New Delhi: Amid outrage over the alleged use of pellet guns on protesters in Delhi, a former top Intelligence Bureau officer has moved the Supreme Court seeking a ban on them as a crowd-control measure, saying even though they are categorised as “non-lethal weapon”, the trajectory of the pellets remains unpredictable and can cause permanent damage to vital organs.
The petition has been filed by former Intelligence Bureau special director Yashovardhan Jha Azad and two young men who suffered injuries that seemed to have been caused by pellet guns allegedly used during the Rapid Action Force (RAF) crackdown on ‘Sansad Chalo’ march last Monday. The plea has been moved by senior advocate Vrinda Grover.
In the plea, Azad, who served in the IB as Additional Director and Special Director between 2008 and 2012, argues that injury to Sahil Lochab, one of the protesters, offers testimony to the “ruthless and grievous” nature of the weapon. A resident of Delhi’s Nazafgarh, Lochab was “hit in his eye by the pellets” and risks losing vision.
The plea comes even as the Supreme Court hears a petition seeking criminal cases against officers responsible for assault and the use of “excessive force” against protestors during their 20 July march to the parliament.
During a hearing on that petition on Monday, a bench headed by the Chief Justice Surya Kant rebuked the practice of lathicharge during protests.
Authorities have not acknowledged the use of pellet guns on protesters in Delhi, but ThePrint has reported, with hospital confirmation, that at least three people are being treated for injuries that seem to have been caused by pellet guns.
The plea moved by Azad and the two victims of pellet guns has been listed for hearing on Tuesday.
“The difference between a bullet fired from a similar gun and the pellets fired by them lies in the specific targeted nature of the former, while the latter sprays into a wide area by ricocheting off surfaces and breaking into multiple shrapnel/projectiles. Thus, pellets target a wide zone in the general direction where they are fired. This creates a great propensity of injuring the eyes and other vital organs of persons in an assembly, even if the gun is fired with the intention of hitting non-vital parts of the body,” they have said in their plea.
The plea also said that the assessment regarding pellet guns and damages it caused has not been drawn on theoretical explanation but based on documented experiences in Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur in the past.
An IPS officer of the 1976 batch from the Madhya Pradesh cadre, Azad also drew a distinction between pellet guns and other “non-lethal” weapons, and said that the former has “propensity” to cause fatal and grievous injuries, especially to vital organs.
“In the 20th July firing, the eye of Sahil Lochab, a 19-year-old victim, bears glaring testimony to the ruthless and grievous nature of this weapon when deployed against civilian protestors. Given the sporadic and unpredictable nature of the trajectory of pellets once fired, the Petitioners argue that the same makes the pellet guns an unreasonable, arbitrary and dangerous tool unfit for deployment against civilian assemblies for the purpose of their dispersal,” the plea moved by them stated.
“The very mechanism of the pellets disqualifies them from being a legally valid option for crowd control, as it cannot be qualitatively stated to fall within the ‘least amount of necessary force’ at any given point of time in view of its erratic kinetic projectile movement.”
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)