The news media reported on September 7 that a judicial probe conducted by Metropolitan magistrate S.P.Tamang in Ahmedabad has revealed that the killing of a young college girl Ishrat Jahan and three other persons, allegedly on a mission to “kill” Chief Minister Narendra Modi, in June 2004 was a case of “fake encounter” by the police. 

It may be recalled that the then Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) Head, D.G.Vanzara (who is also the prime accused in another fake encounter killing of Sohrabuddin) had justified the encounter killing with the claim that two of the persons had come from Pakistan, and that all the four persons had links with the LeT and were on a mission to kill Narendra Modi. The probe report has found no evidence to link these four persons with the LeT or to prove that they were coming to Ahmedabad to “kill Narendra Modi”. The report reveals how the victims were kidnapped and killed in police custody earlier and then evidence was planted on their bodies to support the ‘encounter’ theory. According to the probe report, Ishrat and the three others were killed by the police officers to get promotions and other favours from the Chief Minister.

Killing innocent people in fake encounters has now become a standard procedure in the practice of state terrorism in our country. Countless cases of encounter killings are reported, the vast majority of which are thereafter covered up and the truth never revealed. Two most recent such cases, over which the dust has not yet settled and mass protests continue, are the ‘encounter’ killing of a youth in Imphal, Manipur by the Manipur Police Commandos in July this year and the ‘encounter’ shoot-out at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, in New Delhi in September last year.

In the 1960s and 1970s, ‘encounter’ killings were routinely organized to justify the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of youth in West Bengal and other parts of the country, in the name of tackling naxalites. For more than a decade beginning in 1984, the Indian state organized brutal ‘encounter’ murders of thousands of people in the Punjab, in the name of dealing with militancy. In Kashmir, Manipur and other northeastern states, where the Armed Forces Special Powers Act gives complete freedom and immunity to the army to shoot, kill, rape and terrorise the masses of people, encounter killings are almost an everyday phenomenon, justified in the name of ‘dealing with insurgency’. In addition to the army, the state police as well as various paramilitary forces also regularly practice encounter killings. In Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and other parts of the country, where peasants and tribals are resisting the take over of their land and forests by the big monopolies, the fighting people are regularly branded as ‘extremists’ and encounter killings are used to wipe them out.

Encounter killings are justified by the police and security forces as necessary in the context of an ‘ineffective’ criminal judicial process. The argument is given that the terrorists manage to circumvent the courts and go scot-free; so this is a way to eliminate those who are allegedly a potential threat to society. The argument that the police needed to kill in self-defence because the alleged terrorist fired at them is also often given.

Encounter killings have enraged masses of people and human rights groups, for several reasons. First of all, it has been shown time and again that the security forces do not pick up and kill real criminals, but instead target innocent people, who are then declared as ‘dreaded terrorists’ and on whom ‘incriminating evidence’ is planted for media consumption. Secondly, when the security teams that carry out the encounter killings are so well armed and equipped with encounter specialists skilled in the task, it is very hard to believe that they have to kill in ‘self-defence’. Thirdly, the police and security agencies carry out these extra judicial killings with impunity because they know only too well that any ‘procedural lapses’ on their part will be taken care of, as most of these cases are effectively suppressed and never completely investigated, nor the guilty ever punished. In the tragically few cases of encounter killings in which the guilty police officers have actually been named and the truth revealed to some extent, as in the case of the murder of Ishrat Jahan and three others, only the sustained efforts of family members of the victims as well as human rights activists for many years have forced an inquiry to be held! Inquiries ordered by the government in power, regardless of which political party, are headed by representatives of the same criminal state agencies, that cover up and justify the killings and can hardly be expected to do otherwise. Moreover, in almost all cases of encounter killings, the police officers and security personnel involved are invariably rewarded with promotions and other forms of personal recognition.  This only strengthens their belief that a few innocent lives are a dispensable casualty for the advancement of their careers.

It is a fact well established by now, that the state security agencies organize and have close links with various underground terrorist groups that carry out mass carnages, for which ordinary people are harassed and victimized. In the prevailing atmosphere of terror and insecurity, it is often easy for the state agencies to justify the encounter killings, invariably accompanied with a lot of communal and jingoistic propaganda.

State terrorism is a preferred tool of the ruling class, to divert and crush the resistance of the people to their savage exploitation by the big monopoly bourgeoisie. In the case of the killing of Ishrat Jahan and three others, media reports have revealed that the Home Ministry of the UPA Central government had stated in an affidavit to the Gujarat High Court that all four killed were linked to the LeT, a fact which is now openly being questioned in the light of the magisterial probe report. This shows that the problem lies not just with the Narendra Modi government. The truth is that successive governments that have come to power at the centre and in the states, regardless of which political party or coalition, have all practiced state terrorism and encounter killings in exactly the same fashion. This brings home forcefully the point that state terrorism is part and parcel of the arsenal of the ruling class and all the political parties that defend its interests. 

People across society have to come together and demand that state terrorism of all forms, including extra judicial killings, be ended immediately and all those guilty of such heinous crimes be severely punished. We must demand that the apparatus of state terrorism be completely dismantled, in order to ensure peace and security for people.