Expressing what it termed “failure of Constitutional scheme” to protect human rights, the Supreme Court on Thursday cautioned Centre and state governments against indiscriminate encounters taking place across the country.
Stressing that such incidents would alienate people from governments, a bench of justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai resented that encounters taking place in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar and Manipur and other parts of the country would have deleterious effects on the psyche of the people. The court was hearing a PIL that alleged that over 1,500 extra-judicial killings took place in last 30 years in Manipur. It questioned the killing of a 12-year-old in an encounter in Imphal in 2009 on charges that the boy was member of a banned militant outfit.
“Even if assuming that he was a militant, will he be taken out of his house and killed? A Judicial Commission reports state it happened. This has to be stopped; this must go. This is not the way to fight insurgency or militancy,” the bench said.
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