Abdul Rehman, who was from a remote village in Kashmir, was considered missing for 52 days. It was on the 53rd day that his father, Gulam Rasool, learned that his son had been killed in what is known cynically in India as a fake encounter.
This 35 year-old carpenter had been dubbed as a Pakistani militant and quietly buried. A Senior Superintendent of Police and his men received a cash prize of Rs. 120,000/- (US$ 2,725) for this killing.
Later investigations into the death of Abdul Rehman exposed a network of fake encounters in the ranks of the police themselves and the arrests of several officers, including two senior officers have already taken place. The circumstances regarding the disappearance of Abdul Rehman (as reported in the Indian Express, January 31, 2007) are highly revealing. According to Rehmans father My son worked as a carpenter for years in Srinagar but didnt help us with money. Recently I asked him why and he said he paid Constable Farook (who is also a distant relative) Rs. 75,000/- to help him get a government job. He was pushing Farook to return the money after he failed to deliver on his promise.
The Indian Express said that according to sources Farook worked closely with a Senior Superintendent of Police and that he brought carpenter Abdul Rehman to the Ganderdal police after he was told that they need a kill in Ganderdal as operations have dried up.
This shocking incident of a fake encounter killing is unfortunately one of many that take place throughout the country. In the recent years any killing by the police is associated in the popular mind as a fake encounter. Despite of such a strong popular impression of such killings taking place quite regularly neither the central government nor the state governments have taken any serious action to bring this gross violation of the law to a halt. While some individual killings such as that of Abdul Rehman may find condemnation once the matter is publicly exposed, the generality of such killings goes on without being questioned. A senior criminal lawyer told the Asian Human Rights Commission that even I can become a victim of an encounter killing and there is nothing that anybody can do to ensure justice if that happens.
The issue of fake encounters is related to what is commonly known as encounter killings in general. During the last decade the term encounter killing became an oft used term all over India. The term provided legitimacy to some killings carried out by the police. The assumption was that some criminals had resisted the police when being arrested or tried to escape after arrest and the police had killed them in self defence. Such killings were even considered as some sort of heroic act on the part of the police who had dared to arrest serious criminals, even at the risk to their own lives. Often officers who do such killings receive state grants as rewards.
Behind the approval of encounter killings was the assumption that those who are considered serious criminals need to be physically eliminated and that the agency to do this is the police. It was this policy of the encouragement of encounter killings by the state as well as some sections of the opinion makers that has brought about the menace of fake encounters into the criminal justice framework of India.
There are deeper reasons for resorting to encounter killings as the solution to crime. One such reason is the overwhelming opinion often not expressed clearly among the Indians that their policing system is thoroughly inefficient and corrupt. A further reason is the common assumption that the criminal justice system as a whole is slow, inefficient and also corrupt. The problems posed by the policing system in particular and the criminal justice systems in general, are seen as insurmountable problems. Under these circumstances the only way that is regarded as the solution is to allow the police to physically exterminate criminals and to treat this as a legal solution.
There is no way that the state governments or the central government can give a rational explanation to the family of Abdul Rehman or to the public about his killing. To attempt to give a genuine explanation requires that the state government, as well as the central government, examine the policy that has allowed encounter killings and unfolding to the nation a serious action plan to undo this common practice. This cannot be done unless a serious attempt is made to deal with the problems of the Indian policing system and criminal justice system which have now become counterproductive to the nation.
The murder of Abdul Rehman is also a sharp answer to those critics which includes some legal luminaries like Dr. Madhav Menon and others who are agitating with missionary zeal to give greater powers to the police. Nothing more adverse to Indian democracy can be advocated by anyone. Greater powers to the police mean many more deaths like that of Abdul Rehman and the further glorification of the term encounter killings.
