.
Dhirendra Jha describes the case of Ayyub Qureshi, a victim of “Operation Langda” who suffered this kind of “encounter” twice. He was shot in his right leg the first time, and in his left the second. He was pursuing his dairy business peacefully, until one evening in 2019 when the police arrested him on false charges of stealing a calf.
Then began a process of repeated police threats, seizures and demands of bribes. One day, the police charged him falsely with killing a cow. They took him to an isolated location and shot him at point-blank range under his knee on one leg. Months later, they caught him again, this time charging him with theft, and shot him under the knee on his other leg.
Targeting Muslims, Dalits, and the Poor
The Adityanath “encounter” blitzkrieg is also characterised by its conspicuously targeted nature. Such extrajudicial killings would be grave enough if the intention was just to “control crime” or militancy. But the experience in UP is that it is mainly Muslims and lower-caste men who are picked up and killed or maimed with impunity by police.
The victims that the police target are most often petty and not dangerous criminals. The police overwhelmingly earmark for these shootings, particular communities that the regime ideologically stereotypes and stigmatises, namely Muslims and some “lower” castes.
Quite early, it became clear that this campaign of extrajudicial shootings by the UP police intended to target particular religious and caste groups. In February 2018, The Wire investigated 14 “encounter killings”, and found that 13 of those killed were Muslims.
An investigation by News Links (with a grant from the Pulitzer Center) of 10 of these cases revealed that a majority of victims killed by police were from marginalised classes, lived in poverty, and hailed from religious minority communities, especially Muslims. They “had to deal with a broken legal system that seldom operates in their interests. They also faced tremendous police intimidation and failed to find quality legal aid because so many of them were unaware of their rights, leaving them without meaningful recourse.”
People’s Democracy, the official mouthpiece of the CPI(M), writes, “In UP, especially in the western region, a series of encounters started in which a majority of those killed belonged to either Muslim, Dalit, and other backward classes. The truth is that criminals with petty crimes were targeted and their encounters were planned. In a few cases, criminals who were lodged in jail were brought out and then killed by the police. A retired police official said that Adityanath had set targets for policemen on killing such people… Among those killed, 70 percent were Muslims, 15-20 percent Dalits, and the rest from other backward classes.”
It reports: “Most of the people who have been killed are from poor backgrounds and mainly were workers. In majority of the cases, they had been in jail on petty crimes and the police used that record to declare them as history-sheeters about which even their family was not aware of. Then a reward on their head was declared without even the person who was killed knowing that. The houses that were visited did not look like those of ‘ransom getters’. A few of the families are on the verge of starvation… Those who have been killed in these encounters are mostly from Muslim, Dalit and other backward communities. Even the copy of FIRs and postmortem reports have not been given to the families. While doing the last rites and bathing the bodies, the families realised that almost all of them were captured, tortured, and shot from close range…”
The Guardian illustrates the atmosphere of terror in UP with the case of Kamran, a 40-year-old Muslim water-seller from Azamgarh. The police version was that he was picked up by them when he was travelling to commit a crime in Lucknow, 200 miles from his home, and then killed after a shootout with an anti-terrorism unit. But human rights lawyers found a leaked police photograph that shows him alive and in police custody. This directly contradicts the police account of events. When Kamran’s body was handed to his family, it showed signs of brutal torture.
The Building of Impunity
The Guardian reported that five years since Adityanath became the CM, not a single officer who fatally shot someone in UP had faced disciplinary or criminal action. It traces how police officers are protected from any criminal action even after such brazen violation of the law.
“The same police accused of the murders are often then responsible for the investigations. Subsequently, police reports are often not lodged, evidence and CCTV footage routinely disappears, charges filed to the courts are watered down to ‘accidental death’... ” (In the case of custodial deaths. And in extrajudicial shootings, the pattern is that criminals fired at the police and for legitimate self-protection the police had to shoot at them, killing or injuring them.)
We, too, have not found any records of significant criminal cases registered against police officers who have murdered or maimed people outside the law. We have found in a few instances courts issuing directions for fair, impartial investigations, yet no substantive action has followed.
There is a common pattern in the police version in the majority of cases of “encounters”. “The ‘criminals’ came on motorcycle, on seeing the police they fired in which some of the policemen also got injured. In retaliation, the police exchanged fire in which the criminal was shot dead and the others fled. In many cases, the backbones of those killed were fractured. The policemen invariably in all the cases got minor injuries and were released from the hospital immediately”.
The Wire investigated 14 “encounter” cases and found police narratives in each of these cases were strikingly similar, a kind of “cut-and-paste”. The victims were between 17 and 40 years old, and were all undertrials. Before each encounter, the police say they received a tip-off about their location. The victims were shown to be on either a bike or a car, and as soon as the police stopped them, they started firing.
In a retaliatory fire, the accused received bullet injuries and were ultimately declared dead on arrival at the hospital. In most of the cases, police had recovered a .32 bore pistol and live cartridges. The reward for capture of the persons killed was announced only after the “encounter” had already taken place.
News Links similarly found that the official versions followed a common script: The injured or the deceased was a “dreaded criminal,” who resisted arrest by opening fire at the police “with intent to kill,” so the police had to fire back in self-defense. Human rights activists and families of victims countered that most of these police actions were “fake encounters.” These incidents were not “spontaneous confrontations,” as claimed by the police. Most of them were planned. Most victims have only been accused of crimes (mostly petty offences) and are not convicted criminals on the run.
A team of lawyers associated with Human Rights Law Network and Karwan e Mohabbat, comprising Ali Qambar Zaidi, Akram Akhtar Choudhary, and Advocate Sadiq Ahmad, investigated eight such “encounters”.
It confirmed that most of these extrajudicial killings follow a similar pattern.
“The police receive a tip off from informers, following which the police try to apprehend them but in order to escape they start firing back and the police retaliates in self- defence injuring the assailant(s). He is then taken to a hospital where he succumbs to his injury. The other assailant(s) however manage to escape”.
It adds that “all those who manage to escape are the informers. Further, it is worth wondering how these accomplices manage to escape despite heavy police presence which also include special task forces in some cases. Also important to note is that during the cross firing, the police always suffers minimal injury or are saved due to their bullet-proof jackets and the details of the injury are most of the times not recorded. Also, the weapons used by the police are not sent for investigation”.
In most of the cases, “The bodies were found to have torture marks which cannot be a result of on spot firing and thus contradicts the police version. Further the fatal injuries are mostly direct bullet hits resulting in tattoo like marks around the injury. These tattoo-like marks are a result of close-range firing which is highly unlikely in cases of cross firing. In some cases, the nature of injuries is such that the brain material comes oozing out further pointing towards the fact that these were ‘fake encounters’ and the victims were shot (at) point blank (range)”.
Even before the shooting, many families already apprehend that their loved one might be killed in a fake encounter. When they inquire into the killings, they are intimidated by the police officers not to pursue any legal action. Further, other family members are also sometimes put in jail on fake charges. They are also not allowed to register an FIR inquiring into the killing and are in most of the cases, not even provided with the post-mortem report. Even when the victim is in the hospital, the family is only allowed to see him under police presence.
A State Unencumbered by Constitutional and Legal Constraints
The reality of UP under Adityanath is stark and grim. As scholar and writer Dhirendra Jha observes, “Just as the HYV (the militia Hindu Yuva Vahini founded by Adityanath) served him as an instrument for capturing state power, the police force is now serving him as an instrument to enable his domination of UP.”
Only months after he became the CM, he made it plain that his administration would not be bound by constitutional checks.
A spree of police “encounters” began, and continues more than eight years later, we are still counting. In August 2018, a sting operation by India Today TV showed that some police officials were shooting innocent citizens in staged confrontations in exchange for bribes and promotions. But this did not constrain Adityanath, who highlighted these “encounters” as a proud achievement of his government.
From the time he became the CM, The Guardian reports that his agenda was two-fold: one hardline Hindutva, and the other a tough crackdown on crime.
“Agar aparadh karenge, toh thok diye jayenge (If anyone commits a crime, he will be knocked down),” he declared soon after assuming power. “Thok do”—or “shoot them”—became the unofficial policy for “instant justice”. In 2020, he said that “criminals would either go to jail or to Yamraj (the Hindu god of death),” and in March 2024 that criminals’ “right to live will be snatched” if they interfere with others’ right to live.
“Through such statements, the message being sent is that justice is a numbers game for the state and adherence to the rule of law is a waste of time,” said leading human rights lawyer Vrinda Grover.
“The narrative that is constructed conveys to the people that we do not need a judicial system in this country because scrutiny of evidence and proving guilt in accordance with the law is too time-consuming and cumbersome."Vrinda Grover
It gives the police “arbitrary power to pull the trigger and spares them the tedious task of evidence collection to convict a person before court.”
Grover added,
“Encounters are a public spectacle. Government data does not show any causal relationship between encounter killings and crime reduction. Also, it is undeniable that the rising crime graph triggers social anxiety, and encounter killings tend to convey to many a sense of safety. The state preys on these concerns to spin and sell the spectacle of encounters to distract us to believe that the swift elimination of criminals will lead to crime control.”
To the Supreme Court, however, it claimed for the record that it leaves “no stone unturned” in its inquiries into the actions of its police.
“There is regular monitoring of police self-defence action in which accused persons have died. In all the police encounter incidents that have taken place since 2017, details related to the killed criminals and the results of the investigation/enquiry are collected and scrutinised every month at the police headquarters level… sweeping allegations against the state … are completely false and unjustified.”
Signalling that the UP government would not be bound by constitutional or legal constraints, Assistant Director General (Law and Order) Anand Kumar had stated that police encounters in the state were as per the “desires of the government, expectations of public, and according to the constitutional and legal power accorded to the police.”
Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said, “Today, criminals are terrified with the thought that either they will have to give up a crime or leave UP, or maybe even leave this world.”
On 19 November 2017, Adityanath stated that “criminals will be jailed or killed in encounters.”
In 2017, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took suo-moto cognisance of the CM's statements as reported in the media and expressed concern that the state government was endorsing police encounters. The NHRC stated in a press release that “[t]hey [the police] are using their privileges to settle scores with the people. The police force is to protect the people, these kinds of incidents would send a wrong message to the society. Creating an atmosphere of fear is not the correct way to deal with crime. In this particular case (of a gym trainer being injured in a police shootout), the injured man is not an offender. He was travelling with his friends when the rowdy act done by the delinquent SI has gravely violated his right to life and liberty.”
Adityanath responded defiantly, declaring that “[e]veryone should be guaranteed security, but those who want to disturb the peace of the society and believe in the gun, should be given the answer in the language of the gun itself.”
On 15 February, he stated that “[i]t is unfortunate that some people are showing sympathy toward criminals. This is dangerous for democracy.”
The Failure of the Courts
The present encounter spree, as a report in People’s Democracy observes, “is being carried out as part of the state policy where the money kept as a reward on the criminals is given to the police team carrying out such an operation. The Supreme Court …stated that there should be an inquiry after the encounter either by an independent agency or by the magistrate. It is strange that in majority of the cases the inquiry is conducted by the higher official amongst the police itself. If the police station in-charge does the encounter, then the Deputy Superintendent of Police is holding an inquiry. Even magisterial inquiries have not been made public. The court has also made it clear that in case any of the family members feels aggrieved with the encounter, they can approach the court or the human rights commission. But what has happened is that in such cases the family members have been intimidated and threatened by the police and in actual reality, false cases registered against them. (As a result) the police have become the biggest criminal of the state. This is turning the state police more savage and inhuman”.
The office of the High Commissioner for United Nations Human Rights wrote to the Government of India: “We are extremely concerned about the pattern of events: individuals allegedly being abducted or arrested before their killing, and their bodies bearing injuries indicative of torture.”
It called for an urgent review of the use of force by UP police to ensure all law enforcement operations were conducted in compliance with international standards, for prompt, independent, and thorough investigations into all allegations of potentially unlawful killings and for perpetrators to be prosecuted.
It was, therefore, welcomed by many when in its 31 January order, the Allahabad High Court explicitly called out the UP government, observing that, “The practice of police encounters, particularly firing at the legs of accused persons, has seemingly become a routine feature, ostensibly to please superior officers or to teach the accused a so-called lesson by way of punishment.”
The court reminded the state government that the power to punish lies exclusively within the domain of the courts, and not with the police. The court declared, “India being a democratic state governed by the rule of law, the functions of the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary are distinct and well defined, and any encroachment by the police into the judicial domain cannot be countenanced.”
In the case before it, of a man suffering grievous injuries on his leg from police bullets, the single judge bench of Arun Kumar Singh Deshwal also observed that the extensive guidelines laid down by the SC in People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. State of Maharashtra (‘PUCL case’), (2014), was flouted by the state government.
The court expressed its disquiet that frequently even in matters involving petty offences such as theft, the police indiscriminately resort to firing by projecting the incident as a police encounter, without following the procedure laid down by the SC in the PUCL case.
The guidelines lay down that in the event of a police encounter in which the accused sustains grievous injuries or death, an FIR must be registered immediately and the investigation should be conducted either by the Crime Branch, Crime Investigation Department, or by the police of another police station, and by a police officer of a rank senior to the head of the police party involved in the encounter. The statement of the injured survivor must be recorded by a Medical Officer or a Magistrate.
It was indisputable that none of these guidelines were followed by the state authorities. The court sternly directed that these guidelines be followed, and added some more safeguards for the human rights of those targeted by police bullets.
And yet, I am singularly underwhelmed by this order of the Allahabad High Court. It will change nothing on the ground. First, it unconscionably took eight years of such several shootouts everyday for it to act. The court’s order ticks many boxes, it affirms the rule of law and the constitutional separation of powers between the Executive and the Judiciary. It acknowledges that this practice of the police shooting persons charged with petty crimes in their legs (with the aim of disabling them for life) is routine.
But it does nothing to punish public officials for these crimes. It accepts on face value the official claim that this scale of “encounters” and “half-encounters” regularly touted by the CM and the state’s most senior officials is not because they have ordered and encouraged these. Instead, the judge regards these as individual misdemeanours of over-ambitious police officials with lower scruples.
The court does not order that crimes of murder and causing grievous injury be registered against the police officials and for these crimes to be credibly and independently investigated. And, most damagingly, it completely evades the investigation of command responsibility. This, when the CM never tires of claiming credit for ordering the police to kill criminals.
On the face of it, the court does pass an order that affirms principles of human rights, rule of law, and constitutional justice. But this order will not change the realities of police lawless killing and shootouts of targeted communities on the ground. The court cannot be unmindful that similar orders of the past, passed by the country’s highest courts, are being defiantly flouted by the executive with impunity. And that instead of any sense of contrition, the UP CM is flaunting these “encounters” as high among the most significant accomplishments of the government.
This is not simply the gullibility of the senior court. The hard truth is that courts at every level have effectively allowed this endless deluge of extrajudicial murder and injury by persons in uniform to continue without effective penalty, stigma, or restraint. By failing to punish those public officials who break the law and kill and disable persons in literally thousands, the courts are in effect enabling the recurrence of these crimes.
I am grateful to Sumaiya Fatima for her extensive research support.
(The author is a social activist, writer, and researcher who started the Karwan-e-Mohabbat campaign in solidarity with the victims of communal or religiously motivated violence. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)