Despite gathering accolades for solving numerous cases of terrorist attacks across the country, the Special Cell of Delhi Police has also had its share of controversies with some alleged fake encounters, senior officers being arrested and an RTI enquiry stating that unit’s conviction rate is a paltry 30 per cent.
In 2011, former assistant commissioner of police (ACP) S S Rathi and nine other officers were awarded life sentence by the Supreme Court for shooting dead two Haryana-based businessmen, Pradeep Goyal and Jagjit Singh, in Connaught Place after they were allegedly mistaken as gangsters. On the afternoon of March 31, 1997, a team led by Rathi had fired indiscriminately at a car on the suspicion that the businessmen were wanted UP-based criminals.
The cell was also accused of staging another fake encounter at south Delhi’s Ansal Plaza in 2002, when it killed two alleged Laskar-e-Toiba militants. A witness, Hari Krishna, claimed that the two persons who were killed were unarmed and were beaten before being shot.
Similarly, in 2012, almost six years after five ‘notorious gangsters’ from UP and Uttarakhand were killed in an encounter in north-east Delhi’s Sonia Vihar, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had termed it as fake. The cell had said in its FIR that the five men had opened fire, which is why they retaliated, killing them on the spot. But the NHRC, in its report, observed that the victims could not have fired at the police team as there was no trace of gunpowder on their palms, nor fingerprints on the firearms recovered from them. Two of the victim’s relatives had moved a petition with the NHRC, alleging they were picked up from their house in Meerut and killed in cold blood after being taken to Delhi.
In another incident of shame, encounter specialist Rajbir Singh, who had joined as a sub-inspector and was inducted into the cell as ACP, was held by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a corruption case in 2005. It was alleged that he used to extort money from builders and property dealers. He was shot dead in Gurgaon by a property dealer in March 2008. Singh had more than 50 encounters to his credit.
Due to the cell’s dubious past, civil society group Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association (JTSA) has been demanding that the unit must be scrapped or disbanded. Citing an RTI enquiry, they also claimed that nearly 70 per cent of the accused it chargesheeted from 2008 to 2012 were acquitted for want of credible evidence.
They further released a report ‘Framed, Damned, Acquitted: Dossiers of a Very Special Cell’ that documents 16 cases in which those accused by the cell of being operatives of terrorist groups (Al-Badr, HUJI, Lashkar-e-Toiba) were acquitted by courts, “not simply for want of evidence, but because the evidence was tampered with, and the police story was found to be unreliable and incredulous.”
It claimed that people apprehended by the cell had to spend six years in jail on an average, only to be acquitted later. Mohammad Amir Khan was arrested in 1997 and the cell slapped 19 cases against him, alleging that he was the mastermind of a series of blasts that took place in Delhi and NCR in 1997. He was acquitted in all the cases in 2011, after spending 14 years in jail.
The report also mentions instances where the cell had to face criticism by courts. In the Dhaula Kuan fake encounter case of 2005, the court said, “There cannot be any more serious or grave crime than a police officer framing an innocent citizen in a false criminal case. Such tendency in police officers should not be viewed or dealt with lightly but needs to be curbed with a stern hand.”
The accused were acquitted in 2011, after spending six years in jail.
It highlighted that despite action being ordered against officers of the cell, little or no action was taken against them. For instance, the CBI had sought legal action against sub-inspectors Vinay Tyagi, Subhash Vats and Ravinder Tyagi for fabrication of evidence.
“Not a single officer in any of the operations described here has faced criminal proceedings for framing innocent people. Adverse observations, strictures and censures from courts have not come in the way of promotions, gallantry awards and President’s medals,” the report alleged.