Human rights vs humane rights

And it’s obvious now that the underworld bosses had sniffed victory well in advance and had signalled their underlings to come out of their hideouts. Gawli gang, which was reduced to an underdog from a position of primacy in less than four months of what came to be referred to as Encounter Raj’, was the first to indicate its resurgence. A series of well planned killings and it was well and truly back in business. The Chhota Rajan gang and the various splinter groups of Dawood Ibrahim too made their presence felt as police prepared for encounters of a different kind – those fought in the framework of the Indian Penal Code.

But thehuman rights organisations are strangely silent on the rights of the builders who are being killed and the families left behind. That some of them had connections with the underworld would be a weak argument as far as human rights are concerned. Because, it would be like saying that Sada Pawle was a saint. How’s that nobody is talking about Gulshan Kumar’s right to life – or did he deserve to die more than Vijay Tandel?

“Human rights are for humans, and gangsters are not human,” retired high court judge, Bakhtavar Lentin, had said while addressing 400 rookie police officers at a function at the Y B Chavan Centre in 1996. Can Dawood Ibrahim, who orchestrated the serial bomb blasts that killed 227 men, be called a human being? Can he claim any rights, any mercy. Do his lieutenants Chhota Shakeel and Abu Salem think of human rights when they pick up the phone to scare the life out of a businessman and demand crores in protection money? And can human rights organisations stop them from killing people whodon’t comply with their demands?

No, they can’t. But they certainly can wreck the police morale. A senior officer told this reporter that so far at least two of his teams had returned after laying dragnet for a gangster. A constable, though himself armed with a carbine, was injured when a car thief opened fire at him at Goregaon.

But, if the bogey raised by rights group has made police a little more circumspect in picking up their targets, it should make them only more effective. They have realised their mistake in seeking glory by killing small-time criminals to boost figures and enter record books.

Mumbai police’s encounter blitzkrieg between March and August last year had got them close to a place in the Guiness Book of World Records! It may be a piece of trivia for you and me, but as they raced towards the mark, a senior police officer had told this correspondent how they were looking forward to being there – among the world record holders.

It was a dangerous signal. An indication that somewheredown the line an effective anti-criminal campaign was losing its direction. It was a promise of more killings and also an admission that numbers, not criminals, were the target now. Jawed Fawda, Gulshan Kumar’s alleged killer, was one such number and he has got the police in trouble. There are allegations now that the police might have killed the wrong person.

The embarrassment that the Fawda killing and the subsequent Enquiry Commission into Encounters has brought to police may just be able to put brakes on a race for fame in the police department. The desire of every police officer to emulate encounter specialists Vijay Salaskar, Praful Bhosale and Pradeep Sharma must be checked by their seniors. And it’s better that’s done before the human rights organisations step in.

And there’s a lot to do: While only 80 murders were reported in the first four months of the last year, in the corresponding period this year 89 murders have already been registered. Of these, 24 were mafia killings.(Hussain Zaidi isa senior reporter with The Indian Express. He covers the crime beat)