UTTAR Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s methods of controlling crime and criminals are being adopted by his counterparts in Bihar and Odisha. There has been a spate of police encounters since Samrat Choudhary took over as Bihar CM in April. Several encounters were reported from Odisha in May after Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi told the police to root out organised crime in the state.
These developments are on expected lines because BJP-ruled states are known for resorting to fake encounters and “bulldozer justice” to punish the accused. Assam, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Haryana have also tried to copy UP’s policing model, but they have been circumspect at times. There is a pattern discernible in these states that leads analysts to conclude that the controversial policy has the blessings of the ruling party’s top brass.
Last month, the Yogi government stated that 289 dreaded criminals had been neutralised in police encounters during the last nine years. The UP Police conducted over 17,000 such operations in which more than 34,000 criminals were arrested.
The popularity that Yogi has achieved by vesting the state police with the powers to investigate, prosecute, judge and finally deliver “instant justice” — four roles rolled into one — has prompted the BJP to use this template in other states.
When Nitish Kumar led the coalition government in Bihar, such methods were anathema to him. But as soon as he agreed to enter the Rajya Sabha and left the governance of the state in the BJP’s hands, a change in tactics on the sensitive subject of crime control was inevitable.
Samrat Choudhary has made it clear that the Bihar Police have been given a free hand to take action against criminals. He has also hit back at the Leader of the Opposition, Tejashwi Yadav, who alleged that caste-based encounters were being carried out in the state. “I will tell the police personnel — fine, ask their caste first and then fire,” the CM said in a sarcastic vein.
When BJP leader Gopinath Munde was the Home Minister in the Shiv Sena-led government in Maharashtra, he had the temerity to announce in the Assembly that he had instructed the police to shoot criminals if they dared to misbehave on the streets.
Such liberty, if given by the political bosses to the police, is fraught with dangerous consequences. In Mumbai, for instance, a whole new breed of “encounter specialists” was born. They became very popular among local citizens. Bollywood made movies based on their exploits.
These officers themselves became prosperous, even as the number of extortion complaints went up. When the “specialists” were shifted out of the Crime Branch, a semblance of sanity was restored.
The judicial process that governs the application of the criminal law in India is based on the one prevalent in England and Northern Ireland. The police are naturally the first stop in this process. Cops register the FIR (First Information Report) that sets the law in motion. The police investigate the offence and arrest the accused. The role of the police ends with the submission of the chargesheet in the magistrate’s court.
The public prosecutor takes over from there and argues the case in the court. The magistrate or the judge (in case of heinous offences) decides the culpability of the accused. If the crime carries the death penalty and it is awarded by the judge and later upheld by the high court, the jailor gets the sentence executed by hangmen in the presence of the district magistrate.
The police, the prosecutor, the judge and the jailor each have a role to play independent of each other. If the cops are given the four roles by desperate politicians, the end result is a police force let loose, posing a constant danger to the public.
Ordinary citizens do not understand that it’s the judicial system that needs to be fixed to restore public faith in the rule of law. In the colonial era, the four cogs worked separately and seamlessly to make the system work. It was when interference in the investigation and prosecution units by the political class began that the system started crumbling.
When the political class starts relying on the money and muscle power of ganglords to win elections, corruption becomes the coin of the realm and law-and-order management goes into free fall. When citizens feel the adverse effects of this change, the rulers get alarmed and resort to shortcuts to reassert their authority.
It is easier to permit the police force that reports to the Home Department to shoot criminals on sight rather than let the four pillars of the system do their work honestly. Justice Muralidhar of the Delhi High Court was transferred overnight after he criticised the police for not taking action against BJP leaders who were accused of hate speech during the 2020 Delhi riots.
UP-style encounters were common in Punjab during the era of terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s. Terrorists shot cops on sight. They did not recognise the authority of the State and its laws. They presented a law-and-order problem of a different kind. Even high court judges whom I consulted told me not to bring them to trial in courts of law!
When the public gets enamoured with quick justice executed by the police, the party in power has no qualms about persisting with these methods. Enlightened police leaders must highlight the perils of turning cops into “criminals in uniform”.
