'Encounters' (between police and criminals): India
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Police: fake encounters
An overview
“Terrorist killed in encounter.’’ Summary justice or cold-blooded murder? The Sohrabuddin-Kauserbi case has exposed the dark side of India’s vigilante cops. Sunday Times reports
Amrita Singh | TNN
They kill people. The more they kill, the better their chances of out-of-turn promotions and perks — and the bigger their legend. They are the ‘encounter specialists’ of the police force and they are never out of news.
Last week they made news again when their version of a 2005 encounter in Ahmedabad fell flat.
Sohrabuddin Sheikh, they said, was an LeT man on a mission to kill CM Narendra Modi and other Gujarat leaders. The police account of events raised some doubts in the routine departmental inquiry mandatory after an encounter death but the matter was hushed up. Until the Supreme Court stepped in.
Here is what actually happened in 2005: Sohrabuddin, his wife Kauserbi and their associate Tulsiram Prajapati were picked up from a bus while on their way to Sangli from Hyderabad and taken to an unknown destination. Sohrabuddin was gunned down in cold blood, his wife was killed two days later and her body burnt, and Prajapati was eliminated a few months later. All this came to light only in a CID enquiry after the SC intervened on a petition filed by Sohrabuddin’s brother.
But this is not a one-off case, says Supreme Court advocate Rakesh Shukla. ‘‘Almost all encounters in Delhi are doubtful. The Ansal Plaza shootout (in which two LeT suspects were killed) turned out to be fake and there are doubts about the Millennium Park shootout in 2003.’’
Two terrorists were killed in that operation which was led by ACP Rajbir Singh. According to the police,the terrorists were told to surrender but they opened fire, forcing the police to retaliate. However, investigations by the People’s Union for Democratic Rights tell a different story. There is evidence that one of the terrorists, Rafique, was already in police custody; the ACP had visited Rafique’s mother in UP a day before the encounter and had let her talk with her son on his cellphone, says the PUDR report.
What’s intriguing, says Shukla, is that encounters across the country follow a similar pattern. “The site of the encounter is almost always deserted, the time is almost always late night or early morning, and a policeman almost never gets injured.”
This phenomenon is not restricted to just the metros. “In Andhra Pradesh, 99% of the encounters are fake. The police usually run away when they see a Naxalite but whenever they find him sleeping, eating or having fun with the family, they surround him in huge numbers and then kill him in cold blood,” says K Balgopal, a Hyderabad-based lawyer and human rights activist.
While eliminating terrorists in encounters has become all too common — several state police forces now boast their own encounter specialists — it’s largely a post-Independence phenomenon, says Ujjwal Kumar, a reader at Delhi University. The first fake encounters were recorded during the Telangana movement in late 1940s, when many people were summarily eliminated. “The killings increased during the Emergency with the rise of the Naxalite movement; now some states use it as a strategy to eliminate terrorists,” says strategic analyst K Subrahmanyam.
According to an NHRC report, the worsthit state is Uttar Pradesh with 68 fake encounters in 2003-04 and 54 in 2004-05. The figures were nine and five, respectively, for Andhra while Gujarat reported one fake encounter in 2004-05. But as Balgopal points out, the figures do not reflect ground reality since NHRC only investigates instances that are brought to its notice.
Former Intelligence Bureau director Ajit Doval admits it’s not rare for the police to resort to extra-legal methods while dealing with terrorists. “They resort to staging an encounter in cases where the evidence is hard to come by,” he says. ‘‘There is a school of thought in the police that believes resorting to extra-legal methods to eliminate terrorists is not wrong because it’s their moral duty to save people.’’ In fact, D G Vanzara, the main accused in the Sohrabuddin encounter case, reportedly said it would become more difficult to wage the war against terrorism and the underworld after he was arrested.
Not surprisingly, vigilantism has risen at an alarming rate. Says Balgopal: “FIRs filed after an encounter are based on the account of the police officer concerned. The version is seldom questioned even if the story appears straight out of a Bollywood movie.”
Shukla believes it has to do with the general perception that it’s okay to bump off a person if he has a criminal background. Most cases of fake encounters don’t go to the courts and when they do, the court usually rules in favour of the police. “There is little doubt that encounters are faked — I have often been offered money by the police to withdraw from a case. Where does that money come from? I am sure they won’t show that in their cash book!” says Shukla. ‘‘In that sense, the Gujarat incident is a positive development as for the first time, the sympathies of both the court and the people seem to be for the victim.’’
So how did the police become a force that imperils basic human rights? Most believe it happens when rules get bypassed. There are guidelines that require every encounter to be investigated by the police department concerned; in case of any discrepancy, the matter has to be handed over to an independent agency. The police also have to inform the state human rights commission about the encounter which then carries out an independent investigation to verify that the encounter had indeed happened. “But none of the rules are followed,’’ says Shukla.“Encounters have become the norm, be it to settle a property dispute or swing a business deal.”
CBI decisions
1996 encounter: life imprisonment
Abhijay Jha, 4 cops get life for '96 fake encounter, Feb 23, 2017: The Times of India
A CBI court here sentenced four policemen to life in jail till death for a staged encounter in which they killed four daily wagers two days before Diwali in 1996.
On November 8, 1996, the four were shot dead around 2.30pm near Machri roundabout in Bhojpur (Modinagar) area. The victims were Jasveer (23), Jalaluddin (20), Ashok (17) and Parvesh (17).
The cops had said they were dreaded gangsters who were sitting near a roundabout under suspicious circumstances and started firing when challenged, forcing police to return fire. According to public prosecutor Rajan Dhaiya, the cops cremated the bodies saying they were unclaimed.
Following outrage over the incident, local residents and the family members of the victims began an agitation and eventually the case was handed over to the CBI on February 1, 1997. “Special CBI judge Rajesh Choudhary on Wednesday... awarded rigorous life imprisonment to Lal Singh, the then SHO of Bhojpur police station, sub-inspector Joginder Singh, and constables Surya Bhan and Subash Chand,“ Dhaiya said.
SHO Lal Singh retired in 2015 as DSP, sub-inspector Joginder Singh took VRS about six months ago (his last posting was in Kanpur), while constables Subash Chand and Surya Bhand are still serving in the force. All four were arrested on Monday.
The then circle officer of Modinagar, Jyoti Belur, a 1993 batch IPS officer, is the missing link in the case. Belur, who now lives in the UK, failed to appear in the court during the trial. The CBI, which filed the chargesheet in 2001, did not name her as an accused. But the court treated her as one. “A bullet found in Jasveer's body was fired from her revolver,“ Dhaiya said.
Court judgements
Death penalty for false 'encounters'
Fake encounter cops must get death, says SC
‘They’re Cold Blooded Murderers’
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: In a chilling message to cops specialising in fake encounters, the Supreme Court on Friday said they were cold blooded murderers who deserve one punishment — death penalty.
“Cases where a fake encounter is proved against policemen in a trial, they must be given death sentence, treating it as the rarest of rare cases,” said a bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra.
The bench made this observation while rejecting bail to Mumbai policemen involved in the fake encounter at Nana-Nani Park at Versova, which involved “encounter specialist” police inspector Pradip Sharma and others.
Justice Katju, writing the judgment for the bench, said: “Encounter philosophy is a criminal philosophy, and all people must know this. Trigger-happy policemen who think they can kill people in the name of encounter and get away with it should know that the gallows await them.”
No policeman can take the plea of “being ordered by the superior officer” to hide behind the fake encounter crime, the bench said.
“In the Nuremburg trials, the Nazi war criminals took the plea that ‘orders are orders’, nevertheless they were hanged. If a policeman is given an illegal order by any superior to do a fake ‘encounter’, it is his duty to refuse to carry out such illegal order, otherwise he will be charged for murder, and if found guilty sentenced to death,” the court said.
“Fake encounters are nothing but cold blooded, brutal murders by persons who are supposed to uphold the law. If the offence is committed by policemen, much harsher punishment should be given to them because they do an act totally contrary to their duties.”
