[Reader-list] Murder In Plain Sight

[Baruk S. Jacob]

_leave_us_our_hills_

goddamn you chinky rebel fools
(who water these hills with our blood)
goddamn you indian army goons
(who water these hills with our blood)

leave us alone, you bastards,
leave
to eat and sing and dance and sleep
a quiet meal
a happy song
a drunken dance
and
sleep.

deep.

without
constant, constant, constant
memories 
of your
goddamn guns.
and bloody countries.

leave us our hills.
leave.
all you bastards,
leave.

~baruk 

[http://bottlebroke.blogspot.com] 

> *Murder In Plain Sight*
> 
> *In Manipur, death comes easy. In this damning sequence of
> photos, a local
> photographer captures the death of a young man, killed in a
> false encounter
> by the police in broad daylight, 500 metres from the state
> assembly. How can
> a State justify such a war against its own people, asks
> **TERESA REHMAN*
>    *1. Chongkham Sanjit, 27, is seen
> standing in a PCO with the Manpur
> Police
> Commandos adjacent to a pharmacy (marked by an arrow)in
> Imphal on July 23 *
> *2. Though surrounded by commandos, there is no obvious
> resistance from
> Sanjit (marked by a red circle) *
> 
> IF ANY picture can speak a thousand words, these photos —
> available
> exclusively to TEHELKA — could fill volumes. They capture
> a shootout that
> happened in the heart of Imphal, Manipur’s capital,
> barely 500 metres from
> the state assembly, on July 23. They show the moments
> before, during and
> after the ‘encounter killing’ of a 27-year-old Indian
> citizen – a young man
> called Chongkham Sanjit, shot dead by a heavily-armed
> detachment from
> Manipur’s Rapid Action Police Force, commonly known as
> the Manipur Police
> Commandos (MPC).
> 
> There is a grotesque and brutal history to the bullets that
> killed this
> young man. For years, decades even, security forces in
> Manipur have faced
> allegations of human rights violations and extrajudicial
> murders committed
> under cover of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers
> Act (AFSPA). In
> 2000, Irom Sharmila, stirred by the gunning down of 10
> civilians, including
> an 18-year-old National Child Bravery Award winner, by the
> Assam Rifles,
> started a hunger fast — that lasts to this day — in
> protest against the
> AFSPA. In July 2004, the nation was rocked by the protests
> of a group of
> Manipuri women who marched to an Assam Rifles base in
> Imphal, stripped naked
> and raised a searing banner: “Indian Army Rape Us”.
> They were protesting the
> rape, torture and murder, a fortnight earlier, of Thangjam
> Manorama, 32, who
> was picked up from her home at night by the Assam Rifles.
> 
> Manipur rose up in protest that day, and in August 2004,
> the Centre
> relented, withdrawing the AFSPA from Imphal’s municipal
> zone.
> ‘Post-Manorama,’ as history is marked in Manipur, the
> army has taken a
> backseat, withdrawing outside the municipality. However,
> life in Manipur is
> still lived on the tightrope. In a seemingly new
> counter-insurgency
> strategy, the MPC has unleashed a reign of terror in the
> state.
> 
> *PAST INCIDENTS*
> 
> *NOVEMBER, 2008:
> SALAM AJIT SINGH*
> Singh, 30, was allegedly killed by the Imphal West Police
> Commandos and 39
> Assam Rifles on November 7, 2008. Singh ran a taxi service.
> In January 2009
> his family filed a petition with the National Human Rights
> Commission (NHRC)
> 
> *DECEMBER, 2008:
> MD TASLIUMUDDIN*
> Tasliumuddin, 20, a daily wage labourer, was allegedly
> killed in an
> ‘encounter’ by the Imphal West Police Commandos and 32
> Assam Rifles on
> December 30, 2008. The NHRC has registered a case
> 
> *DECEMBER 2008:
> OKRAM RANJIT SINGH
> * Singh, 27, a brick mason was allegedly killed in an
> ‘encounter’ by the
> Imphal West Police Commandos and 12 Maratha Light Infantry
> on December 22,
> 2008 in Imphal West district. The family has filed a
> petition with the NHRC
> 
> *JANUARY 2009:
> LAISHRAM DIPSON*
> Dipson, 28, was allegedly killed by the Imphal West Police
> Commandos and 39
> Assam Rifles on January 12, 2009 at Laingam Khul. The lorry
> driver’s family
> has filed a police complaint
> 
> *JANUARY 2009:
> NINGTHOUJAM ANAND*
> The 30-year-old auto rickshaw driver was allegedly killed
> by the Imphal West
> Police Commandos and 16 Assam Rifles on January 21, 2009. A
> complaint has
> been filed with the NHRC
> 
> The organisation known as the Manipur Police Commandos
> (MPC) was first set
> up in 1979 as the Quick Striking Force (QSF). Former
> Inspector General of
> Police, Thangjam Karunamaya Singh told TEHELKA, “They
> were trained for
> special operations. But the men had strict instructions.
> They were told to
> fire only when fired upon and pay special attention to the
> needs of women,
> children and the elderly. If they arrested somebody on
> suspicion, they had
> to take responsibility for their security,” stated
> Singh.
> 
> The MPC does not fall under the AFSPA but has now become
> notorious across
> the state. It operates only in the four districts of
> Manipur – Imphal East,
> Imphal West, Thoubal and Bishnupur. The MPC is housed in
> isolated commando
> barracks and has minimal contact with the general
> population, though its
> personnel are all locals.
> 
> Extra-judicial killings, and, in particular, fake
> encounters by the MPC have
> become common in Manipur. In 2008, there were 27 recorded
> cases of torture
> and killing attributed to the MPC. Where once they
> conducted ‘encounters’ in
> isolated places, they now do not think twice before
> operating in cities, in
> broad daylight, as they did on July 23. In several
> incidents, innocent
> civilians carrying money and valuables have been robbed and
> sometimes
> killed. In some cases official action has been taken
> against commandos for
> misconduct. For instance, in July 2009, five police
> commandos who had
> reportedly robbed three youths were suspended. But for the
> most part, their
> extra-judicial activity goes scot free.
> 
> According to the official version of Sanjit’s encounter
> death at 10:30am on
> July 23, a team of MPC personnel was conducting frisking
> operations in
> Imphal’s Khwairamband Keithel market. They saw a
> suspicious youth coming
> from the direction of the Uripok locality. When asked to
> stop, the version
> goes, the youth suddenly pulled out a gun and ran away,
> firing at the public
> in a bid to evade the police.
> 
> The official record states that the youth was finally
> cornered inside Maimu
> Pharmacy near Gambhir Singh Shopping Arcade. He was asked
> to surrender.
> Instead, he fired at the police. The police retaliated and
> the youth was
> killed. The account states that a 9mm Mauser pistol was
> “recovered”. The
> youth was identified from his driver’s license as
> Chongkham Sanjit, son of
> Chongkham Khelson of Kongpal Sajor Leikai, Manipur.
> 
> Usually, such official versions of encounters are difficult
> to disprove
> though everyone may know them to be false. But in an almost
> unprecedented
> coincidence, in Sanjit’s case, a local photographer
> rushed to the scene and
> managed to shoot a minute-by-minute account of the alleged
> ‘encounter’. The
> photographs (shown in preceding pages) clearly reveal that,
> contrary to the
> official version, Sanjit was, in fact, standing calmly as
> the police
> commandos frisked him and spoke to him. He was escorted
> inside the storeroom
> of the pharmacy. He was shot point blank inside and his
> dead body was
> brought out. The photographer, fearing for his safety, does
> not dare publish
> these pictures in Manipur.
>  The photographs clearly reveal that contrary to the
> official version,
> Sanjit was standing calmly as the MPC commandos frisked
> him
> 
> Eyewitness accounts partly corroborate the police version
> — except their
> account is obviously about a young man other than Sanjit.
> These witnesses
> state that a youth did escape from a police frisking party
> about a hundred
> metres away from where Sanjit was killed. The police chased
> this youth and
> opened fire, killing an innocent bystander, Rabina Devi —
> who was pregnant
> at the time — and injuring five other civilians.
> Afterwards, the police
> showed the media a 9mm Mauser pistol which they alleged was
> thrown away by
> the militant before he fled. After about half an hour, the
> police claimed to
> have killed the youth who escaped from their hands “in an
> encounter”;
> according to them, this youth was Sanjit. The photographs
> clearly indicate
> otherwise.
> 
> The police claim Sanjit was a member of the People’s
> Liberation Army (PLA),
> a proscribed insurgent outfit. Chief Minster Okram Ibobi
> Singh also made a
> controversial statement in the assembly that day, asserting
> that there was
> no other alternative but to kill insurgents.
> 
> Sanjit was indeed a former PLA cadre. He was arrested in
> 2000 but freed. In
> 2006, he retired from the outfit on health grounds. In
> 2007, though, he was
> detained again under the NSA and was only released a year
> later. Since then,
> he had been staying with his family at his home at Khurai
> Kongpal Sajor
> Leikai and had been working as an attendant in a private
> hospital.
> 
> But even if Sanjit was a former militant, he should not
> have have been
> killed in a false encounter. The photos show him talking to
> his killers,
> calmly, without offering any resistance. He was frisked
> moments before the
> shootout. He was not an insurgent on the run. In fact,
> Sanjit had to make
> periodic appearances before the Court, a requirement that
> the Court later
> lifted. “Legally speaking, Sanjit was a free man,” says
> M Rakesh, a lawyer
> at the Gauhati High Court’s Imphal Bench. There are also
> significant
> inconsistencies in the police versions of the recovery of
> the weapon. First,
> they said it was flung away by the fleeing militant. Then
> they said it was
> recovered from Sanjit after the encounter. As the photos
> show, Sanjit was
> ushered into the pharmacy, not chased in. Also, if Sanjit
> was, in fact,
> armed with the 9mm Mauser, why wasn’t it found during the
> frisking? Why, as
> the photos show, was he taken inside the storeroom?
>  First the police said the pistol was flung away by the
> fleeing militant.
> Then they said it was recovered from Sanjit after the
> encounter
> 
> The law says if a death is caused by state forces in an
> encounter which
> cannot be justified by Section 46 of the Criminal Procedure
> Code, the
> officer causing the death would be guilty of culpable
> homicide. In this
> case, only a rigorous investigation can establish what
> exactly transpired.
> Instead of instituting a judicial enquiry, however, the
> state government is
> setting up a departmental enquiry, which is unlikely to
> yield any justice to
> the victims’ families. Sanjit’s family claims he had
> broken his earlier
> links with the militants and was leading a normal life.
> They say he had gone
> out that day to buy medicines for his uncle, who is
> undergoing treatment at
> Imphal’s JN Hospital. Says Sanjit’s mother, Inaotombi
> Devi, “Life is very
> cheap in Manipur.”
> 
> Manipur is routinely roiled by such devastating narratives.
> Ex-MLA
> 78-yearold Sarat Singh Loitongbam’s son Satish Singh was
> killed by the armed
> forces. Though a devout Hindu, he refuses to perform his
> son’s last rites
> until his name is cleared of wrongdoing. Like Satish, there
> is Ningombam
> Gopal Singh, a 39- year-old Grade-IV employee at the Imphal
> Bench of the
> Gauhati High Court, a man who was chatting over tea with
> women at a hotel
> when he was dragged off by men in plainclothes, to be shot
> dead in an
> ‘encounter’. There is 24-year-old Elangbam Johnson
> Singh, a student and
> part-time salesman, picked up by the MPC while out with a
> friend and killed
> in an encounter, his corpse at the morgue bearing signs of
> torture. Stories
> like these are a grotesque lattice in Manipur. “Life in
> Manipur,” as one
> observer puts it, “is like a lottery. You are alive
> because you are lucky.”
> 
> *WRITER’S EMAIL*
> teresa at tehelka.com
> 
>  *From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 31, Dated August 08,
> 2009*