Police encounters as (unstated) state policy

The surge of police encounters in Uttar Pradesh is borne out by a report in the Times of India (3 October 2024), which claimed that Gautam Buddh Nagar in Noida alone had witnessed one encounter every three days over the past two years. In Noida and Greater Noida, 49 alleged criminals were killed and 416 injured in 327 encounters, 938 were held, and 400 firearms and 24 knives recovered.

Members of the ‘thak-thak gang' (who allegedly specialise in breaking into parked vehicles and stealing stereos, radios and car accessories) figured on the list along with chain-snatchers, burglars and members of other more notorious gangs. Police commissioner Laxmi Singh said the crackdowns increased after Yogi Adityanath took over as chief minister for the second term in 2022.

While the claim of an ‘apradh mukt (crime-free) Noida’ is contentious and death for petty thieves questionable, the fact is that police in UP, as in other states, have embraced encounters as a legitimate instrument to show results. In a Facebook post at the end of September, Sulkhan Singh, a former director-general of police (DGP), UP, warned policemen who were staging fake encounters in the hope of receiving rewards and promotions that their ‘crimes’ could eventually catch up with them.

Singh recalled that criminal prosecution against policemen in Ghazipur and Sitapur districts was launched as many as 22 and 25 years respectively after the encounter killings they had staged. The former DGP claimed that at least 250 policemen, most nearing retirement, were languishing in various prisons. Their pleas for bail were not entertained by even the high court.

Among them, he pointed out, are the 45 policemen held guilty of a massacre in Pilibhit. There was a BJP government in the state then, and there is a BJP government in the state now. Senior officers who are pressurising subordinates to stage fake encounters would be long gone and they would have to face the music, Singh cautioned.

Even the infamous Brijbhushan Sharan Singh, former BJP MP and reviled former president of the Wrestling Federation of India, had alleged in September that select ‘encounter specialists’ were busy killing relatively insignificant criminals in order to claim out-of-turn promotion.

Amitabh Thakur, an IPS officer who took voluntary retirement, provided a different perspective. He said police superintendents are routinely asked during review meetings how many encounters have been staged in their district and how many criminals killed.

If any SP reported a singular lack of killings, the next question would be: what was wrong with him? Most SPs would therefore go back and order their subordinates to stage some encounters before the next review meeting, Thakur confessed candidly, adding that the malady is an old one in the state.

Other IPS officers in UP have been equally vocal. Retired IPS officer S.R. Darapuri claims police encounters were rare when he was in service. Now, he says, “extrajudicial killings have become part of the state’s unstated policy”. He holds that a government resorts to encounter killings only when it fails to ensure law and order by legitimate means. UP minister Om Prakash Rajbhar defended these ‘incidents’, saying the police could surely not be expected to greet criminals with flowers.

The National Crime Records Bureau ‘Crime in India’ report for the year 2022 released in December 2023 recorded a staggering 65,743 cases of crimes against women (rape, murder, kidnapping, murder after rape and gang rape) in just one year in UP.

The same year, the state reported 3,491 murders and 15,368 cases of atrocities against SCs and STs registered with the police. Significantly, the numbers are much higher than they were in 2017 when Yogi Adityanath took over as chief minister. As dramatic footage of crimes recorded on CCTV cameras goes viral on social media, daylight robbery, chain-snatching, bike-thefts and even abductions continue unabated.

It is difficult to say if it’s a case of life imitating art or vice versa. Mainstream films have glorified extra-judicial killings and lionised encounter specialists. The public tends to see ‘instant justice’ as satisfactory proof oftough governance. Hindi films like Ab Tak Chhappan, Company, Aan, Shootout at Lokhandwala, Shootout at Wadala and Garv featured ‘encounter specialists’ as lead characters, even heroes. Regional films have not been lagged behind either, and such policemen are often regarded as celebrities.

Sachin Waze, a former ‘encounter specialist’ with Mumbai Police, echoed other officers who asserted that their targets were all ‘guilty criminals’. “I didn’t do it for money. It was for fame, recognition and to serve the public. Every one of them deserved to go and they went,” said Waze in an interview to the Guardian in 2011.

Tough-talking filmi dialogue has been picked up by politicians. While UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath promised he’d help criminals meet Yamraj, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma encouraged police to shoot criminals in the leg, which, he underscored, was allowed by the law. Too bad if some such bullets went astray and took the lives of the escapee.

In 2023, Guwahati High Court was informed that 161 incidents of ‘police action’ had taken place across Assam in the previous 13 months, which left 51 dead and 139 injured. According to the Union home ministry, Assam recorded the third highest number of police encounter deaths in 2021–22.

On 23 September, Akshay Shinde, accused of sexually abusing two kindergartners in a Mumbai school, was killed while being transported in a prison van. Overlooking the police’s failure to arrest the two absconding trustees of the school, both chief minister Eknath Shinde and deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis tussled over credit for the encounter killing.

Shiv Sena (Shinde) workers distributed sweets and burst crackers in Badlapur, where the school is located, while BJP workers put up posters of Fadnavis brandishing a weapon, along with the slogan ‘badla pura’ (revenge complete).

The Supreme Court has mandated that every killing by the police be followed by both a departmental and a magisterial inquiry, to be communicated to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the encounter spot and post-mortem be recorded and both videos shared with the NHRC. Post-2014, however, the NHRC has been accepting the police version of encounters and returning video records to the state police, making it impossible for the victims’ relatives and human rights activists to access them.

NHRC’s credibility has taken a hit with the UN Human Rights Council questioning its track record and refusing to renew accreditation for two successive years. Even as the Government of India denounces the denial as ‘unfair’, it has made no difference to the composition and functioning of the NHRC, packed as it is with pro-government retired judges and police officers.

The Youth for Human Rights Documentation (YHRD) and 16 other organisations looked at 17 police encounter cases in UP and found that not a single case had been properly investigated.

FIRs of encounter killings are filed by the police themselves, as the family members of the deceased (who are generally poor and from marginalised sections of the community) are way too intimidated to file a counter and challenge the details. Mangla Verma, a young lawyer with YHRD says, “When we examined police records, they were damning. It was quite obvious that the encounters were fake.”

Encounter killings, once endemic in Kashmir, Punjab, as well as supposedly anti-Naxalite operations in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra and West Bengal, have recently spread to Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Manipur. Paradoxically, even as encounter killings convey a false sense of safety, the rising crime graph adds to people’s sense of insecurity.

Proving the accused guilty in court is increasingly seen as too cumbersome and time-consuming. Dispensing instant justice satisfies the blood-lust of people and helps politicians build a no-nonsense image. Encounter killings successfully distract people into believing that swift elimination of criminals will make them safer. The evidence does not bear this out.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav appeared to hit the nail on the head when he posted, "Fake encounters turn protectors into predators. The solution is not fake encounters, but upholding the rule of the law. BJP rule is the Amritkaal of criminals..."