Encountering Reality

We as Indians have grown up hearing about so called "encounter specialists": policemen who are enough cold-blooded to kill innocent people and declare it as an "encounter" thus slipping away from the judiciary. Even movies have portrayed this side of our "free and independent" judiciary. True, the provision of encounter has done good to the society before and one can cite many examples where dangerous criminals have been caught or killed by the police just because they could 'do an encounter'.
Till now, there have been hundreds, even thousands of such cases. Sadly, in almost all of them, the criminal policemen have escaped. This is probably one of the biggest loop-holes in our justice system, and hardly any effort has been made to do anything about it.

If you noticed news headline over the past week, you will find a lot about a certain Sohrabuddin and his wife and how they were allegedly killed by policemen in a conspiracy that reaches high offices of the Indian Police Service.

On November 26, 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh, a petty criminal and his wife were abducted by the Gujarat Police from a Belgaum-bound Inter-state bus. The husband was encountered soon. And, according to recent reports, his wife became a victim too.

Almost one and half years later, on 23 April2007, CID named the encounter as fake and arrested three senior IPS officers in connection with the same. Two of them belonged to the Gujarat Police while the third to the Rajasthan Police.

Soon the blame game began and is, in fact, still in progress.

The Gujarat police named the slain as a Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist, and said that he was planning a murder of Gujarat CM Narendra Modi. The Rajasthan Police defended its police officer. The Gujarat Government then blamed the Andhra Pradesh Police for being 'hand-in-gloves'. And on and on, as it always does.

This blog is being written neither in defence of the victim, nor in defence of the police. The blogger neither cares where the supreme court case goes nor does he want to think of the political repurcussions. The sole purpose here is to make the reader aware of the increasing insecurity among citizens, innocent and criminals. This country is a democracy, right? its not an autocracy where no reasons can be given for most of the things that happen.

How come policemen, including the top brass, indulge in something as bad as cold-blooded murder? How come the judiciary remains with absolutely no law with which it can contain such offense? Why is it that most of these offenders move scots-free among us, even today?

I dont know whether this is a case of human rights or municipal law. i dont know if it is worth taking to the court. I dont even know if its worth talking about at all.

All I know is that whats happening is not right, and none of us are very safe with this very dangerous loophole still in place.

Think about it next time you hear of the neighbourhood 'encounter specialist' who will charge just a small sum to get your enemy slained.