Other States - Uttar Pradesh   

17 cops get lifer for fake killings

Special Correspondent

Court verdict comes twenty years after the incident took place

LUCKNOW: Twenty years after a fake police "encounter" that left 11 innocent persons dead in Karhana village of Basti district (now Sant Kabir Nagar district), a fast track court in Basti has awarded life imprisonment to 17 policemen who were involved in the merciless killings. The ruling was delivered by Justice Devi Prasad Srivastava.

Among those sentenced are the then station house officers of the Dudhara and Mehndawal police stations, P.K. Rai (presently posted as Inspector in Anti-Corruption Organisation, Faizabad) and Ram Bishun Yadav, who led a team of 25 policemen to stage the false encounter on the night of July 28-29, 1986, in the village situated about 60 km from the Paniara Assembly constituency in neighbouring Gorakhpur district. Paniara was the constituency represented in the Assembly by the then U.P. Chief Minister Bir Bahadur Singh of the Congress.

Significantly, the "encounter" took place at a time when U.P. had already earned infamy for several fake encounters staged by the police in the name of wiping out dacoits and criminals. This bloody phase began in the early 1980s and continued for about five years. In fact, the police team in a bid to legitimise the Karhana fake encounter had dubbed the deceased as dacoits and absconding under-trials.

However, the Karhana massacre turned out to be the last multiple fake encounter following an initiative taken by the then Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly and present Chief Minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav. The police theory of a "genuine encounter" with the "dacoits" was taken for granted -- notwithstanding newspaper reports to the contrary -- till Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav visited the village a few days after the encounter. He led an agitation in protest against the incident demanding justice for the innocent victims.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Mulayam blows the election bugle
17 cops get lifer for fake killings
Tallest Buddha statue coming up in Sarnath

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu