The dramatic killing of gangster Vikas Dubey is reflective of how the risk of using encounters as a state policy is very low.
Encounters have always been a part and parcel of our system, be it terrorism in Punjab, or the underworld in Mumbai or terror suspects in Delhi.
Encounters have always been used as the final weapon of any administrative system when that appears to be losing the battle.
When the person gunned down happens to be a gangster of almost 60 brutal and violent crimes, then encounter would fetch more prominence as he is a threat to the society and when he has been having a record of being able to walk free despite killing a minister inside a police station with over a dozen policemen as witnesses.
People or the system as a whole would feel that his encounter is justified, when the gangster had the audacity to kill eight police officials by mounting a Maoist-like ambush and even hack one of them with sharp-edged weapons.
This act of this criminal was to send a message to the government rather that escape or protect himself from being caught. Hence the encounter or Vikas Dubey was in a way a reply of the system to his harsh message.
The risk of such an encounter getting judged adversely almost ends when the gangster has been arrested over a dozen times and still walks free, rather thrives, with an increased perception of a someone who cannot be touched. Such a protagonist proves to the justice delivery system a change of political guard at the governance level makes no difference to his fortunes and clout.
And when a gangster such as Vikas Dubey manages to run his kingdom from inside a jail, as he did successfully for years, and even ends up winning elections in absentia, it dents and reduces the concept of justice delivery through legitimate methods into a nonsensical joke.
When the police gunned down four rape accused in Hyderabad in December last year, the popular sentiment was it was justice delivered. The deep thirst and itch for revenge was satisfied.
Few will cry over Vikas Dubey’s killing. Even as many will shed tears over the lack of a due process of law.
ALSO READ: Few questions raised by many after Vikas Dubey’s death.
