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‘Consider PIL on ongoing police excess in Assam,’ court tells Gauhati HC
The Gauhati High Court is at present hearing a petition filed by advocate Arif Jwadder in December last year alleging 80 incidents of fake encounters had happened in the state since May 2021 and resulted in 28 deaths and left 48 injured. The figure has since increased to over 30 deaths and nearly 80 injuries in such incidents.
Guwahati: A court in Assam’s Barpeta on Friday asked the Gauhati High Court to consider a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) “to curb ongoing police excesses in the state” like injuring or killing of accused persons while they are allegedly attempting to escape from custody.
The court of district and sessions judge Aparesh Chakravarty made the observation while granting bail to Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani who was in police custody for allegedly assaulting a woman police officer. The court held that the police case against the legislator from Vadgam was “manufactured”.
“Send a copy of this order to the Registrar General of the Hon’ble Gauhati High Court for placing the same before the Chief Justice to look into this aspect of the matter and to consider whether the matter may be taken up as a PIL to curb the ongoing police excesses in the state,” the bail order read.
The Gauhati High Court is at present hearing a petition filed by advocate Arif Jwadder in December last year alleging 80 incidents of fake encounters had happened in the state since May 2021 and resulted in 28 deaths and left 48 injured. The figure has since increased to over 30 deaths and nearly 80 injuries in such incidents.
The Barpeta court while granting bail to Mevani observed that to “prevent registration of false FIR” the HC could direct Assam Police “to reform itself by taking some measures...to give credibility to police version of occurrences”.
The court held instances of accused persons attempting to escape from police custody at midnight, while the accused was allegedly leading the police personnel to discover something and the police personnel firing and killing or injuring such accused has “become a routine phenomenon in the state”.
It stated that the HC could consider directing the police that every police personnel engaged in law-and-order duty to wear body cameras, to install CCTV cameras in vehicles while arresting an accused or taking an accused to some place for discovery of some articles and also install CCTV cameras inside all police stations.
“Otherwise, our society will become a police state, which the society can ill afford...converting our hard-earned democracy into a police state is simply unthinkable and if the Assam Police is thinking about the same, the same is perverse thinking,” the order read.
Assam has been witnessing a number of so-called police encounters since May last year following directions by chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to the police to be strict against criminals and even shoot them on their legs if they tried to flee from custody or attack policemen.
