Aligarh: Cops kill two criminals under media glare in an encounter

AGRA: When a few local journalists in UP’s Aligarh district received a call from police around 6.45am on Thursday, they did not know what to expect. To their surprise, a cop on the phone asked them to reach Machua village under Harduaganj police station if they were interested in “watching and filming a real encounter”.The news spread like wildfire and within 15 minutes, an entire troop of local and national journalists lined up at the site, roughly 25km from the district headquarters. On their arrival, the scribes saw a team of policemen, some of them armed with bulletproof jackets and a few others clad in their uniforms or even Tshirts, initially corner and then gun down two men — Mustakim and Naushad — “armed and hiding” in an abandoned irrigation department building.Cops later said the duo had fired 34 rounds before being killed. A TOI photojournalist was part of the group that witnessed what must be India’s first encounter where media persons were invited. Accompanied by cops, reporters and camera crews were asked to stay “at least 100 metres” away from the encounter site. None of them were protected by bullet-proof vests or helmets.Aligarh SP (city) Atul Srivastava told TOI, “Mustakim and Naushad fired gunshots and raced past a police team after they were signaled to stop. Harduaganj police station incharge Vinod Kumar followed them, but they managed to hide in an abandoned building, which was later surrounded by additional forces.”Cops from nearby police stations were called in for assistance to take on Mustakim and Naushad, who according to officers involved in the operation, were armed with.32 and .315 bore country-made pistols. Four live cartridges, cops said, were recovered from the spot after the operation ended. Asked why scribes were invited to record the killings, Aligarh SSP Ajay Kumar Sahini told TOI, “There is nothing wrong in it. We wanted to provide firsthand information to the media.” The SSP emphasized that they have orders “from top” to share details of each and every encounter with the media. “We were just adopting a transparent approach. Nothing was hidden. If anyone wanted to click pictures or record a video, they were free to do that,” he said.The senior cop rubbished the charge that the entire exercise was stage-managed. The SSP added that Mustakim and Naushad were wanted for the murder of six people, including two ascetics, in the last one month. These murders were executed allegedly at the behest of former Etah councilor Sabir Ali, who was arrested on Tuesday.“During the encounter, Palimukimpur police station in-charge Pradeep Kumar Srivastava sustained injuries and was admitted to hospital for treatment,” Sahini said. Kin of Mustakim and Naushad held a press meet in the evening and alleged the encounter was fake. The mother of one of them said, “My boy was picked up from home by the police on Sunday morning. He was murdered in cold blood.”According to official data, 66 men have been killed in police encounters since the Yogi Adityanath government assumed power in March last year. The number of encounters that have taken place during this period has gone past 1,000. Recently, UP DGP OP Singh had said that police encounters were part of a well chalked out strategy to deal with hardened criminals.