Murderers in uniform

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

The fake encounter of Sohrabuddin Sheikh by the Anti-Terrorist Squad of the Gujarat Police on November 26, 2005 dominated the regional media over the past week. Barely had the grisly details of the encounter""which involved IPS officers D G Vanzara and Raj Kumar Pandian of the Gujarat Police, and M N Dinesh of the Rajasthan Police""begun to emerge when the Gujarat government admitted in the Supreme Court that Kauser Bi, wife of Sohrabuddin, had also been killed.

The next day, the Hindi dailies took up the story in earnest. Rajasthan Patrika took this as the lead story in its May 1 edition. The report detailed the events that led the police to kill Kauser Bi and then burn her corpse. The paper also credited IG (CID) Geeta Johri with breaking this story.

Punjab Kesari editorially said that it was important for the truth to emerge, since the fake encounter was the latest in a long line of charges against the Gujarat administration, such as the Best Bakery, Bilkis Bano and Naroda Patiya cases. Pooh-poohing Chief Minister Narendra Modi's harking to 'Gujarati asmita', the paper also put Congress in the dock for the Army's crimes of omission and commission in Jammu & Kashmir.

Dainik Jagran, in its April 28 edition, drew attention to the war of words the Gujarat incidents sparked in the Lok Sabha. The paper also noted Attorney General Milon Banerjee's plea in the Supreme Court that a CBI inquiry be instituted to investigate the case, since members of the state administration were involved.

The Gujarat fake encounter issue grabbed front page attention in all the leading Kannada dailies. It assumed significance as one of the police officers involved in the encounter "" M N Dinesh Kumar of Rajasthan's IPS cadre "" hails from Karnataka. Consequently, the developments remained on the first page on successive days.

All the newspapers prominently displayed the photographs of the officers and the victims. Some dailies carried special reports on Dinesh Kumar. Praja Vani and Kannada Prabha focused on similar fake encounters in Karnataka.

Market leader Vijaya Karnataka condemned the incident in its editorial: "There is an urgent need to stop such encounters which are taking place all over the country. It is highly reprehensible that even the victim's wife was killed. A national consensus on handling cases relating to terrorism and fake encounters should be evolved."

Except Loksatta, no prominent Marathi newspaper, including Sakal and Maharashtra Times, found the Gujarat fake encounter an important enough issue. Ever since the story broke, Loksatta is the only paper to have carried the day-to-day developments on its front page. The paper also commented on the issue in an editorial that said extrajudicial killings have become a norm in our country, not just Gujarat. As they say, 'declare a dog mad and shoot him', the editorial said and added the police also seem to be declaring random criminals Jaish or Lashkar operatives and doing away with them and their families in fake encounters.

Other newspapers relegated this issue to their 'national' pages. The ongoing power crisis in Maharashtra, the BEST workers' strike and the feud between Gujarat and Maharashtra over GAIL's pipeline were some of the other issues that dominated the Marathi press.