An independent citizens' fact-finding mission to Manipur to assess and report on the extrajudicial killings by security forces presented its report in New Delhi recently. One of the team members, K S Subramanian , a retired IPS officer and the author of Political Violence and the Police in India, spoke to Amrith Lal :
What is wrong with the law and order situation in Manipur?
Since July this year when a pregnant young woman and a young man were killed in an unjustified police shoot-out in the heart of Imphal in public view, the situation in Manipur has deteriorated. The enforcement of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in the state since 1980 has led to a large number of such killings (260 in 2009 alone). The public unrest in the state over the last 10 years and more is symbolised in the heroic and unprecedented indefinite fast by Irom Sharmila Chanu. The state has a deployment of 26 battalions of Assam Rifles, 10 battalions of the army, 12 battalions of central paramilitary forces and 12 battalions of Manipur Rifles and India Reserve battalions. The need for such a large deployment in a tiny state with a population of only 2.6 million was not obvious to us. It was causing public dissatisfaction and militancy rather than imparting a sense of increased public safety.
The state government and the civil society groups have completely different versions of almost every violent incident. Why is this so?
The main source of official information is the police force, which feel obliged to present such incidents as arising from a threat to national security. The civil society gets information directly from reliable public sources. Security personnel operating under the AFSPA are tempted to indulge in fake encounters for rewards and medals. Manipur heads the list of police gallantry medal awardees during the current year.
As elsewhere, the AFSPA is a bone of contention in Manipur also. Is this Act essential to fight militancy?
The Jeevan Reddy committee (2005) reviewed the working of the AFSPA and admitted that the Act had become "an object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness" and recommended that it be repealed "without losing sight of the overwhelming desire" of the local people that the army should remain. This means that the AFSPA was not considered essential to fight the insurgency in the region. The large number of fake encounters in Manipur appears to be a direct outcome of the impunity conferred on the security forces by the AFSPA. The CrPC, Section 176 was amended in 2006 to provide for mandatory judicial enquiries in all cases of custodial deaths and rapes. The procedure has not been followed. A sessions judge who carried out enquiries into several such incidents had found all of them to be fake encounter killings. His reports were not made public.

Add to: Add To Any Service!