Bullet for bullet: Munde says encounters inevitable

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and State Home Minister Gopinath Munde June 4: Deputy Chief Minister and State Home Minister Gopinath M...

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and State Home Minister Gopinath Munde

June 4: Deputy Chief Minister and State Home Minister Gopinath Munde today justified encounter deaths saying the police had every right to protect themselves.

“Everybody has a right to self-protection, including the police. If there is an attack, there has to be a counter-attack,” he said in a brief chat with Express Newsline on Tuesday. Munde was following BJP President L K Advani’s Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra at Manmad.

Refusing to give credence to the National Human

Rights Commission’s (NHRC) report on encounter deaths, he said: “What do you want me to do, allow inter-gang rivalries to spill out on the streets?” He insisted that no fake encounters had taken place in the city after the Sena-BJP alliance took over. “The NHRC is free to make its enquiries and punish the culprits,” he said.

Story continues below this ad

When his attention was drawn to a report in a daily alleging that the recent police encounter with two members of the `Kumar Pillai’ gang was a staged one, he said: “A newspaper report is not the ultimate truth. Only after I have gone through the official reports, will I ask for an inquiry.” Nobody, he said, had complained to him. “If an innocent man has been shot at, a complaint can be made to either the DGP, the chief minister or me. I have not received any such complaint,” he said.

The minister, however, admitted that encounter deaths had been increasing steadily in the city (though he hastily clarified that they were not staged). Commenting on DCP Sanjay Pandey’s transfer, Munde reiterated that it was a routine transfer, and that six other officers had been transferred with him. “For me, all my officers are honest. In fact, the man who now heads the Economic Offences Wing is an officer of great integrity,” he said. “Pandey is definitely a good officer. But, he is not the only one.”Accusing the media of being partisan, the minister said: “Nobody seems to realise that it was on my orders that investigations and arrests were made in the bank and cobblers scams. Had I wanted, I could have stalled the investigations in the beginning itself.”

Munde was convinced that Arun Gawli’s much-publicised attempt to turn a new leaf in life was a sham. “My officers are keeping an eye on him. I am convinced that he is a criminal, and his political activities cannot cover his criminality,” he said. He termed the recent High Court judgment charging the police commissioner and the additional home secretary with malafide intentions in arresting Gawli as demoralising.

“We shall be pursuing the matter in the Supreme Court. I sign so many papers on arrests everyday…you can say my orders were wrong, but how can you say my intentions were malafide?”