Official version of police encounters have seldom been reliable. Authentic figures of death of innocent people in such encounters are not available at the moment largely due to the absence of any impartial enquiry. But according to media reports quoting various sources including government sources and responsible organizations the total number of deaths of innocent people in fake police encounters during 14 months old rule of the Kalyan Singh government in the state is estimated to be between 300 to 500.

The police record shows that at least 210 persons were killed in the first three months of a special drive started in Mayl998.The police claimed all of them were criminals but has refused to make public the list of all who have died in encounters and their criminal records, if any.

The judiciary may be subscribing to the theory that everybody is innocent unless proved guilty but the UP police apparently rinds no difference between an accused and a convicted criminal. The police kills an innocent person and then tries to rationalize the killing generally through media that the killed person had many charges against him or her. Often the police charges shown and story given to media in separate encounters at different places and in different time were almost same except names of the victims.

The charges mostly related to arms act and anti-narcotics act, which gives the police enough scope to frame anybody and to cook a theory easy to sell.

In an interesting incident, reported sometime ago from Lucknow the local police fictitiously identified victims of an encounter with a so-called Kachha-Bani-yan gang of robbers. But the same day, police in the neighboring Barabanki district claimed to arrest some criminals which shockingly also included names of those already killed in the encounter by Lucknow police It is believed the victims of Lucknow encounter were agricultural laborer from Bihar who were on their way to Punjab in search of job. A departmental inquiry was ordered and that was all, nothing went further.

The numbers of victims of police encounters were never so important. People knew it well who were the victims. But there was hardly any organized effort to channelise people's protest and intervention against death of innocent persons.

According to a quick estimate 70 to 80 percent victims of police encounters in Uttar Pradesh belonged to religious minorities like Muslims and Sikhs Dalits (Sheduled Castes) and Other Backward Classes(OBC) It's not without reason that vulnerable targets of fake police encounters are mostly people of these groups which to a greater extent stand politically opposed to the votaries of the communal-fascists forces In 1991 under the first chief ministership of Kalyan Singh 11 innocent Sikhs were killed in a police encounter in Pilibheet district and all of them were branded as Khalistani terrorists A journalist, broke the real story shattering the police version which was also found not tenable in the Supreme Court of India.

Uttar Pradesh is fondly called as UP But for the chief minister Kalyan Singh UP stands for Uttar Pradesh the best state! He is obviously trying to project his rule as a preferred model of the Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP), the political wing of the forces of the Hindutava led by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS).He has many feathers in his cap including his inaction as a chief minister during demolition of the disputed Babri mosque at Ayodhya on 6 December 1992 for which he was sacked from the post same day.

Now Kalyan Singh after becoming chief minister of the state for the second time on 21 September 1997 is apparently trying to use human beings as guinea pigs for his experiments in creating a "fearless society" in a state which has become some sort of political laboratory of all sort of retrogressive forces. But the problem for Kalyan Singh is that he is heading the biggest ministry in the world Many of his ministers are widely believed to be criminals.

The very survival of the Kalyan Singh government depends on support of these ministers of bad repute. So the chief minister could do little to curb crime in the state.

But he must have been advised not to show this. In this situation an idea was born to give a blanket order to the police to liquidate the criminals Every district police was given a quota of liquidation to complete in a fixed period. The police now had a license to liquidate anybody in the name of curbing crimes and criminals. Such an encounter also helped promotion and other rewards to the each policeman involved in it.

This was for the first time in the history of India after it's independence that the chief executive of any of it's state openly gave a liquidation order to the police thus denying the fundamental right to life and personal liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the constitution of India. The constitution of India has not given any right to the executive to order liquidation. Only judiciary can deprive any citizen this right that too only through a procedure established by law The chief minister himself revealed his order of liquidation to police on the floor of the Vidhan Sabha on 29 June 1998.According to the page numberl39 of his recorded speech the chief minister said in Hindi, "Shreeman aapko pata hai main aapko bata chuka hun.10 bare mafiayon ka chinhikaran kar liya gaya hai,task force ban gayi hai,usmein jabanj naujawan aur adhikari hain,unka liquidation karne ke liye kasam khakar hamare jawan lage huye hain" (Sir you know 1 have told you. Ten top Mafiosi have been identified. Task force has been Dare devil youths and officers are there in it. Our jawans have taken a vow to liquidate them)"

Kalyan Singh government took the legislature for a ride. The chief minister's order of liquidation on the floor of the state assembly was strangely not opposed by any of 425 members in the house. Media too ignored it. A journalist working for a news agency did report it which was not given proper attention by the newspapers. Media by and large had also not taken proper note of the government's rejection of the demand to establish a State Human Rights Commission raised through a private member resolution in the Vidhan Sabha on 3 July 1998.The chief minister Kalyan Singh started saying that "criminals don't have human rights".

It was only after about 50 organizations including People's Media People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and Indian National Social Action Forum (INSAF) launched their joint "Campaign Against Policy of Liquidation and Denial of Human Rights in Uttar Pradesh" on 19 July 1998 in Lucknow in the presence of veteran journalist and member of the Rajya Sabha Kuldeep Nayyer that the country could know the dangerous designs of the Kalyan Singh government's policy of liquidation.

The campaign was to be launched with a seminar but the state government refused to give permission to organize it in an auditorium of the Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sansthan, a government controlled body Organizers were left with no choice but to hold the seminar on the road in front of the closed gates of the Hindi Sansthan.Kuldeep Nayyer and hundreds of professional journalists, writers, cultural, social and human rights activists also formed a human chain as a symbol of resistance to this policy of the liquidation.

As a part of this resistance to the policy of liquidation All India Muslim Forum riled a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Lucknow bench of Allahabad Court challenging the validity of the liquidation order by the chief minister Kalyan Singh. A somewhat similar but separate PIL was also riled by the PUCL in Allahabad High Court in which a directive was sought from the court to the state government to set up a state human right commission Both of the PIL were quashed by the court on various grounds. One of the interesting observation of the court was that the chief minister Kalyan Singh may not be knowing the meaning of the English word liquidation.

Death of a top criminal Shreeprakash Shukla in a police encounter recently also created a controversy A BJP member of Parliament Swami Sakshi Maharaja had claimed earlier that Shukla had taken a contract for Rs.50 million to kill the chief minister Kalyan Singh. The special task force(STF) of the police which killed Shukla is reported to have found that Shukla had close connections with at least 8 ministers of the Kalyan Singh government. It's suspected that Shukla was nabbed by the police, interrogated for about 12 hours and then killed in a so-called encounter. The judiciary is yet to question why the UP police believes in extra-judicial killings.

Meanwhile as a part of the campaign People's Media started a human rights literacy drive. The group also published a 100-plus pages of document titled"Dastavez-l"

which included one irrefutable evidence of liquidation ordered by the chief minister Kalyan Singh. The evidence is in the form of the photocopy of a relevant page of the chief minister's recorded speech in the Vidhan Sabha (lower house of the state legislature) on 29 June 1998.

The joint action committee Uttar Pradesh(JCC-UP) formed to carry out the campaign is now exploring the possibilities to challenge the liquidation order in the Supreme Court of India.

A student of Lucknow University has started his doctoral thesis on the human rights situation in Uttar Pradesh. Human Rights Center of the School of Ambedkar Studies of Dr. BhimRao Ambedkar Central University, Lucknow is also planning many courses and programs, which may go a long way in the movement for the advancement of human rights cause. People's Media this year instituted an Annual Shaheed Shankar Guha Niyogi Award for the best reporting on human rights, issues and workers movement in India. A group of filmmakers from Lucknow has started work on the making of a documentary on the human rights situation in Uttar Pradesh.