Police defend trigger-happiness

The magazine is printed and published by Director General of Police A S Samra and edited by deputy police commissioner Chandrashekhar Rokade.

A series of encounter deaths in the past few months had raised many eyebrows and some voluntary organisations had gone to the extent of alleging that the killing in fact were murders in cold blood.

The July issue of the magazine has devoted its editorial to the controversial topic, and inside it carries an article defending the police. This article has been written by a senior crime reporter of a city newspaper. The front page of the magazine displays a bold heading in red, which says: Police encounters: the other side.’

Below it is a colour photograph of Chief Minister Manohar Joshi and Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde paying homage to policemen killed in such encounters. There is also a collage of newspaper reports of encounters and police deaths. The top left corner of the cover page displays a list of police personnel who died on duty since 1991.

The editorial begins with a definition of the word encounter’. “Every encounter is an attempt to control criminal activities. Condemning the police for encounters in fact encourages criminals,” the edit says.

It then goes ahead to criticise human rights activists for their so-called double standards. “They blame the police of inaction on one hand and accuse them of fake encounters on the other.”

The article, titled Encounters – the strongest remedy’ is based on the police encounter in which three gangsters belonging to the Kumar Pillai faction of Amar Naik gang were shot dead. Two police officers were shot at by the gangsters in this encounter which took place on May 28 this year at Powai. The police had claimed that the gangsters had bombed their vehicle with hand grenades.

This effort of Dakshata is being seen as the police department’s answer to a city daily’s report accusing the police of staging encounters and killing gangsters in cold blood.