Progressing from media to SC : Seeking judicial confession
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: January 10 2018 -

Seeking to make a judicial confession.

This is a big step from what has been confessed before the media and herein lies the merit of the seven column lead news that The Sangai Express ran under the heading “Was part of many fake encounters, ordered to kill by superiors : Herojit to SC,” courtesy News18 in the January 9 edition.

A significant move from the bombastic confession that the former Head Constable of Manipur Police Commandos made some time in 2016 before the media and his admission that he killed an unarmed Ch Sanjit in cold blood in the July 2009 BT Road killing went a long way in giving credence to the breaking news carried by Telhelka, which came out with a series of damning photo sequence which showed Sanjit being accosted on BT Road, pushed inside a pharmacy and his dead body being brought out on a stretcher.

Not unexpectedly, the State police came out with the fantastic version of how Sanjit was killed in a shoot out and it was purportedly in this shoot out that a woman, Rabina was also killed.

Witness to a large number of fake encounters in Manipur between 2003 and 2009-this was reportedly the version of Herojit, when he moved the Supreme Court and this more than signifies that staged encounter was something ingrained in the training of some hand picked encounter specialists and this is highly indicative that staged encounter had become ingrained in the State Police Department, particularly amongst its hand picked encounter specialists and Herojit was one among them.

Active from 2003 till 2009 and it may be assumed that before Herojit came to the scene, there were other trend setters, personnel who had made it a point to eliminate suspects, by cooking up some fantastic tales.

A police set up within the State Police Department. This is what can be read into the disclosure of Herojit.

And this is what is scary.

Not jumping the gun and stating that what Herojit has had to say so far is the Biblical truth, but already a storm has been kicked up and it would do good for the State Government to act on its own and see how far this is true.

If what Herojit has had to say is true, then was it done sans the knowledge, that is official knowledge of the State Government ?

Did ‘such an arrangement’ have the tacit or overt approval of the State Government ?

When did such an arrangement start taking roots ?

And how can a police official be called an ‘encounter specialist’ ?

This very term may have different connotations but to the public there is something dreadfully abhorrent about this tag being attached to the very personnel who are there to uphold the rule of law.

The disclosure of Herojit should open the floodgates and while the Court may conduct its own investigation and hearing, the State Government too should take up the needed steps to identify these elements and put an end to such a policy.

In many ways such ‘encounter specialists’ are more than hired killers, for remember they take refuge under their uniform and under the slogan that they are here to uphold the rule of law.

And important too to acknowledge that such elements cannot be there without some sort of a patronage.

It is this patronage that should be exposed.