Santosh makes the common mistake of equating legitimate police activity of confronting criminals and engaging with them with gunfire, if necessary, and the subsequent illegal and illegitimate activity of 'set-up encounters' or extra-judicial killings where the victim who was already in the custody by the police was taken to a remote and deserted spot and bumped off.
In the former case, many of the police encounters took place in the presence of the public or the media. In the latter case, there were no witnesses except police personnel who fed their version to the media. I may further add that such 'set-up encounter' killings which started in the late 80's and early 90's were initially directed against criminals of the various gangs that were operating in Bombay. However, subsequent to the bomb blasts in 1992 and the new BJP-Shiv Sena government in 1994, such killings took a communal turn. Muslims were specially targeted. If a muslim had a dispute with a hindu over property or anything else, whether he was right or wrong, and did not give in, and the dispute was taken to the concerned authorities, he could land up as another victim of the dreaded ' set-up encounter' killings. So also any muslim who resisted the strong arm tactics of the BJP-Shiv Sena activists. This was a new strategy to subdue the muslims, just like that followed by Narendra Modi in Gujarat, though for a different objective. Some of the police encounter specialists who initially began as heroes later turned renegade and mercenary and were available for a price like in the wild west. Over a period of time the thin line between legitimate police activity and illegal extra-judicial killings got blurred and all encounters got tarred with the same brush without going into the merits of each case. They were generalised, just like 'all goan men get drunk', or 'all anglo-indian women are loose characters' or 'all politicians are corrupt'. Regards, Marshall *The following article entitled "Rise of the ?83 ?encounter? batch" supports Roland's contention on this issue: http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Rise-of-the-83-encounter-batch/Article1-860364.aspx * * * *Santosh Helekar:*
