There is no arguing that in a legal sense every police encounter can be made to fit the definition of murder. After all, once a man has been hit by a bullet, shouldn’t we cease fire, offer him first-aid, rush him to the nearest hospital and then book him under the relevant sections of law? Accept this sensibility and the second bullet should never be fired. So why do we do it? For money, that we can’t spend without inviting media scrutiny or a vigilance inquiry, for glory, that is both fleeting and attracts dangerous attention, or for a misplaced sense of instant justice?

In a hard-hitting piece published last month, journalist Barkha Dutt pointed out that encounters of all types are not only morally and legally reprehensible but also “strategically disastrous” as they create a crisis of credibility for the police force. She goes on to compare the situation in India with the Abu Ghraib episode and America’s war on terror. Just goes to show that hyperbole and propaganda are no longer the monopoly of the state apparatus. They too have been successfully privatised.

Wake up and smell the coffee, Ms Dutt. You may find it hard to believe, but police encounters are not the cause, rather the symptom, of the disease of non-performance and utter lack of accountability that afflict all institutions of governance in modern India. In the absence of a credible witness protection programme, in the absence of basic infrastructure to initiate and conclude scientific investigations, in the absence of any real check on the rampant corruption in the lower judiciary, in the absence of competent legal assistance at the trial stage for the prosecution, it is not surprising that many policemen, without the lure of lucre or glory, choose to fire the second bullet. It is done in the vain hope that despite being a short-cut, legally and ethically, it will create an example for hardened criminals that will have a salutary effect on the lives of ordinary citizens. That it doesn’t is, of course, a strategic disaster but for reasons that Ms Dutt and other commentators choose to gloss over.

... contd.