#dnaEdit: Police in the dock

The puncturing of the Andhra police version of the killing of 20 labourers, allegedly working for red sanders smugglers — first by eyewitness accounts, and now by an Indian Express investigation, which has revealed call detail records in variance with the police version — point towards a cold-blooded fake encounter. The April 7 incident has the chillingly dubious distinction of recording the largest toll of civilian deaths in police firing in recent times. The AP police had claimed they were attacked with knives, iron rods, and stones. However, suspicions rose when the nature of the victims’ injuries and the evidence at the crime scene did not tally with the police version. Soon afterwards, two survivors revealed that two agents had offered work to them and the 20 slain men, and they were travelling to Andhra Pradesh from Tamil Nadu when they were apprehended. This contradicted the police version that the men were intercepted while hauling logs in the Seshachalam forest. The CDR records also appear to tally with the survivors’ version.

However, the approach of the AP police reveals the ways in which the police and state government work towards undermining the Supreme Court’s 16-point guidelines on fake encounters. The AP government had initiated a magisterial inquiry by a revenue official, instead of opting for an inquiry by a judicial magistrate which has greater legal standing. Twenty days after the incident, the Andhra Pradesh high court was dismayed to find that the case diary did not even have the names of the officers involved in the alleged encounter and had no details on the progress of the investigation. The AP high court has directed the Special Investigation Team of the AP police to directly report to it and not take orders from any political authority. But can the high court ensure that the SIT, drawn from the same police force, will not act in a biased manner? With law and order a state subject, and states reluctant to order a CBI probe unless pushed to the wall, the best hope for victims would have been the NHRC, but it rarely proceeds beyond ordering monetary compensation for fake encounters.

In 2011, the Supreme Court had ruled that fake encounter cases against police personnel must be treated as “rarest of rare” deserving the death penalty. The SC opined that where crimes were “committed by ordinary people, ordinary punishment should be given, but if the offence is committed by policemen, much harsher punishment should be given because they do an act totally contrary to their duties”. The AP police contention has been that the slain men were smugglers. It is the law that gives police personnel the right to arrest criminal elements. The law also technically allows the police to fire in self-defence. Abusing these two facets of the law to eliminate citizens before proving their criminality in a court of law, only leads to a loss of faith in the law and not its opposite, as has been claimed. Some politicians and police officers have defended encounters as a “natural reaction” of a slow-moving judicial system. This is a self-serving argument that does not factor in their own roles in retarding judicial processes. Recently, Delhi was witness to an encounter killing at a restaurant. The trigger-happy Delhi police special cell claimed they fired only after Manoj Vashisht, an alleged conman, whipped out a pistol. Eyewitnesses have supported the police version though the CCTV footage is inconclusive. Meanwhile, Vashisht’s family claims he was a social worker. The long list of victims, who have fallen prey to police brutality, does make for a strong case for popular anger against the slow pace of police reforms in India.