Extrajudicial Killings in Yogi Raj

Saurav Das

On January 26, 2018, as India was celebrating its Republic Day (commemorating the adoption of its constitution), Mukesh Rajbhar, a 17-year-old labourer in eastern Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), was killed in a police shootout near his home in Mutkallipur village. The police claimed that he was a wanted criminal evading arrest in an attempted murder case and that he had opened fire along with his associate. Thus, they shot him in self-defense, and he succumbed to his injuries. They claimed that, in addition to this murder case, Rajbhar had a history of criminal activity: two cases of robbery and theft, and one case under the Gangster Act of 1986, the state’s special law to curb organised crime and antisocial activities. Hence, he was a “dreaded criminal.”

Rajbhar’s family alleged, however, that the police had implicated him using cases that are commonly described as being “kept in cold storage”—that is, cases that are originally filed against unknown persons but are later used by the police to “create criminal histories” to use against people they want to portray as “dreaded criminals”. Consequently, the family was not convinced about the police’s version of events and claimed that their son’s death was extrajudicial. “He was only 17”, said his father, Nandlal, a tall and sturdy but aged man.

The family received news of Rajbhar’s death the day after the incident from local residents and newspaper reports, even though the law mandates that the police must inform the family when a person is killed in a police shootout (called an “encounter” in popular parlance). “Mukesh was in Kanpur until a day before his death [a city almost 250 miles from the site of the incident]. CCTV footage from his house corroborated this. The local police picked him up from the city and brought him here to kill him”, Nandlal claimed.

“The family wrote letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the country’s human rights watchdog, seeking a federal bureau probe into Rajbhar’s death, but their pleas were not heeded. On the contrary, the local investigations absolved the police of any foul play.

Official investigation did not address these findings, and for the past six years, Rajbhar’s family members have grappled with the bitter reality of India’s broken justice system. The constitution’s guarantee of the right to life, equality and redress for violations has rung hollow for them as they have struggled to find justice for possible extrajudicial violence at the hands of the state.

Over the years, these encounters with the police have emerged as a common practice in some parts of the country, like UP. The police engage in what appears at first glance to be spontaneous, defensive gunfire with the alleged criminals—all to maintain the state’s semblance of law and order. The accused either sustain or succumb to their firearm injuries.

Since 1997, when the NHRC began maintaining a database on police killings, at least 3,584 people have died in police shootouts in the country. The state of UP tops this list, with 1,114 killings. From January 2017 to April 2023, the UP police said, 183 people were killed in 10,900 police shootouts throughout the state. The state also witnessed an exponential rise in “half-encounters”, a practice in which police inflict non-life-threatening injuries on alleged criminals, for example, by shooting them in the leg. Over 5,000 people were injured this way during this period.

Official versions of police shootings often parrot the same script: The injured or the deceased was a “dreaded criminal”, with an apparent record of misdeeds, who resisted arrest by opening fire at the police “with intent to kill,” so the police had to fire back in self-defence.

However, many human rights activists and families of victims have claimed that most of these police actions are “fake encounters”, a term used to describe extrajudicial killings. Contrary to the police’s claims that these incidents were “spontaneous confrontations,” most of them were planned, they allege. Most victims have only been accused of crimes (mostly petty offenses) and are not convicted criminals on the run.

The 2014 guidelines issued by India’s Supreme Court on investigations into police shootouts had proved ineffective. Moreover, the police used loopholes in the laws and guidelines to grant themselves impunity. Rajbhar’s death was one of these cases.

The highest court has mandated an independent investigation into the cases, to be carried out by the state’s special police unit or a police team that was not involved in the incident. This investigation was to be followed by a magisterial inquiry that was to be completed within three months. An intimation, or summary of the incident, was to be turned in to the NHRC within 48 hours of the death for the purpose of analysing the case files and intervening if necessary.

The Supreme Court’s 2014 guidelines also extend to shootouts resulting in “grievous injury cases,” but the subsequent wording in the judgment—that the guidelines be followed “as far as possible” in such injury cases—allows the police enough discretion to decide which guideline requirements to follow and which to ignore.

The majority of victims killed by police were from marginalised classes, lived in poverty and hailed from religious minority communities, especially Muslims. When families of victims insisted that their deaths were extrajudicial, they had to deal with a broken legal system that seldom operates in their interests. They also faced tremendous police intimidation and failed to find quality legal aid because so many of them were unaware of their rights, leaving them without meaningful recourse.

In 2019, United Nations experts expressed alarm over the allegations of at least 59 police killings in U P — most concerning individuals from Muslim communities living in poverty— and raised concerns that the Supreme Court’s guidelines had not been followed since March 2017. They said evidence indicated that the killings took place in police custody and during encounters and that the victim was acting in self-defense. “We are extremely concerned about the pattern of events: individuals allegedly being abducted or arrested before their killing, and their bodies bearing injuries indicative of torture,” the UN experts said. They sent detailed information to the Indian government on 15 of the cases.

As the most populous state in the country, UP retains a central position in India’s politics. Eighty of the 543 members of the lower house of Parliament represent UP. More than half of India’s prime ministers have been elected from this state. The state’s other claim to fame is its culture of gun violence and gangsters, which has persisted for decades, with various criminal syndicates operating in the region. Consequently, law and order in the state is a highly contentious issue that often turns national, given the state’s significant political influence.

Although police killings occurred during the rule of previous state governments, since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rose to power in UP in 2017, led by Hindu nationalist strongman Yogi Adityanath, official policy now embraces police shootouts. The policy has emboldened the police, and they realise that they will not be held accountable, regardless of the evidence against them. Adityanath has made several public statements in support of the police, and his government has often honoured the officers involved in the shootings. In 2017, he said, “If you commit a crime, you will be knocked off.” In 2020, he reiterated that “criminals would either go to jail or Yamraj [the Hindu god of death]”, and in March of this year, he said: Criminals’ “right to live will be snatched” if they interfere with others’ right to live.

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Vol 57, No. 8, Aug 25 - 31, 2024