NHRC hold 2010 Assam police encounter as fake

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has held an encounter of two persons by Assam Police on May 19, 2010 as fake.

Based on material and record placed before it, the NHRC has found several loopholes in the police theory of a genuine encounter and has held the incident as a grave violation of human rights.

It has issued a show cause notice to the Assam Government as to why the Commission should not recommend monetary relief to the next of kin of victims Chandra Tokbi and Ananda Teron. The State Government has been given six weeks time to respond without fail.

As per the intimation received in the Commission from Additional DGP, Assam, two extremists, namely, Chandra Tokbi and Ananda Teron were killed in an encounter with the police in the area of PS Bokulia, District Karbi Anglong, Assam.

The Commission has found that the police version showing bullets to have been fired during the encounter from the weapons recovered from their person was not corroborated by an independent report from the ballistic expert. There was no report from the finger print expert to indicate that the weapons recovered had fingerprints of the victims or gun shot residue was taken from victims' hands to indicate that they fired the weapons.

The fact that the weapons had not been properly and individually sealed after the incident meant that their value as evidence was dubious. There was no proof that either Chandra Tokbi or Ananda Teron had handled or fired from the weapons because the police did not conduct the essential tests.

The timings of the encounter in the early morning at 03:30 a.m. in the darkness also raised doubts about the genuiness of the encounter as no night vision devices were recovered from the dead bodies, nor the police reported that their team carried any.

The autopsy report of Ananda Teron established that his left leg had a fracture with the dislocation of the femur. It is unlikely that a man of this sort of injury would have been on a hill engaged in an encounter with the police.