Yogi Raj: Kin of alleged fake encounters victims approached Human Right Commission

LUCKNOW: Families of those vulnerable innocent killed as part of alleged ‘UP fake encounters’ approach the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Monday seeking an independent and impartial probe into the killings.

Most of the victims in the ‘fake encounters’ were Muslims, Dalits or members of Backward Classes. The families along with Senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan and members of civil society held a conference at the Press Club of India.

The press event organised by human rights forum Citizens Against Hate (CAH) on Tuesday focused on the cases and the petition before the NHRC.

Bhushan told the media during a press conference that, “People are being murdered in an organised manner and on a large scale on the orders of the Uttar Pradesh chief minister (Yogi Adityanath),” reported News Laundry.

“The encounters that have taken place in Uttar Pradesh over the last eight months are not encounters but cold-blooded murder,” Bhushan said.

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According to data released by the NHRC earlier this year in response to an RTI had revealed that, India registered close to 1,782 cases of fake encounters between 2000 and 2017.

“People have been picked up, tortured and killed,” Vipul Kumar, a member of the forum, says. Speaking on the encounters, he adds: “These are not encounters or mutbhaed but pre-meditated, pre-planned killings.”

As per report published by The Wire by January 2018, the police had conducted 1,038 encounters in which 32 people were killed and 238 injured.

More recent figures, as stated in the CAH report, put the toll at “50 deaths in ‘encounter killings’ from March 2017, ever since Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath came to power”.