Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath says:
Police encounters will not stop.
Former IG (Law and Order) of Uttar Pradesh Hari Om Sharma says:
Encounters are a part of police’s efforts to bring crime down.
UP Police PRO Rahul Shrivastav, who is posted in the Lucknow headquarters, tweets about an encounter with a sense of pride.
What do these tweets and statements indicate? That ‘encounters’ are on the agenda of the UP government’s police policy. But when does police action, taken in the name of reducing crime, become a criminal act? We’ll never know. A crime sponsored by the police itself.
What Does an ‘Encounter’ Mean?
An ‘encounter’ means that while having a face-to-face with a criminal, if a spontaneous ‘undesirable’ situation arises, instead of arresting, the police are allowed to fire shots. For example, when a criminal attempts to escape or a criminal has kidnapped someone and intends to kill them, or the criminal himself fires shots at the police.
In these scenarios, the police is allowed to fire back in self-defence, and the criminal can end up dead.
Now imagine if an innocent person comes out of his house and all of a sudden, in the middle of the road, a cop shoots him with his service revolver, without any reason or fault of his.
The cops plant his ID card, etc at the spot and declare him to be a criminal. But this means that death isn’t the end.
The family of the deceased has to bear the consequence of that encounter. They now have to prove that their deceased loved one was innocent. That he wasn’t killed in an encounter, but was murdered.
Encounter = Contract Killing?
Recently, in a sting operation conducted by TV Today Network, cops of UP police were caught admitting on camera that they would kill anyone in an ‘encounter’ for the right price. Even if that person is innocent.
How can the ‘protectors of law’ dare to break it? They do dare, because they don’t just have the backing of the political leadership, but that political leadership also releases posters that glorify encounters. For example, take a look at this poster of the UP government.
While pronouncing a verdict on 26 December 2012, the Supreme Court had said:
It’s not the job of a police officer to kill someone just because he/she is a renowned criminal. Without doubt, the police should arrest and investigate him. Such killings should be discouraged. This is state-sponsored terrorism.
NHRC Toothless To Stop Fake Encounters
In a response to an RTI request, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had said that 1,782 fake encounters were carried out between 2000 to 2017. The highest number of them, 794, were in Uttar Pradesh.
The NHRC, which is supposed to track these fake encounters, seems toothless. Because, for most states, the NHRC guidelines are nothing more than a bunch of old, dusty files.
Which encounter is real and which one is fake? It’s up to the Supreme Court to decide. But when encounters are openly supported by the government and the police turn into ‘contract killers’, then one must beware.
Even you and I could be their next target.
(This story was originally published in Quint Hindi and has been translated by Anubhav Mishra.)
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