The Central Bureau of
Investigation’s (CBI) chargesheet in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case
naming senior police officers for abducting and killing four people has once
again drawn public attention to a harsh and recurring reality about so-called
‘fake encounters’. ‘Encounters’ are one of the main reasons why the police is
viewed negatively and why people fear the force. Therefore, for the police to
become worthy of public trust, they must stop illegal killings.
Whether persons
killed in an encounter had intended to commit a crime or had a past criminal
record is not even a material question to ask. The police have no right to
execute even a hardened criminal as if India were a lawless country. It is a
cardinal principle of democratic policing that any use of force by the police
must be properly subject to the rule of law, and to various layers of
accountability and scrutiny.
‘Encounters’ are
seldom what they purport to be: a genuine confrontation between the police and
suspected criminals, in which the police open fire in self-defence. However, in
reality, on most occasions, an ‘encounter’ is a euphemism for a cold,
calculated and premeditated murder. This is often meant to pass off a custodial
death (the victims being already under informal/illegal custody of the police)
as a spontaneous and unplanned shootout.
Instead of submitting
to the process of justice for an extra-judicial killing (because, to begin
with, that is what even a genuine ‘encounter’ is, unless held by the court to
be a killing in the exercise of the right of private defence after a trial), in
an utter travesty, the police foists a case of attempt-to-murder (Section 307
IPC) on the deceased persons whose voices will never be heard in court, making
such a trial, at best, a formality. At a time when the death penalty handed
down by the judiciary is regarded as an abomination in a democracy, a police
‘investigation’ into an encounter is nothing but a brazen attempt to give
illegality a veneer of legality.
Banking on the
parroted statements of fellow officers, as credible scientific evidence is
rarely collected and produced, the police often manages to sail through court
and prove the deceased guilty. A triumph indeed!
We must understand
why ‘encounters’ take place in order to be able to do something about it. Jyoti
Belur, a former IPS officer now teaching and researching at University College,
London, in her book Permission to Shoot? Police Use of Deadly Force in
Democracies (2010) finds that, in Mumbai, with its organised crime and
underworld gangs, the police use of deadly force in ‘encounters’ was not widely
perceived as a form of deviance by police officers, the media, or in public
discourse. In fact, political and public approval only encourages officers with
a mistaken sense of mission in the police service of ridding society of all
crime and disorder.
‘Dirty means for
noble ends’ soon mutates into a bloody business in which it does not matter
whether the individuals eliminated are innocent. This is how ‘encounter
specialists’ are born or created in a particular context. They are then
glamourised by the media and Bollywood, which tends to focus excessively on the
violent crime-fighting role of the police. It becomes a vicious cycle.
Explanations of
police encounters are, of course, more complex and multi-dimensional than
indicated here. However, with senior IPS officers themselves being accused of
hatching conspiracies to carry out ‘fake encounters’, a few conclusions are in
order.
First, whatever the
origins of ‘fake encounters’, any effort to even obliquely justify them on
apparently reasonable grounds is patently wrong. Second, internal professional
supervision by the police alone cannot be relied upon to end this ghastly
practice. Further, those subordinates who believe they have acted on the orders
of their superiors in conducting an encounter would do well to remember the
lesson of the Nuremburg judgement: one cannot shelter oneself behind the
doctrine of respondeat superior while committing an illegal act.
Third, there is an
urgent need for a fundamental reassessment of the role of the police in our
democracy. Fourth, police accountability must be enforced by putting in place
both, a credible and uncompromising external civilian oversight institution,
and an independent complaints-redressal mechanism.
It is surely going to take a lot of effort to root out the menace of police encounters. But persist we must.
It is surely going to take a lot of effort to root out the menace of police encounters. But persist we must.
( Pupul Dutta Prasad is
Senior Superintendent of Police, National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi.)
