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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Encounters as state policy? -Jagdeep S Chhokar

Encounters as state policy? -Jagdeep S Chhokar

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published Published on Mar 7, 2018   modified Modified on Mar 7, 2018
-The Tribune

When a CM says: “Police encounters won't stop”, it implies that the Police will keep running into suspected criminals unexpectedly. The question is: Will these chance meetings continue to happen, or will they continue to be made to happen?

A news item on February 16, 2018, said: "'Police encounters won't stop,' says Yogi Adityanath" .  Since it was a PTI story, most newspapers reported it.

A dictionary describes an 'encounter' as "a meeting with a person or thing, especially a casual, unexpected, or brief meeting". While technically, encounters can also be simple meetings, in this context, 'unexpectedness' seems to be an essential ingredient. It, therefore, follows that encounters happen, that there is an element of chance.

However, when the executive head of a state says: "Police encounters won't stop", the implications seem to be that the police will keep running into suspected criminals unexpectedly. The moot question is: Will these chance meetings continue to happen, or will they continue to be made to happen?

The anatomy of encounters

An encounter takes place when the police, by chance, happen to run into someone who is armed, and when challenged, fires at the police, and the police have no other recourse but to open fire, and end up shooting the person who dies.

In our make-believe world, the narration of most encounters runs like this: The police get information about the movement of a seemingly undesirable person who is planning to conduct some dangerous and undesirable, often criminal, act. The police reach the site with great alacrity and confront this person, he shoots at the police, the police "return" the fire, and the person dies. More often than not, it is subsequently discovered that the person was indeed a dreaded "criminal", had several cases registered against him (or her), and carried a reward for capture.

It seems such chance events started happening very frequently, resulting in some police officers being referred to, as 'encounter specialists'. The phenomenon came to be recognised in the 1990s, originating from Mumbai where these specialists took on various underworld gangs. Such specialists acquired a larger-than-life image which was even lionised in films.

The legal situation

The phenomenon seemed to have become so widespread that the National Human Rights Commission (NRHC) recommended "a procedure to be followed in the cases of encounter death by all the States/UTs in the country." This procedure was circulated to all the states and UTs in March 1997. It was revised in December 2003.

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The Tribune, 5 March, 2018, http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/encounters-as-state-policy/552711.html


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