The file is closed

The first reply I received was on October 24, 2003, almost a year after I had submitted my complaint. That was a reproduction of the NHRC8217;s noting on the case: 8220;Perused the report received from the office of the Commissioner of Police, Delhi, dated 05 Aug 2003. No further action by the commission is called for. File.8221; There was no mention of Ansal Plaza. Nor was there a copy of the police report. I presumed from the laconic reply that it related to my complaint.

When I wrote to NHRC Chairman Justice A.S. Anand that I had not even been 8220;called for the hearing8221;, the NHRC forwarded to me the police report. What kind of inquiry is it when the same police and probably the same officers, whose transfer I had sought, examine the allegation of 8220;a false encounter8221; against them? How can their version be considered an inquiry report? The NHRC has its own staff. Some respectable retired police officers are its members and they are assigned special tasks. Why were they not used for the inquiry? Either the commission did not attach much importance to my petition or it preferred not to cross swords with the police or the ruling BJP, which had said after my complaint that the 8220;so-called human rights activists8221; were 8220;the over ground face of the underground activists8221;. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad had even demanded my arrest under Pota.

Naturally, the police would stand by what it had said on the day of the Ansal Plaza shootout. Repeating the same point, the police have said in the report, 8220;The slain terrorists seem to have sneaked into the Indian territory surreptitiously with the intention to indulge in terrorist act.8221; Two youths who had alighted from a Maruti car were asked to stop for verification on the basis of suspicion. Instead of stopping, they took out their weapons and fired at the police party, who returned fire in self-defence and in order to apprehend them. The two militants got injured, were removed to the hospital, where they were declared brought dead. All encounter reports more or less use the same phraseology. This report was no different. As far as Dr Hari Krishnais concerned, the police were hostile to him from day one and therefore repeated in the report that he was not present at the site.

Even then the police report is full of holes. Many questions come to my mind: did the forensic report support the theory of firing as made out by the police? When was the FIR on the theft of the car lodged and where was it before surfacing at Ansal Plaza? What steps did the police take to find out the identity of the dead because these steps would have goaded the police to local leads? From where did the terrorists acquire the arms, for it showed the complicity or at least involvement of local contacts?

The haste with which the case was closed and the reluctance of the police in parting with the report would arouse doubts about the 8220;encounter8221; itself. Strange, the NHRC does not raise even the obvious questions and accepts the report in toto. Such an attitude only lowers the public standing of the NHRC which had shot up after the courage it had displayed over the Gujarat massacres.

The NHRC should realise that it is concerned not just with the criminal investigation but also with the investigative accountability. Taking at face value the excuses trotted out by the police who did not give any details lest anyone should challenge or counter them cannot fulfill that role. The kind of response which the police have taken recourse to will be the same even in false encounters.

I am surprised how the NHRC, under its chairman Justice A.S. Anand, after reading the police report, could record: 8220;File the case8221;! He is the same Justice Anand who, as a Supreme Court judge, had delivered an epoch-making judgment: 8220;State terrorism is no answer to combat terrorism. That would be bad for the state, the community and above all for the rule of law. The state must, therefore, ensure that various agencies deployed by it for combating terrorism act within the bounds of laws and not become law unto themselves. That the terrorist has violated human rights of innocent citizens may render him liable to punishment but it cannot justify the violation of his human rights8230;8217;8217;

In the fifties there was a poet in communist-ruled Hungary who said: 8220;We are living in cannibal times.8221; The police report and the comment by the NHRC remind me of that observation. How do we change attitudes? When there are persistent voices that law protectors have become law violators, the nation must sit up and ponder. The state can frame as many laws as it requires for fighting terrorism. It already has several of them in its armoury. Whatever their number, the state has to stay within the limits of the law. It cannot become a law unto itself.

Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani is now more circumspect while speaking about human rights violations because the Hurriyat has threatened to walk out of the talks following the killing of labourers at Bandipur in Kashmir. But he is the same person who has dubbed the human rights activists as anti-national. He should realise that no government is worth a dime if human rights do not form an integral part of it.