To what lengths will Fadnavis government go to protect its police?

The Maharashtra government's inaction in the Akshay Shinde ‘encounter’ case is in keeping with its practise of shielding accused policemen

It’s been seven months since Akshay Shinde was killed inside a police vehicle just outside Mumbai. Police claimed the 24-year-old sweeper, accused of raping two schoolgirls in August 2024, shot at five policemen escorting him and they shot back, killing him, on September 24.

This claim was immediately disbelieved by the high court bench hearing his parents’ petition asking for an investigation into his death.

One of the two judges on the Bench turned out to be an expert on firearms. Finding the public prosecutor unable to reply to his detailed questions on how exactly Shinde shot the cops accompanying him, the judge, dismissing the police version, remarked that an FIR should be filed against the policemen.

A written order to that effect came on January 20, after a high court-ordered magisterial inquiry held the policemen responsible for Shinde’s death. That FIR is yet to be filed.

Consider the lengths to which the Maharashtra government has gone to avoid acting against these policemen. It told the court that the magistrate had exceeded his brief by indicting the policemen, and that it would act only after its own CID inquiry was over. By then, having understood the government’s intentions, Shinde’s parents decided to withdraw their petition.

But the court was no less determined to hold the police accountable. Overruling the government’s argument, the judges ordered the setting up of an SIT to investigate the so-called encounter and insisted an FIR be filed.

The current government was having none of it. It went to the Supreme Court on appeal. Obviously, it could not argue that the ‘encounter’ should not be investigated. Instead, it said that the SIT should be set up by the state’s police chief. Earlier last week, the Supreme Court set aside the SIT that had already been formed.

That SIT was headed by Mumbai’s Joint Commissioner (crime). The question staring us in the face is: how does a change in the composition of the SIT suit the government?

It’s not as though the joint commissioner was itching to launch a full-fledged investigation. He had not bothered to bring to the notice of the court that the CID, until then in charge of the matter, was showing no signs of handing over the case papers to him. The court reprimanded both him and the CID, and again reiterated the need to file an FIR. 

The Supreme Court’s order just made the possibility of that FIR even dimmer. Who can tell how long it may take for the DGP to set up another SIT, and how long before the case papers are handed over to the new team.

This case has seen police apathy right from the start, even when policemen were not the ones under scrutiny. The parents of the two raped schoolgirls were made to wait 12 hours before the police registered their complaint. The school authorities weren’t charged till the court mentioned it. It was public fury that forced the government to take the incident seriously. Within six weeks of the incident, charge sheets were filed, with the police claiming to have built a watertight case against Shinde.

Three days later, Shinde was killed. Why? Was it because ‘encounters’ have often assuaged public anger? This one had the added advantage of building up the government’s image before the Assembly elections, then just two months away. After the ‘encounter’, posters went up hailing then home minister and deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.

The ‘encounter’ also blanked out a crucial fact that had surfaced right at the start: the school was run by BJP members. Opposition leader Prakash Ambedkar had then asked if Shinde had been ‘sacrificed’ to save the school. That question has yet to be answered, for the case against the school authorities has been forgotten.

Whether that was an intended goal is a matter of speculation. But there is another aspect that cannot be ignored, one that is not speculative: that is the record of the Maharashtra government on custodial deaths. Between 2018 and 2023, Maharashtra registered 80 cases of custodial deaths, second only to Gujarat’s 81. The Maharashtra government also has a record of shielding policemen accused of custodial deaths. In Mumbai alone, two cases of custodial deaths have been dragging on for more than a decade; another, concerning policemen accused of the murder of unarmed innocents, is in its 24th year. All three — the custodial deaths of terror accused Khwaja Yunus in 2003 and of Agnelo Valdaris, accused of robbery, in 2014; and the shooting down of eight unarmed Muslims in a police raid during the 1992-1993 riots — have seen the government go to great lengths, including approaching the Supreme Court, to protect the accused policemen.

Will the Bombay High Court, that took suo moto notice of the Badlapur rape case, ensure that Akshay Shinde’s custodial death doesn’t go the same way?

Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.