Rock stars in uniform

8216;Encounter specialists8217; get away with murder because the system cannot care less

Sohrabuddin Sheikh was a criminal guilty of extortion and other rackets, and we must listen to BJP leader V.K. Malhotra and not glamourise him. But it has now been established, under the CID imprimatur no less, that he was not a terrorist, was not a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative, and was not planning to assassinate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Of course we would not have known all this and it could have been the perfect 8220;encounter8221; murder, if Sohrabuddin Sheikh did not happen to have a brother who was persistent enough to knock at the Supreme Court8217;s doors. Sohrabuddin Sheikh also had a wife who insisted on accompanying him into the unknown and who also, according to the Gujarat government8217;s statement in the Supreme Court, has ended up dead. She too proved inconvenient to the choreographers of her husband8217;s 8220;encounter8221; death because it is not often that a LeT operative/ terrorist/ intent on killing Modi traipses around the countryside accompanied by a loving wife. But, of course, we must not glamourise Kauserbi.

Sohrabuddin Sheikh8217;s killing was allegedly masterminded by the head of Gujarat8217;s anti-terrorism squad, D.G. Vanzara. He belongs to a breed of policemen who has been allowed to create its own independent universe of impunity and rewrite every rule in the book; a breed which is allowed to create a 8220;subterranean stream of homicidal violence8221;, as Suketu Mehta put it in Maximum City 8212; Bombay Lost and Found. Mumbai8217;s 8220;encounter specialists8221;, believed to have broken the back of the mafia gangs that ruled the metropolis, emerged as popular as rock stars in the late nineties and early years of this decade, posing for journalists with their AK-47s and reeling off the number of scalps they had claimed as their personal tally, much like the maharajahs of an earlier era did their tiger killings. They became the subjects of movies and had police gallantry awards pinned to their lapels. Until, that is, it was discovered that many in this league of extraordinary men were making money from various interests,

including the mafia, by actually staging shootouts.

If in Mumbai the 8220;encounter8221; specialists were deployed to battle the mafia with complete support from the state government, in post-riots Gujarat, they were on a mission to eliminate terrorists with the active assistance of the state government. Sohrabuddin Sheikh was eliminated in November 2005, but almost a year and a half before that there was the curious 8220;encounter8221; that occurred near the Kotarpur Water Works, Ahmedabad, early one June morning, when the bullet-riddled bodies of the four occupants of a car, including a young woman later identified as Ishrat Jehan, from Mumbra, were discovered. The FIR claimed that at least two of this party were 8220;Pakistani fidayeen8221; of the LeT equipped with arms and ammunition who were proceeding with the intention to kill Narendra Modi. An inquiry into the incident by human rights groups in July 2004 pointed out that the Gujarat police were not even able to confirm that the two men were indeed Pakistani. It was also noted that while the car in which the 8220;terrorists8221; were travelling was riddled with bullets, there was little evidence of return fire by the 8220;fidayeen8221; despite their reported possession of an AK-47 and AK-56. The report also noted that the Crime Branch in Ahmedabad had grown into a 8220;powerful parallel police force8221; that was a law unto itself. But the questions around this 8220;encounter8221; soon died down, and the Gujarat8217;s special squad was free to move on to its next big 8220;operation8221;.

Such extra-judicial violence draws its rationale from the belief that tough measures are needed to make life safer for the rest of the citizens. But staged encounters do not help in securing public safety. In fact, they can work to the contrary, by blurring the lines between legitimate security measures and illegitimate ones. Such peremptory snuffing out of lives deprives the police of significant information that is vital if they are indeed serious about fighting terrorists or the mafia in the long term. They deepen public scepticism about the police force, and further a culture in which a small group of officers, enjoying great political patronage and the confidence of the highest functionaries in government, are allowed to believe that they have the licence to kill and who draw great personal and pecuniary benefits from that licence.

So normalised have 8220;encounter deaths8221; become today, and not just in Gujarat, that the fact that they violate the most basic article in the Constitution, the right to life, is hardly a concern. They also ignore the express strictures passed by the National Human Rights Commission. In 1997, the chairman of the NHRC, Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, wrote to all the chief ministers, reminding them that the policeman, under the law, is not conferred with the right to take away another person8217;s life and that if he kills a person, he commits the offence of 8220;culpable homicide whether amounting to the offence of murder or not, unless it is proved that such killing was not an offence under the law8221;. It would not be considered an offence if the death is caused in the exercise of the right of private defence or while trying to apprehend a person who is fleeing from the scene and 8220;accused of an offence punishable with death or imprisonment for life.8221; He then went on to state that whether the death caused in the 8220;encounter8221; was justified would, however, have to be established through a proper procedure, which should include the registering of such deaths and investigation into the facts 8212; under an independent investigating agency. The frighteningly facile way in which Sohrabuddin Sheikh8217;s life was snuffed out, as indeed those who were possible witnesses to it, his wife and associate, Tulsiram Prajapati, demonstrates just how seriously Gujarat8217;s anti-terrorist squad took the Constitution and well-laid out procedures of apprehending suspected criminals.

We must not glamourise Sohrabuddin, but neither must we glamourise such brutal and unconscionable acts. Some 21 encounters that are believed to have taken place in Gujarat between 2003 and 2006 have just been brought to the scrutiny of the Supreme Court. Now let justice speak.