For around six months now, Dinesh Saroj of Jiyapur village in Azamgarh of eastern Uttar Pradesh has ploughed a lonely furrow, seeking justice for his dead brother.
Ramji Pasi, 32, was gunned down by the police near the Sriramganj Bazar in Gambhirpur on September 14, 2017. The police have described Pasi as a dreaded criminal with a bounty of ₹15,000.
However, Mr. Saroj, the Dalit pradhan (headman) of Jiyapur, says his brother was killed in a “fake encounter”.
Over 45 suspected criminals have been killed in alleged police encounters in the State since the Yogi Adityanath government came to power in March 2017. Five of them were in Azamgarh.
SHRC probe
Ramji’s case is one of the four that the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) is looking into after complaints from families of victims that the FIRs of all encounters recorded a similar sequence of events.
According to the FIR, Ramji and his partner Rakesh Pasi were intercepted and surrounded by a special police team and forces from two police stations who waved at the duo to surrender.
However, the two accused fired at the police who shot back. While constable Vinod Saroj survived a bullet injury to the left side of his stomach, Ramji was hit by bullets and died in hospital. A .32 bore county-made pistol was shown recovered from him.
According to the police, Rakesh managed to escape from the scene on a stolen motorbike after taking cover amid a crowd of schoolchildren.
Mr. Saroj contests the police account, asking how Rakesh managed to escape despite being surrounded while his brother was shot dead. As proof that his brother was assaulted before being shot, he cites the post mortem report that said Ramji’s ribs were fractured. He alleges that the police were concocting similar stories to explain the illegal deaths of suspects.
The pradhan , who now supports his brother’s wife and her five children, says that not only was the encounter fake, his brother’s death was also the culmination of repeated harassment by the police in collusion with upper caste persons from the area who resented the growing political popularity of a Dalit.
Mr. Saroj, who has written several letters to the SHRC and the Chief Minister’s Office demanding an independent investigation, says his brother, who ran a grocery store, was being harassed by the police for at least a couple of years and falsely implicated in cases.
The trouble escalated after Ramji’s wife Gyanti Devi was elected to the local panchayat, earning the ire of upper caste political opponents, Mr. Saroj says. Ramji himself won the Block Development Council elections in 2010 and started building political connections.
In December 2012, he was picked up in a narcotics case but was granted bail and returned to normal life. He was again booked in an arms recovery case. He was forced to flee to Delhi, where he worked as a labourer, after an attempt to murder case was lodged against him, Mr. Saroj says.
The police then again charged him after a jewellery shop was looted in Azamgarh.
Open threat
“A police team then came to our house and abused my in-laws telling them that this time they would not arrest Ramji but shoot him dead,” his wife Gyanti Devi has stated in her letter to the National Human Rights Commission. “[Earlier] on July 12, 2016, the SOG [Special Operations Group] had come here and started hitting and abusing him [Ramji], telling him that he would be taught a lesson if he did too much of politics,” the letter says.
Azamgarh SP Ajay Sahni, however, described Ramji as the “synonym for terror in Purvanchal.” The police said Ramji worked with the Rakesh Pasi gang and had 12 criminal cases against him, including of attempt to murder, looting, and under the Arms and Goonda Acts in Azamgarh, Jaunpur and Pratapgarh.
Countering this, Mr. Saroj says Ramji was granted bail in all cases. “Not a single case against my brother was [brought by] by any private person. All were lodged by the police themselves,” he says.
N.P. Singh, ASP (Rural) dismisses all allegations, and says the encounter was “natural and chanced”.
“All encounters in Azamgarh have taken place in daylight. What personal rivalry would we have against these people? Why will we falsely implicate Ramji Pasi,” Mr. Singh asked.
Asked how Rakesh, the second accused, managed to escape from the spot, Mr. Singh said the sudden attack by the accused shocked the constables who panicked and “left behind their AK47 rifles in the car.”
“Rakesh Pasi had a better firepower with his 30 bore pistol. Police didn’t have smart weapons. If the team had got hold of long-range weapons, they would have got Rakesh, who was our main target,” Mr. Singh claimed.
Rakesh faces 10 criminal cases and is absconding, police said.
Azhar Azmi, the doctor whose motorbike Rajesh Pasi allegedly stole to flee corroborated the police version of an encounter and claimed bullets were being fired from both sides. He, however, said he could not recognize which of the accused was firing at the police as he panicked and was wearing a helmet.
