Anyone with a gun can go out and commit an act of terrorism,
even without a political affiliation.
Aaron McGruder
 |
| "Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun" |
Policemen must be hanged if they are found guilty of a fake encounter incident. The Supreme Court (SC) of India has said. A bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Chandramouli Kumar Prasad observed in court that encounter killings can be classified as a rarest of rare crime because the protectors of law become murderers.
That's the fact. The news. And what's the reality? For the record, Uttar Pradesh and Manipur top the list of fake encounters, involving high-handedness of the men in khaki. Utter indiscipline. By ratio to its population, my state, Manipur already affected by insurgent movements and ethnic conflicts, will be the notorious numero uno. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) recorded 32 cases of fake encounters in 2009-10, 12 cases in 2010-11 in the trouble-torn state.
But what does all this mean? For a long time, Manipur has been up in arms against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which has been supposedly imposed to curb the militant menace but the fire of resistance and insurgency has only spread like wild fires, in the last three decades after the act has been put into place. More unfortunately, so many innocents have lost their lives, so many maimed, so many raped, so many abused, so many depressed and Irom Chanu Sharmila has entered the eleventh year into her fast. In this context, an observation in the court that the law-enforcers should be punished means next to nothing.
There's something so wrong in the Indian democracy. If not for the election, the image of things like sovereign and republic is fading from the people residing in its peripheral regions. The crisis in Manipur is just the perfect case study. What is needed is a complete overhaul of the system: policy intervention, help the affected people and persuade them to bring to the table, strengthen democratic mechanism, understand the issue completely and not to go by the interests of other things like defence strategy only, et cetera. So finally, the observation is appreciated but it should come out of the books and courtrooms.
