Rupali Karekar
Assistant to Editor
Fake Encounters of the brutal kind
Rupali Karekar discusses extra-judicial killings by security officials in India.
ISHRAT Jahan, a teenage college student from Mumbra, India, died of a bullet whose trajectory was impossible to fathom.
According to the post-mortem report, the bullet that killed Ishrat in 2004 entered below the mastoid on the left side of her neck and went upward through the temporal lobe.
This trajectory is inexplicable considering that at the time of her death, she was supposedly sitting in a car with closed doors with three other "terrorists".
All four were killed in an exchange of gunfire with senior police officers from the Indian state of Gujarat.
An investigating team probing the killings reported later that all four victims were barefoot at the time of their deaths and no one had any trace of gunpowder or ammunition on them.
All four also had their true identity cards in their pockets. In fact, Ishrat was wearing her college I-card around her neck all the while during the encounter with the police.
The police claimed that the four were linked with Pakistan's terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and insisted that they were planning terror strikes in Gujarat, including the assassination of state chief minister Narendra Modi.
Four "terrorists" were accused of planning the assassination of Gujarat's state chief minister Narendra Modi, pictured above. A report later found all four innocent of the charges.
On Monday, S P Tamang, a local magistrate probing the killing, released a report which held that the entire episode was in fact a "fake encounter" involving senior police officers of Gujarat.
It was carried out to secure promotions and appreciation of chief minister Modi. Justice Tamang also absolved Ishrat Jahan of charges of being an LeT operative and has pinned the blame on the police officers, one of whom has since been jailed for his role in another fake encounter case.
A defiant Modi-government, which is under the scanner for its role in the 2002 communal riots in the state, has rejected Justice Tamang's report, and plans to challenge the report's findings.
Whatever the final outcome, the murky world of "fake encounters" has once again come into focus.
So what exactly is a fake encounter?
The term refers to extra-judicial killings of individuals by security officials. Previously, such encounters reportedly used to target criminals if there was a possibility that they escape the rule of law.
Now such killings are not just restricted to anti-social elements and, more often than not, are immediately linked to terrorism.
While the practice is not the norm, fake encounter killings occur frequently in India.
According to a report released last month by Human Rights Watch, Indian police are usually the only eyewitnesses to these alleged encounters, which are typically carried out by junior and low-ranking officers.
"Considering the long history and scale of this practice, it is likely that state officials and senior police are not only aware of these killings, but allow, unofficially sanction or even order these killings," the report says.
The 118-page report, "Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse and Impunity in the Indian Police," also says that criminal prosecution has the potential to check police abuse, but victims often do not file cases because they fear police retaliation.
Another major obstacle is section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which provides immunity from prosecution to all public officials unless the government approves the prosecution.
While not excusing the abuses, the HRW cites abysmal conditions for police officers as contributing factors of such and other violations by the police.
Police officials are required to be on-call 24 hours a day, every day, remain separated from families for days and have to live in tents or filthy barracks at police stations. They often lack necessary equipment, including vehicles, mobile phones, investigative tools and even paper on which to record complaints and make notes. To add to their woes, the pay is low.
With this backdrop, it is not surprising that some police officers told HRW that they use "short-cuts" to cope with overwhelming workloads and insufficient resources.
"No one is born corrupt. It's a tailor-made system: if you're not corrupt, you won't survive," one officer told HRW.
The current scenario is sad, but much can be done to improve the situation.
The HRW report recommended that the police machinery be taught some basic rules which they need to follow.
For instance reading suspects their rights upon arrest or detention, excluding from court any evidence that police obtain by using torture, bolstering independent investigations into complaints of police abuse through national human rights commissions and improving training and equipment for the cadre.
But, age-old laws make it easy for state and local politicians to rampantly interfere in police operations, however routine.
The HRW report says, such interference may include directing police to drop investigations against certain people with political connections, or ordering them to harass political or personal opponents with false charges.
In 2006, India's highest court mandated reform of police laws. But the central government and most state governments are yet to implement the court's order.
Malpractices by law enforcement agencies have been recorded worldwide.
Corruption is rife among Mexico's local police forces and officers who have not only protected drug cartels, but also murdered their rivals. Ten police officers were arrested earlier this year for the torture and murder of 12 federal agents who were investigating a drugs cartel.
In Britain, Jean Charles De Menezes, 27, was shot dead by police at a London tube station in 2005, when he was mistaken for a suicide bomber. No police officer has ever been charged in connection with the fatal shooting.
Last month, Ali Dizaei, a Metropolitan police commander, was accused of threatening a businessman by purporting to arrest and detain him and then falsely claiming unprovoked assault after a row in a restaurant.
Such incidents may not be the norm but they do occur in countries around the world.
Stringent rules and their strict implementation can curb such corrupt behaviour but it may not be eliminated all together. The onus will finally rest on the individual to apply proper standards to his profession.
When and if such a day comes, innocents like Ishrat Jahan or Jean Charles De Menezes will not have died in vain
