#dnaEdit: The Indian State’s failings have contributed to fake encounters

The sentencing of 47 Uttar Pradesh policemen to life terms by a CBI court for the fake encounter killings of 11 Sikhs in 1991 in Pilibhit is a reminder to police forces and governments that courts of law are the final arbiters of justice in the country. While violence and encounters can happen when police face criminals with weapons, the number of times we have seen police forces resort to fake encounters against unarmed civilians, makes it imperative that each and every encounter killing is rigorously interrogated and the truth brought out. Otherwise, the rule of law that upholds peace and order in our societies will come crashing down. The duty of police and armed forces is to bring criminal offenders before a court of law. No circumstance, be it national security or public order, justifies extra-judicial murder or custodial torture. This has been reiterated by the Supreme Court on multiple occasions though it faltered once in the ADM Jabalpur case when it ruled that fundamental rights like the right to life stood suspended during an Emergency. Police personnel who violate this dictum deserve stringent punishment and it is in this light that the CBI court order must be seen in.

In the Pilibhit fake encounters, justice has been delivered after an unpardonably long time: 25 years. Last year, in another gruesome fake encounter killing from around the same time — the 1987 Hashimpura massacre in which 40 Muslim men were killed —  all 16 Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary personnel were acquitted for want of evidence. At that time, we had written that when trials take 30 years to complete, the first casualty is evidence. It is fortunate that the witnesses in the Pilibhit case have stood their ground and the investigation was not subverted to the extent it was in Hashimpura. In Pilibhit, the 11 murdered men were travelling with their families on a pilgrimage when they were picked up and so many of these family members became the crucial eyewitnesses who last saw the victims alive. The 11 men were divided into three groups and were taken away by separate police teams who shot them in cold blood. It did not help that some of the men were suspected of ties with Sikh militancy in Punjab and this provided a cause to arrest them. Whether it was the lure of promotions and honours or communal hatred that drove the UP policemen to commit these murders, the fact is that they spotted and exploited governance flaws and the poor performance of the criminal justice delivery system. 

When cases piled up in courts, the outcry for speedy justice, somewhere down the line, morphed into legitimacy for vigilante justice. Indian democracy is relatively young and it can be argued that many institutions, especially the police, were not sufficiently reformed when India came into freedom, and the mindset of a colonial police force with many of its insidious trappings has persisted. Last April, Andhra Pradesh police killed 20 men alleged to be red sanders smugglers, and on the same day, five terror suspects belonging to various radical Muslim organisations were gunned by the neighbouring Telangana police. Unlike in the past, police versions of encounters are being vigorously questioned by activists, family members, media and on occasion, the judiciary. Between 1993 and 2010, the National Human Rights Commission registered 2,956 police encounter cases of which 1,366 cases were complaints from the public alleging fake encounters. However, a majority of these encounters were found to be genuine. In 2014, the Supreme Court listed 16 guidelines to be followed after encounter killings including a magisterial inquiry, registration of an FIR, investigation by an independent CID team, and immediately intimating the NHRC. It is unclear whether these guidelines are being uniformly followed or are being subverted wilfully. These measures will surely discourage fake encounters but to improve respect for the rule of law the courts must also crack down on custodial torture, delayed investigations and the huge pendency of cases.