It took 40 years for the law to deliver justice. We could have been angry and talked of justice delayed being justice denied. Instead we are thrilled to bits that some kind of justice has been delivered at all. That the killer of Naxal leader Arikkad Varghese has finally been jailed.
We are willing to overlook the fact that K. Lakshmana, the killer cop, had risen from being a deputy sub-inspector on that fateful day in February 1970 to retire as inspector-general. That he had led a full and rewarding life. Or that he had not been punished for any of the other killings he was accused of, including the infamous Rajan murder case, where the college student vanished forever after being taken into police custody for suspected links with Naxalites in 1976.
Like he would have been in this one too, if the murder had not been documented by the hugely repentant constable who pulled the trigger. P. Ramachandran Nair’s vivid account in 1998 got the case reopened and a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation led to the conviction this week. “Truth triumphs”, said the judge. “Truth alone.”
Sadly, truth alone does not triumph. It needs a lot of help to overcome the hurdles stacked against it by the state machinery. Varghese’s encounter killing had been in the public domain ever since Nair spoke out, after 28 years of nursing his guilt. It still took 12 years to get justice. Nair died in 2006.
We had heard how Varghese had been picked up by the cops, hands tied behind his back, and presented to Lakshmana and other senior officers. Nair is quoted as saying: “Varghese turned to us. ‘They are going to kill me’, he told us. ‘One of you will have to do it. I have one request. Before I am killed, give me a signal so that I can shout a slogan’”. Apparently Nair shared his food and a smoke with the bound and blindfolded captive.
Later, Lakshmana asked for a volunteer to shoot Varghese. As some cops volunteered, Nair said that the captive should be taken to court. “Lakshmana reminded me that policemen could die in accidents”, he recalled. “I recognised the threat. Varghese was going to die anyway. If I died, my family would be helpless.”
Lakshmana ordered Nair to shoot Varghese. “I went up to him and rested the nozzle of my rifle on the left side on his chest. Then I remembered his request. I sounded a signal with my tongue. ‘Long live the revolution!’ he shouted and I pulled the trigger.” Then a shot was fired in the air and the weapon placed in the dead Varghese’s hand.
Over the intervening 40 years, encounter killings have become acceptable. They happen regularly all over the country, particularly in disturbed areas, including the Naxal belt. In the 1970s, even the bourgeoisie of Bengal were horrified by the encounter killings of suspected Naxalites by the Congress state government led by the suave Siddhartha Shankar Ray. Now, all of India has got used to such murders.
Tired and scared by the state’s inability to handle terror attacks, both internal and external, we eagerly accept victims of such “encounters” as terrorists and welcome their murder. Militancy and bad governance has got us cornered. We thirst for quick and severe punishment, without the intervention of courts that take forever. We seem to forget that such fake encounters don’t make it safer — they just make our police less efficient. Besides attacking the foundations of our democracy.
Cops get away with cold-blooded murder until an accomplice squeals. Then the going gets tough. Like in the case of Lakshmana. Or of Amit Shah, Narendra Modi’s aide and Gujarat’s former junior home minister, who was in custody for killing Sohrabuddin in a fake encounter. (He was granted bail on Friday.) The case against Shah was strengthened by two police officers. Former Gujarat deputy superintendent of police M.K. Amin, an “encounter” specialist accused in the case who has been sulking in jail since 2007 while his partners in crime roamed free, and G.C. Raiger, former additional DGP who looked after the Criminal Investigation Department probe into the Sohrabuddin case before the CBI took over, have offered insider information and evidence to the CBI. Earlier R.B. Sreekumar, former additional director-general of Gujarat police, had clearly talked of the political pressures the Gujarat police face, and how he had defied instructions to shoot Muslims in fake encounters and brand them as terrorists.
In fact, killing suspected terrorists was so acceptable that the same Mr Modi who now talks of Mr Shah’s innocence had at a rally in 2007 proudly asked what one should do with a bad guy like Sohrabuddin. The crowd had screamed, “Kill him!” Mr Modi had beamed smugly, adding: “If I have done anything wrong, let the government of Sonia Gandhi hang me!”
In fact, such killers are routinely glamourised as “encounter specialists”. So when two boys were killed in the Batla House encounter in Delhi and passed off as Islamic terrorists, the media’s loud lamentations were focused on the encounter specialist M.C. Sharma who also died in the incident.
Meanwhile Daya Nayak — the inspiration for Ram Gopal Varma’s Ab Tak Chappan and N. Chandra’s Kagaar — has been suspended and awaiting reinstatement as sub-inspector of the Mumbai police. Nayak brags about killing 86 gangsters in “encounters” but got into trouble when he arranged for a favour for a “top Gujarat politician” who needed a trophy militant. So our trigger-happy cop gave him Sadiq Mehtar, 20. According to reports, Sadiq died of seven bullets in his chest and head. Disgraced journalist Ketan Tirodkar said Sadiq was a victim of the Gujarat “riots” which wiped out his family, and he worked as a domestic help in Dubai. He had asked Tirodkar for help. Instead, Tirodkar and Nayak passed him off as a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba militant who was plotting to kill Mr Modi and L.K. Advani. When Tirodkar squealed, Nayak was suspended — not for the killings, but for “disproportionate income”. It now seems there will be no departmental inquiry against him either. Encounter specialists have a handle on too many netas.
And encounter killings continue — in spite of civil society’s occasional demand for a probe, like in the killing of journalist Hemchandra Pande who was shot with Maoist spokesperson Azad in an “encounter” in the jungles of Adilabad, Andhra Pradesh, after allegedly being picked up from Nagpur.
Perhaps this judgment — though several decades late — will remind the police force that they too are accountable. And that some day, some accomplice may squeal. And truth may prevail.

Antara Dev Sen is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at sen@littlemag.com