Do you remember Hari Krishna, the loner who was ‘witness’ to the Ansal Plaza shootout in Delhi. He was really hounded by the Delhi police for speaking the truth. ‘Bhaskar’ a hindi newspaper reported that he would be presenting his evidence against many of the accused police personnel.

There is another good piece of news from A.P. A five member bench of the A.P. Highcourt has directed that ‘every encounter case be treated as murder and cases be filed against the police.’ : (NDTV)

Try encounters like murders: AP High Court
NDTV Correspondent

Friday, February 06, 2009, (Hyderabad)

The Andhra Pradesh High Court has said encounter killings must be treated as any murder case and the police must be booked.

This becomes significant after the alleged encounter killings of leftist extremists and more recently, the killing of three acid attack accused allegedly in a fake encounter.

A five-judge bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court said this afternoon that in every case of alleged encounter, a case must be registered against the police.

This reverses the 2:1 judgment of another Bench that had dismissed a petition seeking a murder trial against police officers involved in ‘encounters’ with the Naxalites.

The majority of the Bench had said that without a complaint a case should not be initiated against the police. Whereas one judge had argued that those involved in encounters should be tried in the same way as in any other murder case.

Nearly 11 petitions were filed by revolutionary writer P Varavara Rao and civil liberties groups following the Manala encounter in Nizamabad district which took place on March 7, 2005.

NHRC letter to chief ministers – 1997

http://nhrc.nic.in/Documents/CasesOfEncounterDeaths.pdf

Minority view in an AP High Court judgement (1999) giving a summary of an earlier judgement of the AP High Court 1995. Incidentally, the 1995 judgement was appealed against by the AP Government in the SupremeCourt. I dont know what happened to that appeal.
http://hc.ap.nic.in/orders/wp_17750_1999.html#_ftnref1

an appeal from PUCL chennai written in 2003 which invokes the AP High court judgement of 1995 and the NHRC letter from 1997.
http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Police/2003/veeramani.htm

In a nutshell – anytime a policeman fires from his weapon, there has to be a magisterial enquiry. This maigsterial power vested in the civil services is resented by the police services. But most often, the enquiry does not amount to much.

In cases where there is a death due to firing by a police officer except when there is an explicit executive order to fire by an authorized official, the law requires that a case of culpable homicide be registered against the policeman and investigated. The onus of proving that the killing was legal, rests on the policeman – the accused. The routine practice however, has been to register a case against the dead. The idea is that someone causes a life threatening situation to the policeman. The policeman opens fire in self protection. Since the person who first caused the life threatening situation is dead, the case cannot be investigated any further. File closed. To make it even stronger, police pull out a variety of old cases against the dead person. The AP High Court in 1995 held this procedure was completely illegal. The NHRC in 1997, sent instructions to all state governments to change the practice. Justice MN Venkatachallaiah then chairperson of NHRC explicitly asks governments to book cases of culpable homicide against the policemen who participated in the encounter. Investigate and bring to trial. It is for the policeman to ‘prove’ that he had indeed acted in self defense. I do not believe that this has been actually followed anywhere. In the current atmosphere, the AP High Court order and the NHRC instructions may not amount to much, but they are worth remembering.

So we have a million plus Iraqis whose life got destroyed forever and anyone who dared ask a question was immediately cowed down by that stick and debunked as a “non-patriot”.

So we have 1300 Gazans killed and any sign of protest is smothered by the calls to National Honour.

So we have Dr Binayak Sen languishing in prison but no questions can be asked, because in the “War on Terror” As Darth Vader would have said…”If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy.”

In a country as ours where a vast majority has no credible means of information and the minority is muddled by a self-serving MSM there is no voice of opposition or reason which can break through.

Reading your post has been reinvigorating.