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When a don and his brother are shot dead while in police custody on live TV in Uttar Pradesh, the rapidly changing landscape of law and order, due process and triumph of law pitted against instant justice emerges but the latter seems to have gained more prominence in the past few years, and reel life “Singham” stories are coincidentally becoming the new normal.
Mafia Raj vs CM Yogi
With an incarnation of a monk and a lucid background, the Chief Minister of UP, Yogi Adityanath has earned multiple sobriquets but the most popular amongst them has been “Bulldozer Baba” which he earned while ordering to raze the properties belonging to gangster, history-sheeters, rioters, perceived by the state administration as “illegal”. It is this narrative which worked wonders on the ground for BJP during the UP Assembly election 2022. Contemplating over the response and result, other BJP CMs also followed the suit like Shivraj Singh Chouhan in MP and Basavaraj Bommai in Karnataka. To puncture the mafia halo built over the years by political strongmen, police encounters were projected as an achievement of CM Yogi to be cited as a CM who has zero tolerance for crime. In the political corridors of Lucknow, it became a PR tool for the government to project that it is ruthless against criminals and mafia. This, after Yogi Adityanath had promised the UP citizens security from land grabbers and criminals and to build a peaceful society across the state. The police have received support from the administration, including CM Yogi, who certainly has been unapologetic about the encounters and instead rolled it over to citizens with a message of security he had promised. In fact, it aids in expanding the base and following of Yogi Adityanath as a pan-India leader, wherein the saffron party starts getting demands of projecting Yogi Adityanath as a star campaigner even in municipality elections (Hyderabad).
Although Yogi isn’t the first CM who has stressed on law and order, it was Mayawati, four times CM, who was commended for her tough stance on criminals but Yogi has surpassed the barriers and encounters have become the new norm. The rationale given by the BJP in defence of such state action is that criminals derail the development of the state and with an atmosphere of terror, it is tough to attract investors. It is the police’s act of “self-defence” which ultimately brings the last laugh for gangsters like Vikas Dubey of Kanpur.
Changing Conscience in UP Citizens towards ‘instant justice’
With a remarkable judiciary system and one of the prudent Constitution across the globe, India’s way of dealing with crime and criminals has been at par with any Western nation but the delay in justice has only dented the image. The way in which the citizens’ conscience towards the criminals and justice delivered to them via courts in UP has transformed, is a scary sign. Several anecdotal evidence suggests that people are overwhelmed by the influence of gangsters in their day-to-day business and clearly need a breakaway from such acts. Earlier, when a mafia was caught, the demand used to be life imprisonment or hanged till death but all of it has transformed to varied forms of “instant justice” like police encounter, overturing of vehicles, seizing the property and bulldozing the houses etc. Such militarized form of justice has quietly seeped in and the so-called “super cops” of UP are being referred to as “encounter specialist”. When people take the law into their own hands, they expose the flaws and failures of our legal system. This should shock and shame those who are responsible for upholding the law, such as judges, lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats and policemen. For a long time, powerful criminals used to evade arrest and prosecution, and even when caught, they would get away with their crimes because no one dared to testify against them. In the past six years when CM Yogi took oath, reportedly 183 police encounters have taken place in Uttar Pradesh which have led to intense discussion in varied quarters about the supposed state action and the need of reforms in the policing of India.
The recent incidents have raised troubling issues about how the law, politics and impunity work in UP. The solutions may not be reflected in the results of the upcoming municipal elections next month, nor in the outcomes of the parliamentary elections next year. But the killing of don Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf live on TV will be reverberated for a long time to come in the media frenzy Hindi heartland, while the dialogue of CM Yogi in Assembly- “Mitti mein mila denge” will act as a background score in the ensuing drama.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.
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