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Please click here to access the 2020 ANNI Report on the Performance of National Human Rights Institutions (released in December 2021), which was prepared by FORUM-ASIA and funded by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). Kindly click here to access the Executive Summary of the 2020 ANNI [Asian NGO Network on National Human Rights Institutions] Report on the Performance of National Human Rights Institutions.

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The report titled 'Extinguishing Law and Life: Police Killings and Cover-Up in the state of Uttar Pradesh' examines the death of 18 young men in these 17 instances of alleged extrajudicial killings by UP police, which were investigated by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Spread across six districts in western Uttar Pradesh-UP, these killings took place between March 2017 and March 2018. The report evaluates the investigations and inquiries conducted in these 17 cases and examines the role of the investigating agency, Executive Magistrates, Judicial Magistrates, and the NHRC, to assess whether they complied with the existing legal framework. 

The report reveals gross violations of law, both procedural and substantive, by the investigating agency and the judicial magistrates, in investigating these killings. Independent bodies such as the NHRC and oversight mechanisms such as magisterial inquiries have failed to identify these violations of law and have ignored factual contradictions in the police version of events. Instead, they have routinely condoned the unconstitutional procedures followed by the police during these investigations. 

The key findings of the report titled Extinguishing Law and Life: Police Killings and Cover-Up in the state of Uttar Pradesh (released in October 2021), which has been prepared by Youth for Human Rights Documentation (YHRD), Citizens Against Hate (CAH) and People’s Watch, are as follows:

1. Of the 17 cases analysed, in not one case has an FIR been registered against the police team that was involved in the killing. Instead, in all 17 cases, FIRs have been registered against the deceased victims on charges of attempted murder under section 307 IPC and other offenses.

2. The FIRs registered against the deceased victims in each of the 17 cases claim an identical sequence of events leading to the killing – details of a spontaneous shoot­out between police officers and alleged criminals in which the police are fired upon, and then (in self­-defence) fire back, leading to the death of one of the alleged criminals, while his accomplice always manages to escape ­ raising doubts about the veracity of these claims.

3. In violation of the guidelines of the NHRC and the Supreme Court in PUCL, in a majority of the cases, the initial investigation was conducted by a police officer from the same police station as the police team involved in the killing, often of the same rank as the senior-most person in the "encounter" team. In all these cases, the investigation was later transferred to another Police Station, almost as if to show compliance with PUCL guidelines.

4. In all the cases studied in the report, the investigations conducted by the ‘independent’ investigating team of a different police station were inadequate. These investigations accept the police version that they killed the victims in "self­-defence", even though the justification of self­-defence for murder has to be proved and determined through a judicial trial. The Police's defense cannot be presumed from the police version or confirmed through an investigation. No investigation was conducted on whether the use of force was necessary and proportionate. Factual inconsistencies and contradictions were also overlooked. These include –

a. Post­-mortem Reports show lethal force used: The bodies of 12 of the victims show multiple gunshot wounds on the torso, abdomen, and even on the head some dead bodies also show fractures. Post-mortem Reports of five deceased victims show blackening and tattooing around the bullet entry wounds, indicating firing from close range. This contradicts the police claim that minimal force was used or that the bullets were aimed at the lower part of the victims’ bodies to immobilize them and ensure their arrest.

b. Police only sustained minor injuries:­ Out of the approximate 280 police personnel involved in these 17 police killings, only around 20 police officers sustained injuries. In 15 out of the 17 cases analysed, the police sustained only minor injuries.

c. Inadequate proof that the deceased or his accomplice were holding weapons or fired at the Police:­ In seven cases, the fingerprints of the deceased were not found on the weapons recovered from the scene of the crime. Therefore, the police’s claim that the victims used weapons to shoot at them is contradicted by the independent record.

d. No evidence to suggest that retaliatory firing by police was necessary: There is an effort to present bulletproof jackets with bullets in them as proof that retaliatory firing was required. At least 16 bullet-proof jackets contain bullet entries. However, there is nothing to connect these bullets to the weapons that are claimed to have been recovered from the deceased. It has not even been conclusively shown that these bulletproof jackets were actually used in the purported “encounter”. In some cases, there is nothing to connect the bullet injuries sustained by the police to the weapons purportedly handled by the deceased.

5. In 16 out of the 17 cases analysed, the investigating officer closed the investigation by filing Closure Reports in court before the Judicial Magistrates. Overlooking the factual contradictions that emerge from the evidence, the closure report in all the 16 cases confirms the police version that the firing was in self­-defence. All the cases were closed on the ground that the victims – who were named as an “accused” ­ were dead and that the police could not find any information about the accomplice who escaped the crime scene. This process has been held to be unconstitutional by the High Courts and the NHRC in other instances.

6. In 11 out of 16 cases where a Closure Report was filed by the police, there appears to be an abdication of judicial powers by the Magistrate who has unquestioningly accepted the Closure of the investigation. By naming the deceased as "accused" in these cases, the requirement of the Court to issue notice to the victim's family before closing the case was done away with. Instead, Magistrates issued notice to the police officer, the complainant in the FIR, who in turn gives a “no objection” letter to close the investigation. Through this process, the Judicial Magistrates accept the closure of the investigation.

7. The law (Section 176(1­A) of the CrPC) requires an inquiry into the cause of death to be conducted by a Judicial Magistrate, however, in at least eight cases, the inquiries were conducted by an Executive Magistrate in violation of CrPC provisions. This violation also indicates that a lack of clarity in the PUCL guidelines is being taken advantage of to evade accountability. The Executive Magistrates held the police killings to be "genuine", acting well beyond their powers and jurisdiction, which is only to determine the cause of death and not determine whether an offense has been committed. The Executive Magistrates’ findings and reports are based on the police version, and most reports do not even consider forensic or ballistic evidence. The statements of family members have either not been recorded or recorded in a perfunctory manner.

8. Three years after the NHRC directed an investigation into 17 cases detailed in this report, 14 cases have been decided, two cases are still pending and the status of one case is not available in the public domain. Out of the 14 cases decided by the NHRC, 12 cases were closed, finding no foul play on the part of the police, and one case was transferred to the UP State Human Rights Commission. In only one case, the NHRC held that the deceased was killed in a ‘fake encounter’ by the police. The other inquiries by the NHRC overlook the factual contradictions and inconsistencies in the police narrative. It also turns a blind eye to violations of procedural and substantive law, for instance, the registration of all FIRs against the deceased victims and no FIRs against the police closing the investigation on the grounds of the police version of self­-defence, no judicial determination of the justification of self­-defence, violations in the collection and securing of evidence from the scene of the crime, often done by police officers belonging to the same Police Station as the police involved in the killings.

9. The burden of ensuring investigation and accountability falls entirely on the victims’ families. The families face intimidation, threats, and persecution through false and fabricated criminal cases. At least 13 letters have been submitted to the NHRC about the persecution by the state and non-­state actors of the victim families and human rights defenders providing legal aid and support to the families. The NHRC neither responded to nor took on record the letters pertaining to the persecution of victims’ families. It directed inquiries in cases of the persecution of human rights defenders but closed those inquiries as well.

10. This report lays bare the abject failure of the criminal justice system to ensure accountability for police killings. It shows how the justice system is unable to hold police officers to account for use of force causing death. It exposes the ambiguities and gaps in the Supreme Court’s guidelines in PUCL v. State of Maharashtra, which is effectively translating, in practice, into impunity for killings. These include introducing ambiguity on FIRs to be registered against the police, introducing vagueness which allows the plea of self­-defence to be misused by the police and claimed at the stage of investigation instead of a trial, ambiguity regarding mandatory inquiry by a judicial magistrate into police killings, and the improbable expectation of a fair and independent investigation by the state police department into crimes by their own colleagues.



Rural Expert


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