Lucknow: The National Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Watchdog of India, has issued notice to UP government for endorsing Encounter killings. The NHRC has taken Suo motu cognizance of the report based on the media reports about allegations of UP government endorsing encounter Killings on the pretext of maintaining law and order situation in the State.
The notice was issued to UP Chief Secretary and a detailed report was sought by the Commission within six weeks.
The Commission maintained that, though improvement of law and order situation in the state is important, it cannot resort to extra judicial killings.
Such backing of government may give free hand to deal with criminals and results in abuse of power.
“433 such encounters had occurred over a period of six months starting from March 2017 when the present government came into existence. Nineteen alleged criminals were killed in these encounters and 89 injured,” the official statistics say.
“Apart from this, 98 officials were also injured and one died. Another news story of 16 September says 15 people had been killed in encounters since the new government came to power in Uttar Pradesh,” the NHRC cited the report.