How special cell officers get away with encounters

Established in 1986 to halt the march of Punjab militancy into the National Capital, the Special Cell of Delhi Police,  has enjoyed the status of an elite unit, with its operations spreading across the country. However the unit recently saw nine of its officials being transferred after a major controversy over realtor Manoj Vashistha (45), who was accused of cheating and fraud, and killed during an 'encounter' with Special Cell officers on May 16.

The incident is one more addition to the chequered history of the Special Cell but the transfer of its officials, even though seen by some as appropriate action for the unit's excesses, is largely being seen by Delhi based rights groups as an eye wash and a repeated attempt to shield the senior most officials of the elite unit.

The case of Inspector Dharmender Singh, one of the nine officials who were transferred, is perhaps a glaring example of the same. Singh who is currently being probed by a Special Investigating Team (SIT) for his role in the killing of Vashistha was transferred to the IGI airport, considered by many as a premium posting for a Delhi police officer.  Sub Inspector Bhoop Singh, the other transferred official, is now posted with the First battalion of the Delhi Armed Police of DAP. 

To complicate things further Inspector Ramesh Lamba was appointed the investigating officer (IO) in the Vashishtha killing Lamba a former member of the Special Cell was removed as the IO after Vashistha's brother Anil raised question marks over the selection of some officers for the SIT, especially inspector Lamba. who was in the process of questioning his ex-colleagues ~ Dharmender and Bhoop ~ with whom he had killed two alleged militants in 2008 in Jamia Nagar in what came to be known as the Batla House encounter.

"Senior officers not being questioned for encounters sends out a very wrong message.There  has to be an end to the glorification of extra judicial killings ," said Manisha Sethi  of Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association which has been quite vocal when it comes to Special Cell encounters.

 " In all probability the officers will be shielded and the case forgotten. Just like in the past," she added. Given by the history of the Special Cell there is some truth to Sethi's statement  but there is one exception.

In 1997  two men were gunned down by the Special Cell led by S.S. Rathi. Rathi and his group of 9 men were found to be guilty by a sessions court. They appealed and were found guilty again by High Court following which they approached the Supreme Court which upheld their conviction in 2011. But other than this conviction, it has been smooth sailing for the Special Cell.

A magisterial probe conducted into an Special Cell encounter at Sonia Vihar of 2006 is yet another example where in Senior officials managed to escape the clutches of law. The probe was ordered six years later in 2012 after the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) found the encounter to be fake. 

The NHRC again in 2010 asked the Delhi Police to compensate the family of Yashvir Fauzi who was killed in an encounter in December 2006 in Sarita Vihar. The CBI which was probing the case even went to the extent of stating that  police did not cooperate with the probe agency during the investigation and "provided only a part of the relevant records, the criminal records, like police files, daily diaries, general diaries and log books." 

The claims of the CBI were hardly a deterrent for cell which  the team went on to grab the limelight with their involvement in major terror-related cases as well as cases involving wanted criminals.

The core team of Special Cell included names of DCP Sanjeev Yadav,and his five lieutenants :ACP Manishi Chandra, Dharmender, Dutt, Kailash Bisht and late ACP Rajbir Singh who was known as an encounter specialist and is said to have '50 kills' to his name, all of them serving as gleaming examples of how officers should be like. Except Singh who was also shunted out of the Crime Branch following his alleged links with a drug mafia and murdered in 2008 by a property dealer over a dispute on "investments" he had made with the realtor.

The shadows of cases cracked by the cell however were large enough to hide its pitfalls. "The busting of the first-ever module of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) following the 2008 serial blasts in Delhi , the arrest of Yasin Bhatkal, one of the alleged founders of the Indian Mujahideen and and of Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, one of the alleged conspirators of 26/11 Mumbai attacks made Special Cell what it is today, a senior police officer said.

Meanwhile activists at loggerheads with the Special Cell even feel that given by the unit's image of countering terror it is becoming relatively possible to question the cell on staged encounters of alleged gangsters but those involving suspected militants are almost  unquestionable.

In 2002, the Cell had come under the scanner again for killing two alleged militants of  LeT  in the parking lot of Ansal Plaza mall. The veracity of this encounter was questioned by an eye witness, Dr Hari Krishna  who claimed to have seen Delhi Police dragging two men who could barely walk into a basement which followed by gunshots . This case, activists say, did not get the deserved attention as those involved continued with their modus operandi.

Yadav and Chandra who have supervised most of the operations of the Special Cell even after featuring in several contested encounters enjoy the status of being key figures of the elite unit even. The Vashishtha killing did not change the status quo, not for the two officers and neither for S N Shrivastava who heads the unit.

Special Cell did suffer a major embarrassment when yet again  Inspector Dharmender Kumar's name had cropped in Liaquat Shah's case also along with DCP Yadav, ACP Chandra, inspectors Rahul Singh and Sanjay Dutt, and four constables.  

Special Cell had shown Liaquat’s arrest from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, claiming that he was member of Hizbul Mujahideen and that he was intercepted when he was trying to enter India through the Nepal border. The Special Cell had claimed to have seized an AK-56 rifle, three hand-grenades from a guesthouse in Delhi at Liaquat's  instance. However it was later found that Sabir Khan Pathan a police informer who had allegedly planted weapons to implicate Shah and then 'dissappeared'.  

Pathan's latest status still is that of 'missing' according to a senior official of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) told dna last week that it hasn't been able to locate the man who could very well serve as a key to the pandora box that the Special Cell has become.