Fake encounters staged by the police resulting in the killing of even criminals is illegal and has very rightly landed senior police officers in Gujarat in a sea of trouble. It is, however, a fact that false encounters are at times staged by police officers because there is pressure from their political masters to demonstrate quick results, by means fair or foul. The public, particularly the educated middle class, also does not mind if the police take law into their own hands, particularly with regard to dreaded criminals. The police dilemma is compounded by the slow-moving criminal justice system. Trials drag on interminably for years and the outcome remains uncertain, particularly with respect to criminals who enjoy money and muscle power. This, for instance, explains the reasons why the police officers who blinded criminals in Bhagalpur did not lose public support.

The fact of the matter though is that encounters are not the problem but the symptom of a collapsing system of justice. They are counter-productive and encourage contempt for law within the police. The practice of policing to break the law in the name of law enforcement is unacceptable and intolerable in a democratic society governed by the rule of law. It is objectionable because it is arbitrary as a process, and random in effect.

The National Police Commission in its report (‘Fifth Report of the National Police Commission’) powerfully recommended that false encounters are to be sternly discouraged by police leaders as this is not a remedy for the situation. The answer is to strengthen the law and legal process. Unfortunately some senior police leaders, instead of resisting pressures emanating from their political masters, very often bend backwards to curry favour with them. I still recollect that as a senior officer in-charge of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Orissa police, I was betrayed by a chief minister for not mastering “all the tricks” of the police trade. But by succumbing to the illegal, police officers may land themselves in a deeper morass.

... contd.