The Hindu : New Delhi News : Focus on police encounters

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Feb 10, 2007
ePaper


<SCRIPT language='JavaScript1.1' SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N4322.hinduonline/B2155503.3;abr=!ie;sz=468x60;ord=[timestamp]?"> </SCRIPT> <NOSCRIPT> <A HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N4322.hinduonline/B2155503.3;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=468x60;ord=[timestamp]?"> <IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N4322.hinduonline/B2155503.3;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=468x60;ord=[timestamp]?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=468 HEIGHT=60 ALT="Click Here"></A> </NOSCRIPT>

New Delhi

New Delhi

Focus on police encounters

Police are forced to cook up stories and at times stage-manage operations, finds Devesh K. Pandey

Even as questions are being raised over genuineness of police encounters with suspected terrorists, those closely associated with such operations in the past feel that various constraints create situations where the police are forced to circumvent legal procedures to avoid "unnecessary hassles".

Explaining the manner in which most anti-terrorist operations are carried out, a former Police Commissioner of Delhi said the major challenge before the police and intelligence agencies is identifying the terrorists. "They easily mix with the general public and become one of them. They take up different professions and set up cover businesses to evade detection. They procure voter and ration cards to show themselves as citizens and even brainwash locals into working for them."

It is here that the real struggle for the police and intelligence agencies begins. A great deal of effort and time goes into identifying and tracing the terrorists. Once the police pick them up, they have to be produced in court within 24 hours. This, however, according to the former Police Commissioner, is too short a period for the police to interrogate and extract crucial leads from the terrorists.

"They are committed and it sometimes takes even a month to make them reveal vital details," says the former police officer. Based on their disclosures, other members of the module can be picked up from different places. After the entire module is cracked, the task before the police is to get them punished, for which they have to be formally arrested and produced in court.

The top cop concedes that in such a scenario the police are forced to cook up stories, show false dates of arrests and at times stage-manage operations to formally effect the arrest of the terrorists.

In all this, says another retired police officer, a major legal constraint the police face is that if the arrests of the members of a terrorist module are shown at places from where they are picked up, which in most cases fall in different States, the police will have to get separate cases registered with different police stations. "Investigations will then be carried out by the local police. Besides, the police personnel who put in so much of effort to track down the terrorists will end up dealing with court dates across several States. Further counter-terrorism operations also suffer in the process," says the retired officer.

Although policemen risk their lives on several occasions during anti-terrorist operations, the circumstances in which the terrorists are arrested or eliminated in encounters often raise doubts about their genuineness. In the long run, such instances erode the credibility of the police.

This leaves the police in a Catch-22 situation where they are expected to crack all terrorist modules without fail and at the same time go strictly by the rulebook, which they find impractical at times.

No wonder then that senior police officers believe it is only through enactment of special laws or creation of a unit with special powers that the constraints that force the police to opt for "varied tactics" can be done away with. "Only political will is required to make police functioning more transparent and efficient."

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

New Delhi

News Update

Stories in this Section