It is a bumping-off of the rule of law too

The inquiry into the 2019 Hyderabad encounter killings is a reminder that the police must observe the spirit of the law

A recent report submitted by the commission of inquiry headed by a former Supreme Court of India judge, Justice V.S. Sirpurkar, indicting the police in Hyderabad for the fake encounter, in 2019, on the outskirts of Hyderabad near Shamshabad, should serve as an eye-opener to senior police officials who by-pass the law and due processes and eliminate suspects with impunity. Decidedly, a fake encounter, the law should now take its own course; a first information report should be filed against the police officials concerned for the murder of the four youth suspected to have gang-raped a veterinary doctor and then murdered her and burnt her body on the night of November 27.

That D.R. Karthikeyan, a very senior Indian Police Service officer (also Special Director in the Central Bureau of Investigation who investigated the Rajiv Gandhi murder case), was associated with the commission of inquiry lends credence to the fact that after a thorough investigation, the killing of the youths was deemed to be nothing but a pre-meditated cold-blooded murder. The alleged culprits deserved severe punishment after observing all legal procedures. But definitely not execution by policemen who later boasted about their so-called heroic act — shooting down unarmed men in the early hours of December 6, 2019.

The public outcry to apprehend the men after the crime may have pushed the police to act fast. Indubitably, they did a great job by arresting the criminals in a very short time. But, thereafter, things became murky when the police preferred to take the law into their own hands and eliminate the four youth.

Even as the details of the encounter were reported in the media, it became amply clear that it was indeed a fake encounter. The version by the police, that the four youth attempted to escape after throwing mud in the eyes of the policemen and attempting to snatch their weapons, was silly and nothing but a cover up; it was a murderous act. That unarmed youth, who should have been in handcuffs, attempted to overpower a large number if policemen sounds too ludicrous to believe.

In November 2017, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, had publicly stated that criminals would be jailed or killed in encounters. The message that went to the law-enforcing agencies, though in a subtle manner, was that they had been given a free hand to deal with criminals; no questions asked. By the end of his first term as the Chief Minister, 151 criminals had been killed and over 3,300 maimed by gunshot injuries, mostly in the legs, in over 8,500 encounters; 13 policemen are reported to have been killed and 1,157 injured.

Following the lead of Uttar Pradesh, the Chief Minister of Assam too gave clear directions to the Assam police personnel that criminals who attempted to escape should be shot. The message was loud and clear. It was for the police to prove that a criminal was shot dead while trying to escape. Between May 10, 2021 and January 28, 2022, as many as 28 suspects were killed and 73 injured by the police, a majority of them from the minority community and most others from ethnic communities.

Following three murders within 24 hours in three districts of Bihar in March last year, three legislators of the State (from the Bharatiya Janata Party) suggested that the Uttar Pradesh model of encounter killings by the police be adopted in Bihar too, in order to bring down the crime rate. In the same manner, the recent ‘bulldozer policy’ of Uttar Pradesh has also been adopted in Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, giving established legal procedures a go-by.