Meerut Police's 8-Day Blitz: 2 Killed, 33 Injured in Encounters
New Delhi: Even as the Uttar Pradesh government under Yogi Adityanath has built a reputation of becoming an 'encounter raj', police in Meerut have conducted 35 encounters in eight days.
According to a Times of India report, these encounters have led to the arrest of 51 persons, while two were killed during exchange of gunfire. Thirty three of the arrested people sustained bullet injuries, the report says.
Meerut zone's ADG Prashant Kumar attributed the sudden spurt in encounters to police officers returning to their regular duty after they were deployed at the Kumbh Mela and during the general elections. "The better strength has reinvigorated our efforts to go after criminal," he told the newspaper.
On Tuesday, there were four encounters in the Muzaffarnagar district, of which one was led by the Meerut special task force. In this encounter, Aadesh Baliyan, a wanted man with a bounty of Rs 1 lakh on his head, was killed. Baliyan managed to escape from the police custody in April 2016, after he had appeared before Delhi’s Rohini court. He had jumped out of an intercity train while being taken to the Bareilly jail.
Journalist Piyush Rai pointed out that most of these encounters seem to follow a similar pattern. Several police officers have provided starkly similar accounts of how the encounters unfolded. The suspects are usually spotted on a bike, and when police ask them to stop, they do not. A chase ensues, during which the suspects open fire. Police retaliate, injuring or killing the suspects. In at least six different encounters, events have unfolded in the same sequence.
'Encounter raj'
Since 2017, when the BJP came to power in the state, there has been a stark increase in the number of reported encounters. In January, the Adityanath government included encounters as part of a list of achievements to be publicised on the occasion of Republic Day. It claimed that during its first 16 months in office, over 3,000 encounters had taken place, killing 78 people.
While the government is brazen in celebrating encounters, human rights organisations and even the Supreme Court have expressed concern about the situation. A few weeks before the UP government sought to publicise encounters as an achievement, a UN rights body expressed alarm at the practice.
“We are extremely concerned about the pattern of events: individuals allegedly being abducted or arrested before their killing, and their bodies bearing injuries indicative of torture,” officials from the Office of the High Commissioner for United Nations Human Rights (OHCHR) wrote to the Indian government.
Also Read: A Chronicle of the Crime Fiction That is Adityanath's Encounter Raj
The Supreme Court also said that encounter killings in the state required a "close and serious examination".
In February last year, a detailed investigation by The Wire into the encounter cases revealed discrepancies in the accounts of the families of those killed and the police. Of the 14 cases The Wire examined, the victims were in the age group of 17 to 40 and were undertrials in a number of cases.
The approach to encounters seems to driven by the highest echelons of power, as chief minister Yogi Adityanath in June 2017 told India TV “Agar apradh karenge toh thok diye jayenge (If they commit crimes, they will be killed).”
These criticisms have fazed neither the UP government nor the BJP. As the saffron party has set its eyes on capturing West Bengal, its leaders have already begun warning people of replicating the "UP model" in the state.
BJP's West Bengal general secretary Raju Banerjee warned workers of the TMC allegedly involved in incidents of political violence. "After the BJP comes to power", it would "not intervene if the police dealt you in encounters”, he said.
TMC leaders responded sharply, saying these remarks expose the BJP's ideology. Firhad Hakim said the party's president and home minister Amit Shah also follows this "ideology", referring to the encounter deaths of Sohrabuddin Shaikh. Shah was accused in the case, but was acquitted.
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