After the Supreme Court on Monday sought a reply from the Yogi Adityanath government over encounter killings of alleged criminals during its tenure, the Uttar Pradesh Police is preparing a reply to defend the government. The Supreme Court had asked the Uttar Pradesh government to file a reply in the issue in two weeks' time.
There have been allegations that some of the encounters were ‘fake.’
Additional Director General (law and order) Anand Kumar said the Uttar Pradesh Police will clarify its stand in the Supreme Court.
Referring to statistics, Kumar said since formation of the Adityanath government in March 2017 to June 15, 2018, there have been 2,174 encounters, in which police have arrested a total of 5,222 criminals.
In those encounters in which criminals fired on police, 59 criminals were killed and 534 were injured.
In these encounters, four policemen were killed and over 390 were injured, Kumar revealed.
In those incidents where criminals were shot dead, judicial probes has been completed in 25 incidents, out of which police have filed the final report in 23 cases. Of these 23 cases, the courts have accepted 16 reports.
Kumar further added that in encounter cases, the Uttar Pradesh Police have followed the guidelines of the Supreme Court “in toto”. For instance, inquiries into encounter cases were done by officials who belonged to jurisdictions other than the ones where incidents occurred in order to ensure impartiality.
Furthermore, the inquiries were done by officials who were one rank higher in seniority than the policemen who participated in the encounter, there were judicial inquiries into all encounters and postmortems were done by a panel of doctors, with reports being sent to the human rights commission within 24 hours.
Defending the government, Kumar said the aim of the police was not to kill anyone. In past one-and-half years, the Uttar Pradesh Police has caught around 7,000 criminals, of whom 2,000 had cash rewards on their heads.
A writ petition questioning an encounter was filed in Muzaffarnagar, but after the police filed its reply, the petition was rejected, Kumar added.
People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) had questioned encounter killings in Uttar Pradesh by filing a writ petition in the Supreme Court.
