Fake Encounters Nothing But Cold-Blooded Murders: Ex-IPS Officer

Extra-judicial killings or fake encounter deaths are nothing but cold-blooded murders, whatever be the popular opinions created in a society or community afflicted by problems related to real or perceived lawlessness, says former IPS officer Amod Kanth.

He also says no other period in the annals of India's criminal justice system than this could be more appropriate to discuss the extra-judicial killings or the false encounters resulting in the deaths of alleged criminals.

Mr Kanth has just come out with the second volume of his "Police Diaries" series "Khaki on Broken Wings", in which he untangles some of the most sensational and heinous crimes that dominated national headlines.

For decades, he says, the police have been "indulging in short-cuts" to giving the so-called justice.

"Such killings or fake encounter-deaths are nothing but cold-blooded murders, whatever be the popular opinions created in a society or community afflicted by the problems related to a real or perceived lawlessness," he says.

In the book, published by Bloomsbury India, Mr Kanth talks about the loopholes within the criminal justice system.

Among the many stories he narrates is one of mafia lord Romesh Sharma, who terrorised his targets to extort properties worth hundreds of crores and thwarted investigations using his access to powerful people in the political and corporate world.

He also recounts how 'Bikini Killer' Charles Sobhraj managed a sensational escape from the high-security Tihar Jail in Delhi, the complex story behind the fight for justice in the BMW hit-and-run case that left several people dead, and the Jessica Lal murder case.

Mr Kanth says whatever be the compulsions of maintaining security, law and order, or crime control, the police and justice machinery cannot be permitted to give go-by to the laid down legal processes.

"Killing someone, even the hardened and much wanted criminal, while the said person happens to be either in the police or judicial custody or within reasonable control, shall amount to a murder or a culpable homicide not amounting to murder," he says.

"Through my extremely hazardous journey negotiating the path of criminal justice system in the majority of the cases I investigated, I found that the most serious and heinous crimes, even those concerning the terrorists, mafia, and drugs or being supported by the rich and powerful, could be brought to logical conclusions within the framework of law," he told PTI.

He says his book is mostly about cases and situations in which the "truth which is supposed to be the guiding star in the hazardous journey of India's criminal justice system becomes the first casualty".

"In most of my time in the police law-enforcement for nearly 34 years, particularly while dealing with the inquiries and investigations, which somehow remained the most exciting part of my work, I found that the stakeholders of the criminal justice system were too anxious to distort or destroy the truth rather than establish the same," he further adds.

Mr Kanth also feels that "anti-people, colonial, and alien laws" which define the practically-unchanged architecture of the criminal justice system, were tailor-made to keep the country in perpetual subjugation.

Several exercises have been made and nearly 1,500 outdated and redundant laws have been scrapped, but no serious efforts have been made to change the basic laws concerning the criminal justice system, including the police, he said.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)