Annexure - VI March 29, 1997 Dear Chief Ministsr, The Commission has been receiving complaints from the members of the general public and from the non-governmental organisations that instances of fake encounters by the police are on the increase and that police kill persons instead of subjecting them to due process of law if offences are alleged against them. No investigation whatsoever is made as to who caused these unnatural deaths and as to whether the deceased had committed any offences. 2. Complaint Nos. 234 (1 to 6)193-94 brought before the Commission by the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC), referred to one such instance. It was , stated in the complaint that the police had shot and killed some persons alleging that they were members of the outlawed People's War Group who attempted to kill the police party that was atfempting to arrest them. The case of the APCLC, on the other hand, was that these are cases of unjustified and unprovoked murders in what they describe as 'fake encounters'. 3. The practice obtaining in Andhra Pradesh, as perhaps elsewehere also, is that when an encounter death takes place, the leader of the police party engaged in the encounter furnishes information to the Pojice Station about the encounter and the persons that died. The stand taken by the police in all these cases brought by the APCLC was that the decsased persons, on sighting the police, opened fire at them with a view to killing them and were, therefore, guilty of the offence of attempt to murder under Section 307 IPC. The police justified their firing and killing as done in exercise of their right of self-defe-~ce.This information was recorded in the Police Station describing the persons killed bi the bullets fired by the police as accused and FIRS were drawn up accordingly. Without any more investigation, the cases were closed as having abated, In view of the death of accused. No attempt whatsoever was made to ascertain if the police officers who fired the bullets that resulted in the killings, were justified in law to doing so, and if othennrise whether and if so what offences were committed by them. 4. Under our laws the police have not been conferred any right to take away the life of another person. If, by his act, the policeman kills a person, he commits the offence of culpable homicide whether amounting to the offence of murder or not unless it is proved that such killing was not an offence under tha law, Under the scheme of criminal