Terminate with extreme prejudice!

Post-Independence India has an illustrious history of the State and the police playing Dirty Harry

Mohan Guruswamy Delhi

Just as we were getting our fill about the 'encounter' between the Gujarat Police and an alleged terrorist Sohrabuddin Sheikh, who was allegedly gunned down in cold blood, the movie Shootout at Lokhandwala about the 1991 slaying of gangster Maya Dolas by the Bombay Police brings into focus state-sanctioned extra-judicial killings. Staged encounters have become fairly common all over the country. In fact, there is good reason to believe that there is now considerable support for them among the general public, which could be a main reason for their prevalence. This does not make it right, but it is a telling commentary on the state of affairs. Read this along with the recently released report by Transparency International that India's lower judiciary took Rs. 2630 crores in bribes last year and we get a good inkling as to why the general public is willing to go along with the police's murderous ways. Lower judiciary generally refers to the trial courts where evidence is recorded and justice is dispensed, the kind that found Manu Sharma innocent of killing Jessica Lal despite having shot her in front of scores of people, including an IPS officer.

According to the Chief Justice of the Patna High Court, Justice JN Bhatt, only about 6.5% of murder trials result in a conviction. In 2005 there were 32,719 recorded murders all over India and 28,031 attempts to murder. Given this state of affairs it is little wonder that the public applauds the Dirty Harry methods of the police.

But this leads to another more serious consequence. Many individuals in the police then take to contract killings, either to please their bosses or for money. In fact, it is now not uncommon for gangland bosses to contract killings out to the uniformed “encounter specialists”. In Mumbai the topmost killer policeman, Inspector Daya Nayak, who is now facing charges of corruption, has long been suspected of liquidating smalltime hoodlums at the behest of certain dons. Even ACP AA Khan, the main protagonist of the movie, has been suspected of killing Maya Dolas, incidentally brilliantly portrayed by Vivek Oberoi, on instructions from Dawood Ibrahim from Dubai.

In Delhi the escapades of ACP Rajbir Singh of the Special Cell are well known. The most notorious of them was the Ansal Plaza shootings in which two purported Pakistani terrorists were killed in the basement parking lot of the mall. Although the NHRC was forced to take notice of it, even after three years, justice has not been served. In the meantime, Rajbir Singh got the President's Medal for distinguished service and gallantry. But sometimes the police does act motivated by its sense of infantile justice, as we saw in the Barakhamba Road shooting incident where a Delhi Police team gunned down a businessman and his nephew under the mistaken belief that they were the two notorious killers they were trailing. Nevertheless, it is still a murder and the trial is supposedly progressing. Another ACP, in the meantime, has been sentenced to death for an 'encounter' killing over a decade ago when he was still SHO. He recently retired as an ACP.