Trigger-Happy Assam Police Raises Many Questions In Shooting Spree

The tales are all too familiar by now. A suspected criminal attempts to snatch a firearm from police personnel, tries to escape, and is either shot at or shot dead. Nothing seems to be amiss. Just police doing their job. Or are they? A series of police shootings across Assam over the past two months have left a trail of unanswered questions and sparked allegations of highhandedness and, ironically, even of incompetency, by the trigger-happy force.

It is also not lost on anybody that the shooting spree began right after the BJP strongman in the Northeast, Himanta Biswa Sarma, took charge as the Assam chief minister on May 10. Critics allege that Sarma’s two-month tenure is right out of the BJP playbook—from his muscular policing to the new bill on cow protection to his strident views on what is known as ‘love jihad’, a term used by the right wing to describe Muslim men marrying Hindu women allegedly through coercion or allurement.

The police action in Assam, many point out, is a copy of their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh which has also seen a spate of controversial police encounters that left many suspected criminals dead or injured. Sarma, on his part, has defended the police action, saying that the cops shooting at criminals trying to flee should be the “pattern”. Incidentally, Sarma’s endorsement of the police act­ion came while speaking at a conference on ‘Redefining Policing Standards in Assam’. “Some people told me that, these days people are running away from police and many shooting incidents have taken place, is it becoming a pattern? I told them, yes this should be the policing pattern. If a rapist runs away, tries to snatch arms from police, police will have to fire, but not on the chest and the law says that you can shoot at the legs. We want to transform Assam Police into one of the best policing organisations in the country,” Sarma said. Most victims were allegedly involved in cattle smuggling or drug traffickers. At the last count, at least five alleged criminals have died while nearly a dozen were injured in two months of the BJP’s second coming in the state.

Police officers are reluctant to speak on the new trend, saying that the chief minister has already made the line of action clear. But their claim of firing only when the criminals attempt to escape, however, have not found many takers. “I have my reservations about what is going on,” says Dilip Kumar Borah, a ret­ired IPS officer. “How is it that unarmed persons can attempt to escape when they are guarded by armed policemen? Being in custody means they are under complete control of the police…are the police so incompetent? Not even Ulfa militants tried to escape in such a fashion and so frequently. These need to be investigated to ascertain the veracity of the police claims,” he tells Outlooks. Borah also suggests that it was time for police in India to use body cameras as is the practice in many countries so that every action of theirs is recorded. In this ­regard, he refers, in particular, to the George Floyd case when the 46-year-old Black man was killed in police custody in the US. “Besides, people have to speak up and ask questions in the interest of human rights,” Borah adds.

Critics say that by making such claims of criminals trying to flee so often, ­police are only making themselves look bad. Many social media users have said that “police have only admitted to their own failure” through these cases. Some have also pointed out that all the ­victims were only “suspects” and yet to be proven guilty. “If one of them turns out to be not guilty that means police have blood of an inn­ocent on their hands,” says Samiran Bora, a vocal critic of the government on social media. However, there are also many social media users, both on Facebook and Twitter, who have backed the police ­action, saying the criminals got what they deserved.

Retired judge and former member of Assam Human Rights Commission, Tarun Phukan also wonders how policemen could be so careless for criminals in their custody to snatch their weapons. “Policemen outnumber criminals so how can that happen? Or shall we think that they are allowed to flee only to be shot at? Actually action should be taken against such policemen,” he says, adding that shooting should be the last resort and that too against dreaded criminals whom the police are unable to arrest.

Amid the swirling controversy, the matter has reached the National Human Rights Commission, with Delhi-based advocate Arif Jwadder asking the panel to inquire into the cases. The Assam Human Rights Commission has also taken suo motu cognisance and asked the government to look into the circumstances leading to the injuries and deaths. “It is very unlikely that they (the alleged) could use the snatched pistols against the police who were heavily armed and had more men. Also, it cannot be believed that all alleged petty criminals could snatch a pistol from a trained police officer whose service weapons are normally tied to a rope to the waist belt of that officer,” Jwadder said. “Police actions are denying the rights of the alleged criminal to a fair trial,” he said in his petition, while ­requesting NHRC to take cognisance of the matter and institute an inquiry against all such “fake encounters”. AIUDF legislator from Dhing, Aminul Islam, has gone a step further and termed the encounters as instances of “targeting the minorities”.

Opposition parties allege that the chief minister is taking his image as a man of action too far and turned Assam into a “police state”. Congress’s state chief Ripun Bora says the police have become trigger-happy and were disregarding human rights. On the other hand, Asom Jatiya Parishad general secretary Jagadish Bhuyan allege that the surge in encounters was a ploy to “silence” lower-­rung criminals to protect their bosses, including politicians and top police ­off­icers, involved in illegal syndicates. Raijor Dal chief and MLA Akhil Gogoi says that people were silent now because criminals were being targeted, but once the guns are turned on the general ­public, there will be a problem.

The BJP has come back with its standard practice of asking a question to answer a question. “Are the opposition parties trying to protect criminals?” a BJP leader said.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Shoot at Site")

By Dipankar Roy in Guwahati