Former IPS officer Amod Kanth said on Sunday that extra-judicial killings or fake encounter deaths are nothing but cold-blooded murder, reports news agency PTI. Kanth also said that there is no other period in the historical records of the criminal justice system in India than this that could be more appropriate to discuss the extra-judicial killings or the false encounters resulting in the deaths of alleged criminals.
The former police officer has just completed the second volume of his "Police Diaries" series "Khaki on Broken Wings", in which he untangles some of the most sensational and heinous crimes that dominated national headlines. He said that police have been indulging in short-cuts to give the so-called justice. Published by Bloomsbury India, Kanth talks about the loopholes within the criminal justice system.
"Such killings or fake encounter-deaths are nothing but cold-blooded murders, whatever be the popular opinions created in a society or community afflicted by the problems related to a real or perceived lawlessness," he says as quoted by news agency PTI.
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Among the many stories in his book, Kanth narrates one about a mafia lord, Romesh Sharma, who terrorised his targets to extort properties worth hundreds of crores and thwarted investigations using his access to powerful people in the political and corporate world.
Kanth says whatever the compulsions of maintaining security, law and order, or crime control, the police and justice machinery cannot be permitted to give the go-by to the laid-down legal processes.
"Killing someone, even a hardened and much wanted criminal, while the said person happens to be either in the police or judicial custody or within reasonable control, shall amount to a murder or a culpable homicide not amounting to murder," he says.
"Through my extremely hazardous journey negotiating the path of criminal justice system in majority of the cases I investigated, I found that the most serious and heinous crimes, even those concerning the terrorists, mafia and drugs or being supported by the rich and powerful, could be brought to logical conclusions within the framework of law," he told PTI.
Kanth says that his book is mostly about cases and situations in which the "truth which is supposed to be the guiding star in the hazardous journey of India’s criminal justice system, becomes the first casualty".