Killing pointblank in UP

The surname is of extreme importance in UP, or the cow-belt for that matter. The unfortunate youth shot dead in downtown Lucknow would have, at best, a magisterial inquiry marked into the circumstances of his killing had his surname not been Tiwari. The police was well into a cover-up. The police station personnel were planning to go on a protest fast while the suspect constable was being encouraged to give his version before the cameras with women constables helpfully providing the backdrop to suggest a softer side to the UP Police. It was the roughing up of a minister by the crowd outside the dead youth’s house that may have indicated that this wasn’t the all-too-frequent ‘encounter’ in the hinterlands. As the victim’s wife lamented, they had been done in by the very government they brought to power.

From that moment onwards, the fortunes of Vivek Tiwari’s family changed. The trolling on social media ended and the family was given an audience with the CM. It will be tempting to assume that this was a case of one rogue cop. But the DGP’s overwrought explanation gave the game away. The UP Police, he bravely confessed, required a complete turnaround by systemic reforms through behavioural training and humanisation of the force. It is hard to disagree with the DGP’s diagnosis, considering the complaints pouring in from the UP countryside about encounters being staged for the benefit of TV cameras.

In fact, on the day the UP Government was bending over backwards to contain the fallout from Tiwari’s killing, Rafeeqan, a mother of two youngsters killed by the police in Aligarh, was knocking on every available door for a hearing. For a government bred on muscularity, the mistake of gunning down ‘one of your own’ was waiting to happen. Now that the DGP has owned up that the UP Police has been operating on shaky foundations, perhaps it will be equitable and just to scrutinise the previous encounters. And provide government jobs and compensation to those who unfairly became statistics in the state’s battle against crime.