The killing of Mumbai-based don Sanjay Ghate, a member of the Chhota Rajan gang, in an ‘‘encounter’’ in Ekattuthangal, an industrial area in Chennai, on April 20 last year set the stage for a series of such incidents. The result: over half-a-dozen criminals were shot down while another three were injured.This, according to the police, is the chain of events which led to 31-year-old Ghate’s death at the hands of a police sub-inspector. Ghate was being taken to the Chennai airport to identify an associate arriving by the day’s flight. The police jeep hit a road median and turned turtle. Ghate seized the chance to attempt an escape, snatching a service pistol from a police inspector, even firing two rounds. Ghate’s death came just a day after his arrest. Just a few days before Ghate’s death, City Police Commissioner K. Vijay Kumar had issued a stern warning, stating that the police were empowered to open fire in case of an emergency without any special orders. He had said that the police would be acting as per the legal provisions if they had to use firearms to ‘‘protect life and property’’.Interestingly, Ghate’s wife and relative, who arrived in Chennai to claim his body, refused to talk about the ‘‘encounter’’.After a lull of about five months, Murugesan, a burglar whose victims included Tamil film icon Rajnikant and retired IAS officer Paul Raj, was shot dead when he allegedly tried to escape from police custody. Murugesan was reportedly being escorted to Elliot’s Beach in Besant Nagar, where he claimed to have hidden a pistol stolen from the house of Paul Raj. On reaching the spot, the burglar is reported to have diverted the attention of the police, dug out the pistol and fired two rounds. While one Sub-Inspector was injured, another quickly shot two rounds at Murugesan, killing him.In November, the city saw as many as six ‘‘encounters’’. Stalin, a notorious ganglord, was shot dead on the busy North Usman Road in T Nagar late in the evening of November 3. A police team is said to have spotted Stalin in Somasundaram Park in T Nagar. They gave chase. When he was surrounded, Stalin reportedly whipped out a knife and attacked a police Inspector, who shot him in ‘‘self-defence’’. Another history-sheeter, Suresh, was shot dead the same month after he reportedly attacked a Sub-Inspector with a knife while trying to escape on a motorcycle at a police check-post.On November 21, three persons belonging to a tribal sect, the Koravas, were shot dead when they reportedly tried to escape after attacking a police escort personnel at Neelankarai, on the outskirts of the city. The accused were said to have been involved in over 15 rape and robbery cases.Three days later, Siva, a Naxalite member of the Revolutionary Youth League, was killed after he allegedly opened fire at a police team in the forests of Dharmapuri. Following this, 25 other Naxals were taken into custody. Although a couple of probes by the Revenue Divisional Officer into the ‘‘encounters’’ were announced, the police was not really put under the scanner for their actions. Unlike in 1996, the last time the city saw so many ‘‘police encounters’’, when the then Opposition leader J. Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK openly accused the police of stage-managing the killings. This time, there was no political outcry, nor did the human rights groups raise a storm.In 1996, five dreaded gangsters were killed in a period of one-and-half months. In early June that year, a dreaded gangster ‘‘Military’’ Kumar was shot dead in a pre-dawn operation in the city. Three weeks later, three other gangsters, Asai Thamby, Mano and Gopal, were reportedly killed in a shoot-out with the police outside the Loyola College. Jaya had then alleged that the police had caught the trio much before, illegally confining them. She claimed that the police had wanted them to implicate the AIADMK leaders in the cases filed against them by the DMK. When they refused to comply, they were shot down in a fake encounter, she claimed.
