[Commons-Law] encounter killings and IB

[Latha Jishnu]

re Shuddhabrata's mail. you're spot on. such killings are not possible
without the backing of the IB and other central agencies like raw. it
happened during the punjab militancy and there are several reports on
this. HT did a story on this a couple of days ago, and it is telling
but we need to highlight this more.
Encounter opens up old wounds across India- Hindustan Times

Kanwar Sandhu and Manoj Joshi
Email Author
Chandigarh/New Delhi, May 04, 2007
First Published: 01:56 IST(5/5/2007)
Last Updated: 03:56 IST(6/5/2007)

The probe into the murders of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausar
Bi near Ahmedabad in late 2005 has again focused public attention on
extra-judicial killings — what the police call "encounters".

An explanation for the prevalence of extra-judicial killings in this
country could lie in a confidential letter written over 15 years ago
by the head of the Intelligence Bureau (IB). This letter, of which
Hindustan Times has a copy, served as a de facto blueprint for police
forces nationwide on how to carry out extra-judicial killings while
avoiding public attention.

The letter was written by VG Vaidya, director, IB, to then Punjab DGP
KPS Gill on December 30, 1991. It dealt with the subject of some
police officers revealing to Western journalists how they had killed
terrorists without legal sanction. One officer even gave the
journalists access to a militant who had been illegally detained and
was later shot.

"Their professional compulsions in executive action should not get
reflected in their public utterances, which should be correct and
responsible," Vaidya wrote in the letter. In effect, he was condoning
the killings, and objecting only to these being frankly revealed to
journalists.

The killings in Gujarat have opened old wounds, as HT correspondents
who fanned out across India, found. Starting today, a series of
stories will show how families are demanding fresh probes into
encounters that are not acknowledged as extra-judicial killings but
are still on police files.

As many countries formerly run by military juntas begin scrapping
amnesties and investigating thousands of extra-judicial killings and
disappearances dating as far back as 1968, it could be time for
democratic India to do the same, said security experts and former
police officers.

"This (exposure of fake killings) has to be done. It must be done for
the country's sake, but I can assure you it'll create a lot of
problems," said EN Rammohan, former DG, BSF. "We must exorcise the
past."

Rammohan said extra-judicial killings were now so widespread they
involved entire security forces. "In Kashmir, only a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (of the sort South Africa set up after
apartheid ended) will enable India to make peace with the Kashmiri
people," he said.

There is no accurate count, but police units have killed hundreds
nationwide since Vaidya wrote his letter. In Gujarat alone, over the
past decade, there have been 17 alleged police encounters.

Encounter killings have become part of an unwritten but widely
condoned state policy, officers acknowledged. Started initially to
cripple militancy, encounters have since been used to even do away
with petty thieves and extortionists, which is what Sohrabuddin Sheikh
appears to have been, as shown by police records.

"Extra-judicial killings are akin to murder," said former Punjab and
Mumbai police chief Julio Rebeiro. "There is now a glimmer of hope
from the judiciary."

Another senior police officer who served in Kashmir said the force
there had a policy — if one soldier or BSF official was killed by
terrorists, five young men were executed in retaliation.

Former police officer Arvind Verma — now teaching criminal justice at
Indiana University in the US — said even politicians would not succeed
in making the police more accountable.

"The only outcome that can result when political pressure is applied
is to make the police even more brutal and unaccountable," said Verma
in his 2005 book The Indian Police, a Critical Evaluation.

"When VP Singh sent the message that dacoity would be eliminated from
Uttar Pradesh, the only outcome was the 'encounter' deaths of hundreds
of suspects. Similar pressures in Bengal, in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar
against left wing extremists or Naxalites have also resulted in
killings and police terror in the so called 'disturbed areas'... The
spate of crimes — specially kidnappings — in Delhi put the police
under pressure to 'do something'.

The Delhi police did something: it shot dead two business persons in
Connaught Place (in 1997), in open daylight supposedly on mistaken
identity," the book has noted.

VK Jain, former special secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs,
said the Centre must accept the National Police Commission reports on
police reform — the first was submitted in 1901, the last in 1977. But
none have ever been implemented. Jain said the Supreme Court had
accepted these recommendations, but states balked at implementing
them.

The 1991 IB letter gives away the kind of transparency that once
existed about extra-judicial killings. Vaidya refers to an April 1991
story in The Guardian, based on an interview with Sanjeev Gupta, then
senior superintendent of police (SSP) of Amritsar.

"In this interview, Gupta had in good faith tried to justify the
killings of terrorists by the police in simulated encounters in the
absence of any better option," Vaidya wrote in his letter to KPS Gill.

"In consultation with the External Publicity Division, it was thought
to get the story contradicted through our High Commission in London
but the exercise was abandoned when it was later learnt that not only
three foreign press correspondents were present during the SSP's
briefing, but that they had also clandestinely recorded the
interview."