VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
In the last three decades, there
have been hundreds and thousands of deaths in encounters, both genuine and
staged all over the country from Jammu & Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
All law enforcement agencies from
the State police to the paramilitary forces and army have been involved in
these encounters not only in States facing secessionist violence and insurgency
but also in peaceful metro cities of New Delhi
and Mumbai. In fact, terrorists and gangsters who were hanged after due process
of law in three decades would not even touch the figure of two dozen if
compared to the encounter deaths which must be in thousands.
But except two-three encounters
in the last three decades, none became the talking point of the entire country
the way Ishrat Jahan encounter case in Gujarat has. The
encounter was politicised by the Congress so much so that almost everyone in
the country now has an opinion with some justifying the killing of terrorists
in encounters and others arguing that the due process of law should be
followed. With CBI’s independence still a far cry, motives are being attributed
to the agency for toeing the Congress line in this case, filing a suspicious
looking charge sheet, bringing the Intelligence Bureau in the picture as
co-conspirators and also attempt to find political motive for the killing of
terrorists. The Congress has deviously managed to polarise the people on
religious lines and divide public opinion in the country forcing the BJP to
practically stop short of justifying the extra-judicial killings.
I have followed the Ishrat Jahan
encounter case from the very beginning and it was a simple explanation expected
of the police force in any such killing — staged, controlled or genuine. There
was an input from the Intelligence Bureau. A gang of terrorists wanted to kill
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and before they could do that, the police
spotted them and fired at them when challenged leading to the deaths.
As a journalist, I have seen hundreds
of such Press releases by the police from almost every State of the country.
Even in small mofussil towns of the Hindi heartland in the 1980s and 1990s,
journalists on the crime beat would vouch for the regularity of such releases
and how encounters took place. It went like this. “A gang of three-four people
were sitting on a small bridge in the late evening hours. They were planning to
commit a dacoity. When the police reached there on a specific tip-off and
challenged the criminals, they opened fire. When the police fired in
self-defence, one person was killed and the others fled taking advantage of
darkness. A country made pistol, a knife and live cartridges were recovered
from the spot”.
This was the standard release
from the police forces in several parts of the country a few years ago. The
language could be different, the arms recovered could be different or the place
of encounter could be a semi-forest area or a deserted park. The details were
strikingly similar. No one shed any tears for the dead as invariably they were
wanted in a series of cases and the locals always rejoiced such killings as it
made their life better without fear of the criminals. When dacoits were killed
in Chambal region or elsewhere in UP and Bihar , their
bodies were tied on tractors, and announcement made on a megaphone that so and
so has been killed. People used to come out of their houses, see the body,
rejoice and even garland the team of police which had conducted the killing.
None of the villagers ever asked if the encounter was fake or genuine when they
saw the bodies of the dacoits who had tormented them on vehicles.
If the newspaper readers recall,
statements about encounters were routine not only from the insurgency-hit Punjab ,
Jammu & Kashmir, the North East but even in places in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar .
Of course, the Mumbai Police and the Delhi Police had their encounter
specialists who bragged that they have killed 50 or 60 gangsters in encounters.
No one asked them how they did it as long as a gangster was involved. There
were invariably huge gaps in how the encounters took place and why did they
take place.
In Punjab ,
which perhaps remains one of the world’s few places, where armed insurgency
backed by Pakistan
was vanquished, releases from the security forces were quite similar. “Two
people were riding a motorbike. They approached a check post and when questioned,
opened fire from automatic weapons…The police retaliated. When the firing from
the other side came to an end, police found two bodies. Two AK 47 rifles with
four magazines were recovered. They were later identified as so and so from so
and so organisation”. Any person who used to read the newspapers and watched
State-owned Doordarshan news in the early 1990s would recall that this happened
almost everyday, sometimes twice a day when the security forces led by the
Punjab Police started having an upper hand against the terrorists before
liquidating them completely. There are gaping holes in these. But no questions
were raised.
Could anyone believe today that
it was a Congress Government headed by Beant Singh in Punjab
which had a DGP like KPS Gill which was responsible for the end of
Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in the border State? Did anyone in the country at
that point of time question the modus operandi of the security forces in the
fight against terrorism? Everyone was simply looking upto the police for
restoring law and order in the State. There was collateral damage, innocents
were killed but the larger purpose of the country was solved. Of course, there
were CBI cases against some of the encounter deaths in Punjab
as well but there was a political consensus between Congress and the Akali Dal
in Punjab that terror would not be politicised. The
police officers, against whom the CBI registered cases of fake encounters, were
defended by top lawyers of the country with the money released by the
successive State Governments. Both the ruling parties-Congress and Akali Dal
supported them and continue to do so as this was not a war of one police
officer against the terrorists but the collective effort of the entire
Punjabis. The police officers were risking their lives and doing this not for
personal ends and medals but for the country.
Now the same Congress which has
such a successful track record of supporting the fight against terrorism in Punjab
is shedding tears for the death of terrorists in Gujarat
just because it thinks that at this point of time this could help in communal
polarisation and secure the votes of the Muslims as those killed were from this
community. Since when did the Congress start believing that terrorists have a
religion?
It was time for the Congress to
do some quick introspection on terrorism and desist from taking mileage out it.
Two of its Prime Ministers — Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi — were victims of
terror designs. But not long ago, its leader Digvijay Singh was shouting from the
rooftop demanding “justice” for the terrorists killed in the Batla House
encounter in Delhi . Remember, Delhi
is ruled by the Congress and so is the Central Government whose Home Ministry
controls the Delhi Police, the personnel of which were involved in that
encounter.
No doubt, the law, the
Constitution and the process involved has to be followed and no one can be
allowed to take a life. But then, things are not always in black and white.
There are often shades of grey. There are occasions and circumstances when it
is difficult to judge between right and wrong. In security and intelligence
parlance, there is a thin line dividing right and wrong and often the line does
not exist.
A senior police officer who
fought insurgency in Punjab once told me the dilemma
which those on the ground face. He gave an illustration. An A-list terrorist,
who prided himself in calling Lt General of a Khalistani terror outfit, was
caught in a surprise raid. He was named in at least 75 killings, including that
of police officials. Now what do they do after catching hold of the terrorist?
The jails were not safe as in the heydays of terrorism, jail brakes were not
uncommon. The lower judiciary was not willing to try these cases as they
themselves faced threat if a terrorist was convicted or even tried. Moreover,
ferrying a terrorist to a court and back to jail was a Herculean task in itself
as there were several cases in which their fellow terrorists freed them killing
the accompanying policemen. The officer left it on the wisdom of the people,
the civil society and lawmakers of the country as what needed to be done to the
terrorist at that point of time.
It is here that a political
consensus is needed. Will the political parties rise to the occasion and build
a consensus to fight terror the way they did in Punjab ? (July 8, 2013)
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