Open Access Research Article
BRUTALITY OF U.P. POLICE- A QUESTION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Published Paper
Article Details
BRUTALITY OF U.P. POLICE- A
QUESTION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Authored By - Disha Singh
Llm (Criminology)
Galgotias University
Abstract
The police system in any country is
considered to be a protector of the citizens. However, the same institution has
been seen as a grave violator of human rights globally as well as in India,
especially in a crime prone area as Uttar Pradesh. The police officials at
places are burdened with immense pressure from the authorities and the masses
to deliver results in an expedient and efficient manner and control the crime
rate. However, the lack of resources and technology prevents them from
effectively carrying out their duties and function without abusing their
powers. There has been a normalization of violence perpetrated by the police on
accused/suspects by society. The basic
human rights of the individuals are often compromised even after having
protection being given by the legal jurisprudence. The abuse of power by the
police is often unaddressed by the legal system due to the lack of
implementation and safeguard of the rights provided to suspects/accused. There
is a need to re-evaluate the treatment and rights of such individuals. Be it
accused or suspects, human rights violations cannot be tolerated and supported
in any country.
Introduction
In six years, 175 dreaded criminals
were killed in the encounter and 4808 were injured. Since 2017, the UP Police
have conducted 10,531 encounters, resulting in the arrest and imprisonment of
22,597 criminals. During the encounters, 13 brave police officers also lost
their lives while 1,398 police officers were injured in the line of duty.
After getting elected, the new Chief
Minister of UP, directed the UP Police to implement a zero-tolerance policy for
crime to strengthen the state’s deteriorating law and order situation and track
down on unrestricted criminals.
As a result of effective policing and
improved law and order situation in the state, in Global Investors' Summit
(GIS)-2023, investment proposals totalling to Rs. 34.09 lakh crore were
received by the state.
In six years, 175 dreaded criminals
were killed in the encounter and 4808 were injured. Since 2017, the UP Police
have conducted 10,531 encounters, resulting in the arrest and imprisonment of
22,597 criminals. During the encounters, 13 brave police officers also lost
their lives while 1,398 police officers were injured in the line of duty.
The UP Police carried out demolitions
of illegal properties as part of their commitment to making the state crime-free.
They also seized criminals’ illegal property. Under the Gangster Act, the
police also seized movable and immovable properties worth Rs.90 billion 22
crore 33 lakh. In addition, the police seized illegally obtained properties by
the mafia and criminals worth more than 2819 crores. Furthermore, the action
was taken against 63,055 criminals under the Gangster Act and 836 under the
NSA.
Further, as claimed by current CM The
law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh is the best the state has seen in the
last 15 years, "not just in the state but in the entire country it has
been accepted that law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh has improved and an
indicator of this is that investment is flowing in," said the CM as he
accused the opposition parties of working with a "negative attitude"
in the assembly. He said the crime rate in the state was lesser than what was
under the previous government and FIRs were being lodged. The National Crime
Records Bureau clearly believes that crime control is determined by the common
people's perception.
But looking at the current scenario
created in the state, the claim to control the law and order has led people to
believe that for the control the police has started to use force, which are
claimed as torture and harmful acts against the people of the state, as claimed
in many reports.
Further the control the crime rate
and criminals, doesn’t require to kill them in an encounter in having them dead
in police custody. There is always two sides to every claim made by a person,
especially when it comes from someone who has to manage a big area such as
Uttar Pradesh. The pros and cons of the rules made by the CM might have made
many people feel safe and secure, but at the same time there might be few who
consider them as dangerous and felt unsafe because of it.
U.P. Police- Making a safe haven for people or
settling fear in people?
settling fear in people?
STATE OF FEAR
In 2020-21, the National Human Rights
Commission (NHRC) registered 11,130 cases on complaints relating to alleged
violations of human rights by police forces of the country. The maximum number
of complaints were from UP.
Concern over claims that at least 59
extrajudicial executions by the police occurred in UP between March 2017 and
December 2018 was raised by four Special Rapporteurs for the UN. Additionally,
they supplied the Indian government comprehensive information on 15 of these
cases.
Between 2017 and 2021, the NHRC sent
the UP government up to five notices about cases of torture committed while in
custody. But no significant action has yet been taken by the local authorities.
India does not have a specific law against torture, and it is not a signatory
to the 1984 UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which makes the issue worse.
As per a report published by the
National Campaign against Torture, out of the 125 deaths in police custody in
the year 2019 in India, UP stood at the top with 14 deaths.
The freedom to peacefully demonstrate
in person or online is a fundamental human right, according to the UN Human
Rights Committee's general comment no. 37 on Article 21 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was published in July 2020.
Similar to this, the Supreme Court of India stated that the right to protest is
a basic right in Ramlila Maidan Incident v. Home Secretary, Union of India
& Ors. in 2012.
Three people were killed during
anti-CAA rallies in UP as a consequence of battles with the state police,
despite the fact that the state denied it. Additionally, tens of thousands were
held as a precaution. The NHRC and the UP Human Rights Commission (UP-HRC) have
sent separate notices to the UP Police about acts taken during the anti-CAA
protests.
The anti-CAA protests saw the
greatest number of internet shutdowns, according to the data that is currently
available, in UP. More recently, some protestors in UP were arrested and killed
as part of farmers' protests against contentious farm regulations that were
later abolished by Parliament.
·
Encounters
In the period from March
2017 to August 2021, 146 people were killed by the UP police in claimed
encounters.
Over the course of this
time, there were up to 8,472 confrontations, during which the UP Police shot at
3,302 persons, injuring them, and leaving many of them crippled, typically from
leg injuries from the shots. 37% of those slain in interactions between 2017
and 2020 up until August were Muslims.
The extrajudicial
executions in UP alarmed the UN human rights experts in January 2019. They also
expressed worry about statements made by high-ranking state government and
police officials that appeared to encourage, defend, or approve killings. The
UP administration has received at least four notices from the NHRC over
encounter deaths. The UP government received a notification from the Supreme
Court in 2018 over fictitious encounters.
·
Riots and fake cases
According to the NCRB
data, UP recorded 5,714 cases of riots in 2019, 8,908 in 2018 and 8,990 in
2017, respectively. As per an answer given in the Lok Sabha by Union minister
of state in December 2018, UP saw 195 cases of communal violence in 2017.
Between 2018 and 2020,
National Security Act, 1980 was invoked by the UP government in 120 cases.
However, as many as 94 such cases have been quashed by the Allahabad high
court. Forty-one such cases related to cow slaughter and all accused belonged
to the minority community. The court regarded this as the misuse of the NSA and
went on to observe that much important information in the police FIRs was “cut
and pasted”.
Human rights organizations are
concerned that the present BJP administration in Uttar Pradesh appears to be
selective in its prosecution of crimes.
If the goal is to lower crime in the state, all forms of crimes should
be targeted, and everyone who commits a crime should face punishment regardless
of caste, religion, or whether the crime fits the current BJP government's
pro-Hindu nationalist narrative.
Taking a different path from the
direction of law and order will only result in the formation of a lawless
state, even though the criminals who have done heinous crimes should be
punished.’
SAFE HAVEN?
Despite the opposition campaign
against the UP government on the law-and-order issue, the latest data released
by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) states that the crime situation in
the state has improved. The NCRB data says that UP has witnessed a sharp
reduction of 45.43% in rape cases and has the lowest figures of crimes against
women compared to the 21 major states of the country.
This has played an important role in
changing the image and perception of Uttar Pradesh globally and re-establishing
its identity.
According to an official release, the
state has seen a significant fall in the number of rape cases from 3419 cases
in 2016 to 2317 cases in the year 2020. The UP government has also recorded the
highest conviction rate in the cases of crimes against women and cyber-crime in
the country, says the report by NCRB.
·
Uttar
Pradesh has taken several steps to check crime against women which include
anti-Romeo squads, UP-122 India App, night security cover scheme, women
helpdesks, and pink booths.
·
A
total of 25,895 criminals have been sent behind bars till the year 2019.
·
Despite
being the most populous state, UP has also seen a reduction in cases of murder.
With a density of 690 persons per square km, Uttar Pradesh has witnessed a
sharp decline of 19.8% from the year 2016 to 2020, in cases of murder.
·
Murder
cases registered a reduction of 5.9% in 2017. As many as 28,653 killings were
recorded in 2017, down from 30,450 in 2016, the NCRB report said.
·
According
to the report, the rate of murder cases in UP in 2016 was 2.2 cases per one
lakh population, while the year 2017 recorded 1.9 cases of murder per one lakh
population.
·
The
year 2018 recorded 1.8 and the years 2019 and 2020 recorded 1.7 and 1.6 murder
cases per one lakh population, respectively.
Chief Minister has been claimed to be
working overtime to ensure the safety, security, empowerment, and all-around
welfare of women as well as applying a break over crimes against them have been
one among the top priorities of the government.
The government has ensured stringent
law-enforcement, administrative, legal, and pro-women mass-awareness efforts.
These efforts in the past four years have borne out positive results, and the
system succeeded in containing crimes while improving safety and security
situations.
The hard work of the UP police as
well as administration cam be understood by the steps views from various local
people, who lived their life in fear before the new rules have been established
for the security of the people.
A farmer, in his sixties, yet
athletic in frame, proceeded to answer the question himself. “Nothing is more
important than the safety of our families,” he said. “My biradari (community)
may be upset with them now – I am hurt too – but this government has been able
to do what no one else has: they have ended crime.”
The Muslim journalist in Meerut said
he now felt safe riding his motorbike back home to his village, 35 kilometres
from the city, late at night after work. “I used to be anxious during the SP’s
time, always scared that someone would emerge from the fields and loot me,” he
said, referring to the previous Samajwadi Party government. “But now I go home
tension-free.”
Another man, who runs a small leather
business in a Muslim ghetto on the outskirts of Kanpur, claimed thefts and
robberies had come down in his neighbourhood.
According
to a crime journalist in Unnao, the town’s morgues had fewer unclaimed bodies
of murdered people.
The
official crime statistics neither prove nor refute these assertions, as the
last available data from the National Crime Records Bureau, which compiles
police records from all states, is for the year 2019.
It shows
no clear pattern that suggests a drastic change in Uttar Pradesh’s law and
order since the new government took over. If anything, compared to 2016 and
2017, the next two years saw a marginal increase in crimes against women and in
atrocities against the Scheduled Castes, as Dalits are known in India’s
official parlance. Therefore nothing can be claimed as the permanent graph for
the UP government and the unfair administration of the police force.
But the
data on gender and caste crimes by itself does not necessarily mean the
situation for these social groups has worsened under the government.
Conclusion
The date
by the NCRB cannot be considered a guideline to decide whether the police
officers in the state of UP has worked against the human rights or not, what it
can conclusively state is that the crime rate in the state has drastically
reduced, which made people, who are against the government too have a sense of
relief.
The police
administration in a big state such as UP has always been in question but they
have never worked well enough to reduce the crime rate or better yet to say
none of their work has led to the reduction of crime rate. Though the encounter
has increased, but the many crimes done by such encountered have left people in
trauma.
Maybe that
is why the UP Police and the government has created a safe haven for the people
with a sense of fear in it.
References
1.
United
Nations Human Rights Commission
2.
National
Human Rights Commission
3.
National
Crime Records Bureau
4.
U.P.
Human Rights Commission
5.
International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
6.
Global
Investors' Summit (GIS)-2023
7.
(2012)
5 SCC 1
8.
A
Progress Report on UP's Law and Order available at: https://thewire.in/government/dubious-record-a-progress-report-on-ups-law-and-order-under-the-bjp-govt
9.
Crime
and Punishment: Has the government actually improved law and order in UP?
Available at: https://scroll.in/article/1005256/crime-and-punishment-has-the-adityanath-government-actually-improved-law-and-order-in-up
10. UP police conducted 10,000 encounters
since 2017, available at: https://newsroompost.com/india/6-years-of-yogi-govt-up-police-conducted-10000-encounters-since-2017/5240416.html
Article Information
BRUTALITY OF U.P. POLICE- A QUESTION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Authors: Disha Singh
- Journal IJLRA
- ISSN 2582-6433
- Published 2023/07/13
- Issue 7
About Journal
International Journal for Legal Research and Analysis
- Abbreviation IJLRA
- ISSN 2582-6433
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