The Assam government on Tuesday submitted to the Gauhati High Court a detailed affidavit on police encounters, stating that 28 people were killed and 73 others injured in police action between May 2021 and January 2022.
According to the government, the incidents took place across 27 districts in the state between May 10 last year (when Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took office) and January 28. The Sarma-led BJP government has been under fire for increased police action on alleged criminals.
Hearing a public-interest petition on the police encounters filed by advocate Arif Jwadder, the court on January 11 asked the government to file details of the police actions. On January 25, the court granted the government ten more days after it failed to submit an affidavit.
In the affidavit, Ashim Kumar Bhattacharyya, an additional secretary at the home department, said “the due process of law and the procedure established by law, including the guidelines issued by the National Human Rights Commission, are being complied with by the district police”. It also added that FIRs had been registered in “each and every case” and investigation was being carried out to take the cases to their “logical conclusion”. The document also provided district-wise details of the encounters.
The affidavit was filed on the same day the government asked the director general of police to suspend a police official in connection with the shooting of Kirti Kamal Bora, a former student leader, in Nagaon last month. Bora’s injury had created a furore in the state, after which Sarma instituted a one-man inquiry commission, headed by Additional Chief Secretary Pawan Borthakur, to probe the matter.
Sarma’s government, “which has a zero tolerance policy against crimes”, has been increasingly criticised for being “trigger happy”. The people injured or killed in alleged attempts to escape had been held for crimes such as cattle-smuggling, rape, murder, drug-peddling as well as militancy.
As the Indian Express reported in July, four of those injured and one who died were all shot in the leg. The same month, Sarma said at a conference attended by police officers that there was nothing wrong if police firing at a target “trying to flee” became “a pattern”. “Police cannot shoot him in the chest, but shooting at the leg is (allowed in) the law,” he said.
The court will next hear the case on Thursday.