In Sindh and Punjab, we often hear of hardened criminals being killed by the police, where policemen remain unscathed. Interestingly, not a single criminal is caught alive or in an injured state.
There is a perception that a majority of extrajudicial encounters are staged after a nod from the ruling elite. The argument in support of such encounters is that it is difficult to prove hardened criminals guilty in courts as they are influential and can easily threaten witnesses.
"But this does not mean that all the policemen are desperate to shoot such criminals at sight and be judges and executors," says Khawaja Khalid Farooq, former Inspector General of Police (IGP), Punjab.
"There is a difference of opinion among the police. Many officers have vehemently opposed fake encounters as a means to weed out criminals," he states, continuing that killing a human being is permissible only in a situation where a person feels he will lose his life in case he does not hit an attacker. "Even in that case, it is suggested that minimum force should be used to take over the attacker and foil his attempt."
He further adds, "Under the law, a citizen can shoot an attacker in self-defence but in this case it would be very hard for him to prove that. On the other hand, for police it is very easy to establish that".
Farooq says police encounters are carried out under policies approved by the sitting governments and there is hardly any case where a police officer makes a decision himself. "There is zero tolerance for gang rapists, robbers who molest women during dacoities, extortionists, those involved in kidnapping for ransom, paid assassins and murderers of cops. The orders to execute are always verbal. Due to this self-assumed role of the police, sometimes injustice is done to the people who are not hardened criminals but are found at the wrong place at the wrong time."
Sarmad Saeed Khan, former Additional IGP, says police officers that do not obey these verbal orders are sidelined. "Officers who are ready to take the lives of under-custody criminals are blue-eyed boys of the government and can get out-of-turn promotions. In this situation, many officers who disapprove of fake police encounters and are not in the good books of the government, ultimately change their stance and agree to obey such orders."
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He believes judicial inquiries into such police encounters are of no use because the political will is not there and the only purpose is to counter the pressure exerted by heirs and human rights activists. "The judicial inquiry report ultimately goes to the police department that has to do the follow-up but it doesn’t."
Khan says accountability of those involved in such encounters can happen only after a regime change but that is not always the case. He cites the example of the clean-up operation against the MQM that was led by PPP’s Naseerullah Babar in the early 1990s. Around 400 policemen involved in extra-judicial killings at that time were tried and dismissed from service during the Musharraf government. "State protection and security were also taken away from them. This made them an easy target for the armed personnel of the groups they had targeted during the operation and most of them lost their lives."
This situation calls for a review of the role of judiciary in determining the legitimacy of a police encounter. A senior prosecutor, with an experience of handling several cases of alleged extrajudicial killings, states that it is very difficult to find relief as cases of killings and homicide cannot proceed without active involvement of complainants who can be heirs of the deceased. "There are many ways to deter the complainants and make them surrender or enter into truce with the alleged killers," he says, adding that the police can implicate the complainant by saying that he may be the person who fled the scene during the very encounter.
"In most cases, relatives or acquaintances of hardened criminals give newspaper ads about severing ties with them. It is also a pity that police pressurises doctors to get medico-legal reports in their favour," he informs.
Farooq says the case of encounter victims gets weak as police registers FIRs against the deceased under the charges of attempt to murder, obstructing police and stopping it from doing its work and manages ocular as well as circumstantial evidence immediately -- "The heirs of the deceased are totally at a loss and cannot act at the same pace."
He states that whenever a wanted criminal is surrounded or spotted by police, he fights to his last as he knows he will be shot dead by the police," he adds.
Haider Ashraf, DIG Operations, Lahore, says there is no official sanction to use of more than required force in dealing with criminals and in cases of foul play there are internal mechanisms in place in the department to investigate them. "Departmental inquiries and surprise visits to police stations are just two of the several ways adopted by officials to check excesses against citizens."