Encounters: to be killed like dogs

I recently read a rather pointed, well-researched and blow-by-blow account of the encounter that had the ATS progenitor, A A Khan pitted against the notorious gangster, Maya Dolas (born Mahendra Vithoba Dolas) close to 14 years ago. The piece that appeared in the Mumbai tabloid, Mid-Day obviously was inspired by the release of Bollywood's latest take on Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs -- Shootout at Lokhandwala. The film dramatises the encounter which according to some accounts was stage managed by the police to eliminate the foulmouthed Dolas at the behest of underworld don and Dolas' estranged boss, Dawood Ibrahim. Others critiqued it as cold blooded murder by the men in uniform of five petty criminals who possessed less than half the ammunition carried to the site by the police. The police used more than three hundred to kill five.



Perhaps a case of being overprepared? Were 300 policemen required to tackle five men? Is it fair to not allow the criminal to have proper recourse to justice and a trial? After all, every man, woman, and child born free has a right to be heard. Why does the police prefer to 'Shoot to kill' when arresting the man alive could lead to vital leads in very many cases? The gangsters could have been caught alive and tried for murder, extortion, arson, whatever.



Ditto for Sohrabuddin Sheikh, Ishrat Jahan, scores in the Kashmir Valley, Khwaja Yunus, Javed Ahmad...many more. Yes Sohrabuddin Sheikh was a criminal, an extortionist. But the Gujarat police have no records to show that he was a Lashkar militant, the charge on which he was shot in cold blood. What about Kausar Bi? Was she also a militant? Ishrat Jahan -- university student, amateur tutor, shot point blank in an 'encounter' in Ahmedabad. How on earth was she shot in the head and chest if she was fleeing and trying to escape the police? The windshield of the car she was travelling in was smashed completely. The rear shield was intact. How? Khwaja Yunus -- software engineer in Dubai, picked up after the Ghatkopar blast in Mumbai, never returned home. The police has been accused of killing him in custody. The 1993 Mumbai blasts led to a flurry of arrests and torture recounted impeccably in S Hussain Zaidi's book and then filmed to perfection by Anurag Kashyap in his project which goes by the same name. The film showcases the torture scenes brilliantly, the macabre violence of it all is outlandish and scary. Thus, it is but childish to either believe or expect the police to adhere to and abide by rules. If the police manual permits torture, in fact lists it as the only method to extract information, then it is but usual that the men in uniform do not think twice before torturing suspects. And mind you, these men (sometimes women) are only suspects. The question then is -- Is is fair to get down to torture purely on the basis of suspicion?



Coming back to the Lokhandwala encounter, the police denies that the underworld bosses has any hand in the encounter and claim that it was absolutely legitimate and true. The incident had been forgotten until film-maker Apurva Lakhia (of the Mumbai Se Aya Mera Dost and Ek Ajnabi fame) decided to dig into the past and come up with a film on the encounter that shook Mumbai in 1991. He has been accused of glorifying violence and creating iconic figures out of misdirected youth ending up as gangsters. Shootout at Lokhandwala is a violent film. After all it is based on an extremely violent episode where a lot of blood was spilt. Not only did the police put the lives of close to a hundred and fifty Mumbaikars at stake by firing indiscriminately at the dilapidated flat where Maya Dolas, Dilip Bhuwa and three others were holed up for some weeks, it also converted the entire residential area into a war zone for close to six hours at the end of which the five gangsters were killed and two policemen injured.



So does the film justify the methods adopted by A A Khan? Apurva Lakhia would like to think so but Shootout... actually ends up not taking sides at all. If anything Maya Dolas emerges as a somewhat wronged antagonist who was not allowed a shot a justice. I have written about the film in the other blog I frequent and write for -- Passion for Cinema. I'll extend my argument a little bit here and say that the police went overboard. And Lakhia goes overboard in trying to make a case for Khan and his boys while all he ends up doing is convert Maya and his gang into reel heroes. Let me explain. SI Javed Sheikh, drafted into the ATS by Khan specifically because of the wide network of informers he had in the Muslim dominated areas as well as the underworld drags one of the men out of the building, alive, before Khan shoots him down in full view of the heaving, screaming crowds. 'I said Shoot to Kill meaning shoot to kill,' he says before gunning down Maya's cohort. The fact that the shooting happened in front of a thronging crowd made it look like a spectacle. The 'Breaking News' phenomena is made full use of the film as television journalist Meeta Mattoo (yet to decipher if the real encounter was filmed or not) played by Diya Mirza follows the cops to Lokhandwala. She questions the ethics of the encounter throughout the film, from the first frame to the last. Her expression after having witnessed the killing of the criminal says it all. Disgust is writ large over the character's face even though she happens to be an admirer of Khan's ways. The police, according to the rules are supposed to shoot a man only in extreme circumstances and that too below the knees to decapitate the person. This is true even for encounters. Under no circumstances are they supposed to cross the line. But they do, day after day across India, there are reports of encounter killings. Ahmedabad gangster Abdul Latif was shown bail papers, ordered to escape and then shot at. Hardly an encounter!



Thousands have disappeared in Kashmir and never returned. The lucky ones have found column space in newspapers as victims of fake encounters. Others are just numbers, statistics. The police (as also the army in Kashmir) is said to have staged fake encounters to boost their chances of promotion and to bag the cash award that comes with the killing of every militant. And mind you, all these men killed in so-called encounters are all 'dreaded' terrorists who pose a grave threat to the safety and security of India. After investigations by independent agencies and the media, the men turned out to be carpenters, teachers, tailors, farmers, shepherds, and even informers.



Two men were killed in a staged encounter in New Delhi's Ansal Plaza some years ago. Eyewitnesses recount that the men were brought in a police jeep, the bandobast was complete with coffins and shrouds to take the bodies away. People too scared to bat an eyelid later said that the men were pushed out of the jeep and asked to run...the police shot them dead after a perfectly staged drama that went on for more than two hours. Just before Diwali, the encounter of alleged militants was a feather in the caps of the Delhi police.



This is not to say that criminals are to be left free to hurt the society even more and not taught a lesson. The nature of the lesson needs to be questioned. The police went to Lokhandwala with an 'intention' of killing Maya Dolas and his men. The police manual describes and defines an encounter as an act of self defence. 300 people and Khan himself certainly did not need self defence. Thus, the encounter was intentional, cold-blooded. Was killing the only option? The film does not answer the question. Instead it raises many more. One of them is, well -- was killing really the only option? Repeated over and over again by Dia Mirza. Lakhia's attempt at glorifying the police actually doesn't work that way. It does otherwise propelling the ethical debate into the public domain. Amitabh Bachchan's question in the courtroom is misplaced and melodramatic. Would you be confronted by a gangster or the police? Ask the riot victims in Gujarat who were directed towards the murderous mobs by the police? Ask the families of the 14 Muslim men killed by the police at the Suleiman Bakery in the Bombay riots? Ask the wives of those who have disappeared without a trace in the Kashmir valley? The answers would be apparent.


The film comes at an apt time. Televised debates have been held on the question of encounter killings in the past few weeks after the Sohrabuddin story broke. But Bollywood has from time to time dwelt on the issue. Ab Tak Chappan was apparently based on encounter specialist Daya Nayak's life. Company, D and Sarkar looked at the underworld quite effectively. Black Friday was an exceptional film. Shootout attempts it...and succeeds to a great extent. Bollywood finally creates a desi Reservoir Dogs-lookalike in the form of Maya Dolas and his men after attempts such as Kaante and the ilk. By putting police encounters back in the limelight, the film, even though overtly dramatic in parts is a great try. The sepia background makes Swati Building where the encounter happened look sinister, almost imposing. The battleground becomes the backdrop of a perfect potboiler. Masterfully edited, Shootout at Lokhandwala is crisp and pithy, something a film such as this rides on. And more importantly, it put the encounter question back in the minds of the people. But will there be a public outcry? One is yet to see a public outcry in cases involving the lowly and the downtrodden. Yet one question still remains-- will Manu Sharma, Santosh Kumar Singh or even Vikas Yadav, the offcpring of powerful men ever be killed in encounters?