Comment

If you know your history, you know that there is no such thing as a benign dictatorship. Similarly, there can be no ethical Encounter Specialists. The old saying, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely,” applies in both cases. Which is why, wherever “encounters” have been openly permitted by the state (or the government has turned a blind eye to them, which is the same thing), they have gone beyond their original intended use and degenerated into abuse of the worst kind.

The former Punjab police chiefKPS Gill, who readily owns up to instituting “encounters” as an important part of his armoury in crushing militancy in that state, had this to say in a recent interview to a news magazine: “Encounters should happen, if required. If a terrorist or a criminal fires at the police, one cannot expect the police personnel not to respond.”

Who would argue with that? The problem, as we all know by now, is that encounters are not real encounters but “encounters”; in other words, there is no genuine exchange of fire between police and criminals; instead, criminals are caught, disarmed, then shot in cold blood. In short, these are extra-judicial executions of unarmed men, presumed guilty without due processes of law.

When you give people licence to kill with no questions asked, things are going to turn ugly sooner than later. In Punjab during Gill’s tenure, the police were said to have turned extortionists, threatening families that their sons would be “encountered” unless they paid up. (Most did. Given the climate of those days, who wouldn’t?) The same thing happened in Mumbai, where fake encounters were widely used in the fight against the mafia. Some Encounter Specialists are said to have amassed huge personal wealth, even becoming crorepatis! Even if some of them were honest, they couldn’t resist the lure of publicity, courting the media with boastful headcounts of people they had killed.

This is not all: there have been accusations that fake encounters have been used to settle personal scores by third parties, which if true, would make policemen take on the role of hired killers. Even in the recent case where DG Vanzara, Gujarat’s top anti-terrorism cop and his associates are said to have killed Sohrabuddin Sheikh, motives other than mistaken identity are being mentioned. One allegation is that Sheikh, labelled a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative by Vanzara, was actually an extortionist who targeted marble traders in Rajasthan. Some of them, it seems, had political links in Gujarat and, it is alleged, a fiat went out to eliminate Sheikh. The latter’s wife (Kauser Bi) and an associate (Tulsi Prajapati) were witness to Sheikh’s killing, and were then eliminated too.

As it is, there have been acknowledged instances of innocent people being killed in these ‘encounters’. The most infamous is of the two Delhi businessmen who were dragged out of their car and killed by Delhi police in May 1997 in Connaught Place, apparently in a case of mistaken identity. Did the police say ‘sorry’ to the victims’ families and did the families say, “These things happen”? KPS Gill rather grandly says, “In fighting militancy and organised crime, mistakes are bound to happen.” Would he be so sanguine if his own relatives or friends were mistakenly bumped off?

“Encounters” are actually an extension of the police forces’ now long-standing tradition of taking the easy way out. Third degree is routinely used to solve petty crimes, because it’s far easier and quicker than detective work. Similarly, staged encounters eliminate the need for laborious work which will establish an arrested man’s terrorist links.

The media is to blame too: it has too easily accepted the police version of “encounters” without doing any independent investigation of its own, and it has too readily given ‘Encounter Specialists’ cult status. They aren’t heroes, by any definition, and it’s about time we recognised them for what they are.