Hyderabad: "They chased the gangster and he started firing at them. The STF personnel tried to catch him alive but had to fire in self-defence." As cliched as it sounds, it is the official statement released by the UP STF after they gunned down gangster Vikas Dubey.
Dubey, a history-sheeter, earned himself the label of UP's 'most wanted' after he planned an ambush that led to the death of eight policemen and seven others were injured on the intervening night of Thursday (2 July) and Friday (3 July) at Bikaru village in Chaubepur area of Kanpur. The chain of events that followed was nothing short of dramatic as one after the other Dubey's aides were shot down by Uttar Pradesh police in encounters. But it is the encounter of Dubey himself that has raised serious questions about the circumstances of the purported encounter.
After leading the UP police on a merry chase for 6 days, Dubey was arrested after being spotted at Ujjain's Mahakal temple. The gangster, who was thought to have connections with local politicians as well as personnel inside the police dept was killed in an 'encounter' after a police vehicle carrying him from Ujjain to Kanpur met with an accident and he tried to escape from the spot, taking all the secrets to the grave. Now questions are being raised, with the opposition even accusing the ruling Yogi Adityanath government of staging the encounter to shield the real culprits.
As unsurprising as the police's story may be, it isn't the first time that police, in any part of the country, has tried to justify 'extra-judicial killings' or as they like to call it - an encounter. The killing of Vikas Dubey and his aides is reminiscent of the Hyderabad encounter, in which four people accused of rape and murder of a veterinary doctor were gunned down. Claiming that the suspects "snatched" their weapons, the police in both cases shot the suspects "in self-defence".
The story of the suspects snatching weapons and the police having to shoot them is one that has been used repeatedly by police to justify extra-judicial killings. But that is not all, in many cases, encounters have turned out to be fake, where the police essentially staged confrontations with victims deemed to be "criminals" by the police. As per an RTI filed by Firstpost, the NHRC registered 1782 fake encounter cases between 2000-2017 across India with UP alone accounting for a startling 794 cases (44.55%). According to UP Police's own account, 103 criminals were killed and 1859 injured in 5178 police engagements in the last more than 2 years.
Legal aspects of police encounters
In ‘People’s Union for Civil Liberties & Anr vs State of Maharashtra and Ors’ (September 23, 2014) a bench of the then Chief Justice of India R M Lodha and Justice Rohinton F Nariman issued a detailed 16-point procedure “to be followed in the matters of investigating police encounters in the cases of death as the standard procedure for a thorough, effective and independent investigation”.
Some of these directives were:
● Whenever the police are in receipt of any intelligence or tip-off regarding criminal movements or activities pertaining to the commission of a grave criminal offence, it shall be reduced into writing in some form (preferably into case diary) or in some electronic form.
● If pursuant to the tip-off or receipt of any intelligence, as above, an encounter takes place and a firearm is used by the police party and as a result of that, death occurs, an FIR to that effect shall be registered and the same shall be forwarded to the court under Section 157 of the Code without any delay.
● An independent investigation into the incident/encounter shall be conducted by the CID or police team of another police station under the supervision of a senior officer (at least a level above the head of the police party engaged in the encounter).
● A Magisterial inquiry under Section 176 of the Code must invariably be held in all cases of death which occur in the course of police firing and a report thereof must be sent to Judicial Magistrate having jurisdiction under Section 190 of the Code.
● The involvement of NHRC is not necessary unless there is serious doubt about the independent and impartial investigation. However, the information of the incident without any delay must be sent to NHRC or the State Human Rights Commission, as the case may be.
● The court directed that these “requirements/norms must be strictly observed in all cases of death and grievous injury in police encounters by treating them as the law declared under Article 141 of the Constitution of India”.
