A rude gesture by the rogue cop

The slaying of former MP and crime lord Atiq Ahmed in Prayagraj last week has shocked even those who are all too aware of the depths to which the rule of law has sunk during the current administration in Lucknow.

However, given the frequent and widespread incidence of custodial deaths in India — the murder of Atiq Ahmed and his brother while in the protection of armed policemen is a custodial killing — it should not have been a surprise. In just the last six years, there have been 183 such killings in Uttar Pradesh.

In the mid-1970s, Sidharth Shankar Ray’s police routinely abducted Naxalite-inspired students from their homes in Kolkata and bumped them off in the dead of night.

The police of undivided Andhra Pradesh adopted extra-judicial killings as their entire strategy in their three decades long campaign against the People’s War Group. The Punjab Police raised this to war proportions against Khalistani militants in the late 1980s.

Indian society’s response to this corruption of the law enforcement process was one of quiescence, which only emboldened the police to adopt the custodial killing as verily a tool of law enforcement, thereby making themselves the judge, jury and executioner.

Bar the occasional slap on the wrist, the judiciary—which could have arrested the trend had it given a proper hearing to victim representations or taken it up suo motu—chose not to notice this flagrant violation of the most basic principle of natural justice. As a consequence, killings perpetrated or facilitated by the police or government, have evolved to have their own grotesque grammar, method and politesse.

One example is the cute coinage ‘encounter’, which implies that the police posse and the hapless quarry are in some sense equal combatants. In the old Andhra Pradesh, encounter-slain Naxalites’ bodies would always be adorned with a police gun to prove that the weapon was snatched, thereby making it an equal contest.

Another is to play games with the letter of the law: the victims are often taken to the jurisdiction of an easy judge to be bumped off. There even are macabre courtesies: Naxalite captives are invited to take a bathroom break before the deed is done.

Three facts make the Atiq Ahmed killing particularly villainous in the annals of rogue law enforcement in India. One is that the victims knew what their fate was going to be and sought the court’s intervention to prevent it.

Atiq Ahmed petitioned the court to take cognizance of the threat to his life, but the judge refused to hear his plea. In Ahmedabad, prior to his transit to Prayagraj, Atiq Ahmed shouted out to reporters that he was being taken out to be shot. No court took suo motu notice of it.

Second, the killing of Atiq and his brother Ashraf took place while he was surrounded by armed policemen. None of them pulled out their guns to protect him. They in fact scattered, leaving the assailants to have a clear shot at the victims. The brothers were in fact handcuffed together, making them sitting ducks to the shooters.

Third, immediately upon emptying their clips, the shooters began shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. What were they trying to convey by that? Were they saying ‘we are on your side?’ To whom were they announcing themselves? Or were they saying killing the two captives was god’s work?

These questions make the slaying of Atiq Ahmed a milestone in law enforcement infamy. It’s the wolf declaring itself from behind the sheep’s clothing. It’s the truth emerging from the Trojan horse. It’s a rude gesture by the rogue cop to the fair judge.