A few days ago, I was watching a daily show on crime in one of the regional Channels. The episode was about a notorious rowdy killed in a Police encounter. The rowdy’s body was riddled with 16 bullets and the cops claim that they only opened fire in retaliation, after giving due calls for him to surrender. I suppose this is the standard line of the Police post every encounter.

The theme is the same, only the wordings vary.

Encounters, according to the Fuzz version, are done in extreme circumstances, like the one cited above. The logic goes that–I remember reading this as a statement from a Police Commissioner of Bangalore–when a rowdy/criminal becomes a real menace which the society can no longer tolerate, he/she needs to be "eliminated." I won’t go into a debate on this "logic" here, nor do I accept it. While there may be an ounce of truth in it, the entire "tool (for want of a better word:-)" of encounter has been more often than not abused in India. Generally, it is used to settle personal rancours with full legal cover. Although the policeman is accountable–indeed, where the legal system has not fully collapsed like in say, Bihar, in other states, cops go through an elaborate justification ritual–he usually manages to justify the deed. This is where the real danger lies.

Encounters are rarely a one-man show. They’re elaborately crafted and meticulously executed. The success rate of encounters is pretty high. In fact, a certain cop in Mumbai (fill in the name for me, anyone? Daya Shankar? A movie is under production based on his "achievements") holds a record against his name.

However, the chronicle of its misuse is pretty grim. Uttar Pradesh emerges as the top scorer here. Here’s some statistics (collected from various NHRC reports):

Since the NHRC’s first report in 1993, Uttar Pradesh has dominated the list of custodial deaths and rape with a total of 940 reported cases so far. During 2000-2001, the state topped the list of fake encounter deaths with 68 cases out of the 109 reported….

The key word here is "reported." The figure would be much, much higher if the unreported cases were also taken into account. Which only goes to serve as an indicator to this statement:

Sanjay Vijayvargiya, a Lucknow based human rights activist, estimates that more than six extrajudicial executions occur each day in Uttar Pradesh.

How much does this total up, for a year? Small wonder that UP has been bedamned as the "Killing Fields." Here’s a reasoning why this happens routinely and why it’s very tough if not impossible to stop it:

The police force in Uttar Pradesh has an inordinate amount of power and discretion delegated to them by the legal system, the political climate and society in general. The internal reward system, which provides monetary incentives or promotions for carrying out extrajudicial executions, also acts as a catalyst. In addition, victims hail primarily from the disenfranchised, poverty-stricken, lower caste and illiterate sections of society, which generally lack access to the few legal remedies that actually exist.

But I’m surprised that UP heads the list instead of Bihar. Is it because there’s nothing called law in Bihar that the surveyors chose to ignore it? Maybe I’m speculating wildly, but I have a point What is true of UP is also true in all other states, the difference lying only in degree.

Coming back to where I started, I agree that encounters maybe warranted in extreme cases, that it instills fear in criminals’ hearts and all those nice (?) things. But is it the ONLY solution?