Police Responses to Petitions - Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab (CIIP)

C. Police Responses to Petitions

Police responded to admitted writs with several types of claims: that the detention never occurred, that the disappeared had absconded and was a proclaimed offender, that he was killed in an encounter, that terrorists had kidnapped and killed the disappeared, or that he had escaped after going for recovery of weapons.[91] The most common reply in my selection of cases was that the disappeared was killed in an encounter, going for recovery of weapons while in the custody of the police. The police often explained the escape by declaring that the detainee had ripped his handcuffs from the constable’s belt and had run away while no policeman shot at him.[92] As Gurdarshan Singh Grewal, a former State Advocate General, said, when police replied that the disappeared had escaped, that was synonymous with “escaped from this world.”[93]

Police creatively explained why they did not comply with the rules established for encounter killings, as spelled out in Section 25 of the PPR. In Karnail Singh v. Punjab, the police wrote: “Photographs were arranged but could not be enlarged as the negatives were found defective due to some technical defect in the Camra [sic], as stated by the photographer.”[94] Also, since the body was identified, the police did not publish a report in the Criminal Intelligence Gazette.[95]

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