Dial 100 For Encounter

It바카라�s almost puzzling how solitary crimes sometimes shake the soul of a city and att­ain a scale and proportion way beyond their immediate, often petty circumstan­ces. The unhurried city of Lucknow in ­Uttar Pradesh, the genteel home of tehzeeb, is presently convulsed by shock and horror. No long roll call of casualties here바카라�indeed, one corpse on a city street seems insignificant compared to the hundreds who die of encephalitis just a few hours바카라� drive away. Still, because of what it comes to symbolise, how it concentrates unto itself a lot of ambient fears and meanings from the surrounding context, it has touched the city바카라�s people at a very elemental level. Instead of their old networks of conviviality generating a sense of comfort and security, the discussions in Lucknow have acquired a tinge of abstract dread. As if their fabled way of life is itself a casualty, as if the city바카라�s character is changing for ever바카라�if not headed for the morgue.

What happened was as bizarre as it was ­random: nothing in its routine setting should have brought it about. A father of two was shot by a police constable late on the night of September 29, reportedly for not halting his car when signalled to. Vivek Tiwari, a white-collar worker with Apple, died shortly after the bullet tore through his chin. His female colleague, who was with him, testified that the constable shot without provocation. The latter, now under ­arrest, says Tiwari tried to run him over and he shot in self-defence. For three days, local front-pages obsessed over details of the incident. Headlines and hashtags conveyed the shockwaves across the country.

At 2 am, four days after the incident, the spot of crime is a deserted spread of road, awash with streetlights. A stone바카라�s throw away, the light at the entrance of a residential complex blinks int­ermittently. Two shadowy figures, security guards in all likelihood, watch with rapt attention from behind the gates. The road, stained with gutkha and betel spit, bears circles made with white chalk at the exact spot where the incident happened바카라�made after the police re-enacted the whole incident for investigation purposes.

Twelve hours earlier/Tuesday afternoon: A high-voltage sense of anticipation hangs in the air as the police enactment바카라�essentially an adaptation of the witness바카라�s account바카라�is set to begin. The entire area has been cordoned off. Still, local residents have joined the swarm of journalists. It바카라�s a very professional-looking team바카라�a person in a white coat, one with gloves on, one filming seamlessly, one taking photographs. All of it is being overseen by Sujeet Pandey, I-G, Lucknow range, who is heading the investigation.

Immaculately dressed in white shirt and black trousers, Pandey conducts the exercise with great patience and with an air suggestive of long association with authority. As a constable trains his gun at the car driver, one bystander throws a jibe in chaste Lucknowi accent, 바카라�Dekh liye chamber mein hai toh nahin, nahin phir se ek ho jaaye (Make sure there is no bullet inside, lest there바카라�s a repeat of the incident).바카라� The cackles draw helpless glances from the policemen, already at the receiving end of public ire over the past four days.

But underlying the snide remarks is a layer of fear. 바카라�Bhaiyya, bhay samaa gaya hai (Fear has set in). We have stopped going out after 10 pm. If even Lucknow is not safe, which other city can you expect to be safe?바카라� asks Abhishek Singh (26), a businessman. As he sees cops on two motorcycles going past, he seethes, 바카라�Look at them. They think they바카라�ve done something very macho. If they can fire at us in self-defence, we can also run our vehicle over them in self-defence, right?바카라�

Another resident, who lives nearby, says the two constables involved in the incident only do extortion in the area. 바카라�They just roam around looking for couples. Wherever they find any, they바카라�ll go and quickly take their photographs, and then ask the girl to call her father. The couple has no option but to shell all their money to avoid embarrassment,바카라� says Thakur Prasad Pandey, 49, who claims to be unemployed. The person next to him adds that the state government바카라�s free hand to the police has made them 바카라�nirankush바카라� (not bound by rules).

Since the Yogi Adityanath government took charge of the state, the police force has come under accusations of high-handedness on several occasions. Besides cases of arbitrary act­ions바카라�last month, for instance, when a lady constable in Meerut was seen in a video slapping a Hindu woman for allegedly having an affair with a Muslim man바카라�there has been a spate of deaths in police encounters under Adityanath바카라�s rule. In the one-and-a-half years he has been at the helm, there have been, by the government바카라�s own admission, close to 1,500 encounters in which 67 people have been killed. Opposition parties and rights groups claim that most of these were staged and the government is killing Muslims, Dalits and OBCs as part of a nefarious design.

The most recent case of death in an encounter happened in Aligarh on September 20, where, bizarrely, the police invited media persons to come and film the incident live. Two young men, Mustakeem and Naushad, were killed in the all­eged encounter. The police said they were complicit in six murders, three of which happened in Aligarh on September 14 while three happened in Etah earlier. Asked about the evidence incriminating Mustakeem and Naushad, Manilal Patidar, SP, Aligarh Rural, said the duo바카라�s phone numbers came up while the police were doing 바카라�B-party and C-party surveillance바카라� on the accused in the first Etah murder.

Rafeekan, Mustakeem바카라�s grandmother, and Hina, his wife, both say the police came to their house on September 16 and picked up four members of their family바카라�Mustakeem, Naushad, Nafees and Salman. Away from the watch of the two cops stationed outside their house, preventing people from meeting the family, other residents too ascertain that the four men were picked up from the house by the police. Mustakeem was Naushad바카라�s brother-in-law and their ages, according to the family, were 22 and 17 respectively.

The police, however, deny this and say Mustakeem and Naushad were absconding. Patidar tells Outlook that Mustakeem had spent 7-10 years in jail, was actually 34-35 years old, had a fake Aadhaar card, and kept changing names. Aligarh SSP Ajay Kumar Sahni, in a press note issued after the encounter, said Mustakeem and Naushad had been running a gang since 2007, and 바카라�Bangladeshi links바카라� were surfacing in the investigations.

Besides, the kin of the three murder victims in Aligarh too seem miffed with the police. Giriraj Singh, brother of slain godman Roopdas, says the police could not find any culprits for his brother바카라�s murder. 바카라�They caught random people. They don바카라�t have any evidence. Whenever I go to the police station asking for evidence, they say they바카라�ll call me when they find it,바카라� says Singh, 바카라�I want justice for my brother. I don바카라�t care how much money goes down the drain for that.바카라� Similarly, Lalit Kumar, whose brother and sister-in-law were killed, says the police could not find the mobile phone of his brother, or give the family any conclusive proof.

Activists say the targeted killing of people from certain communities in staged encounters is being carried out to crush the morale of political party workers from these communities. 바카라�Of the first 50 deaths in encounters under this government, 21 were Muslims, and most of the others were from backward classes,바카라� says Rajeev Yadav, general secretary of Rihai Manch, a politico-legal advocacy group working for the marginalised.

The culture of excesses is orchestrated from the top leadership in the state, says Rajeev. In an interview to a television channel last year, Adityanath had said that if people committed crimes in UP, they would be shot dead. 바카라�Why is only constable Prashant Chaudhary responsible for Vivek Tiwari바카라�s death? Wasn바카라�t it Adityanath who formed anti-Romeo squads and told them to strike wherever they saw a boy and a girl tog­ether? The constable was doing just that. Tiwari was killed by a mindset that has been cultivated by Adityanath,바카라� says Rajeev. After the incident, the CM sought to assuage sentiments, meeting the victim바카라�s family, and announcing aid of Rs 40 lakh and a government job to the wife. That hasn바카라�t altered the core of the narrative, though.

Other reasons too are ascribed to the UP pol­ice바카라�s high-handedness. A.L. Banerjee, former state DGP, says a lot of recently inducted rank and file police staff do not receive training in as comprehensive a manner as their seniors did. 바카라�Around 2008-09, it was decided that the police force needed an additional 2 lakh personnel. Some 40,000 were recruited in one go and trained under inadequate infrastructure. Later, their training period was also cut from nine to six months, which I think was atrocious. Lack of adequate training leads to indiscipline,바카라� says Banerjee, who headed the force between February-December 2014.

On the streets of Lucknow, the conversations flow바카라�the city folk are proverbially fond of talking. It바카라�s midnight and child labourers at the tea shops are sweeping the area clean. Men clad in banyans sit in darkness, rubbing the utensils clean, wrapping up the day바카라�s business. The discussions have taken a morbid turn since last week. A bunch of men in their mid-twenties, come to have tea at Burlington Chauraha, are overheard talking about a viral video from Delhi where an extortionist 바카라�put his gun at the belly of a man and fired바카라�. The discussion inevitably strays back to the original incident. 바카라�바카라�aur besharmi dekhiye, justify kar rahe thhe shuru mein (And look at their shamelessness. They were defending the constable initially),바카라� one of them says.

One Rajesh Yadav, a cloth trader in his early thirties, is sitting in a car with his friend, having flavoured milk in a kulhad. 바카라�If there had been even one minor case against Tiwari, they would have made it look like an encounter. 바카라�He was an old criminal, and there was an exchange of fire for half-an-hour,바카라� they would have said,바카라� intones Yadav, as he scrapes the inner surface of the kulhad with his finger and licks it. It바카라�s a common theme. Just before him, a lawyer who looked in his fifties reprised it. 바카라�Had it been a Muslim, they would have thrown an AK-47 inside and claimed they have shot a terrorist,바카라� said Abdul Razzaque Khan, chairman of the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh바카라�s executive committee, at Jagran Chauraha, where he had come to have paan.

The policemen sit in ones and twos at the big junctions. In Hazratganj, a group is stationed near a police outpost. The incident has done colos­sal damage to the force바카라�s credibility, and they know it. 바카라�No matter how hard a sepoy works, nobody remembers. One small mistake and바카라�바카라� says a young constable, requesting anonymity. A few inspectors also express concerns. 바카라�When the Nirbhaya rape happened in Delhi, everybody was asking why the police did not check the vehicle. When we do, we face this. The car was parked there. What if a body was found inside the car next morning?바카라� asks one of them, again requesting anonymity, saying he already has enough worries and doesn바카라�t wish to invite more.

Lucknowis, however, are not in a particularly indulgent mood. Some say the government must not be spared. 바카라�This party asked for votes saying they had a kohinoor in their pocket. Gullible as we are, we believed them. The kohinoor turned out to be a plastic one,바카라� says Rakesh Yadav, 45, a road contractor, ruing the delay in payments for government contracts. The city, it appears, will take its time to recover from the shock, and the police and the government have much to do to restore people바카라�s faith.

By Salik Ahmad in Lucknow