IN AUGUST 2008, an unexpected judicial pronouncement was made at a fast-track court in Sitapur. It announced rigorous life imprisonment for 14 policemen for killing three young people in Sarsai village of Sitapur district. But it was hardly fast, for it had taken 27 years and 200 hearings for the judgment to be reached at the special court. Six of the policemen and nine of the witnesses had died by the time the judgment came.
The Sarsai judgement is almost an aberration in a state where 6,126 encounters have taken place since March 2017, when the present government came to power, in which 122 criminals have been killed and 13,361 put behind bars. Magisterial inquiries are mandatory in all encounter cases, and only 74 have been completed so far. In all 74, the action of the involved police personnel has been held correct.
The Vikas Dubey encounter may be just another number, but it is proving to be a problematic one in a state where Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced that criminals who shoot at the police should expect bullets in return. In its crudest form, this is labelled the thok do (shoot them) policy.
The Dubey encounter has raised many questions—the most important of which is why he would have attempted to escape when he surrendered of his own will in Ujjain. His surrender in a different state could have been prompted by the swift police action in nabbing and killing his associates while also razing his house in Kanpur.
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