Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said he had given a free hand to the police force to fight criminals and bring down the crime rate as soon as he took oath as the head of the state. He said he was of the view that criminals will be given a befitting reply by the security forces and if they fire a bullet, they won’t be treated with flowers.
In an exclusive interview with News18 Network Group Editor-in-Chief Rahul Joshi, the chief minister expressed his support to the encounter policy adopted in the state since the BJP came to power under him. “It needs to be remembered that when a culprit starts shooting, our forces cannot sit idle. They need to be responded in a language they understand,” Adityanath said.
When asked if incidents like lynching and riot-like situations affected investments in the state, the CM said, “No, it used to happen earlier, but not anymore. In the last two-and-a-half years, there has been no riot. Secondly, there has been no incident of lynching in UP because we removed elements that incite riots in the first stage. We also stopped illegal slaughtering. We brought in well-managed shelters for cows.”
There have been over 4,600 encounters of criminals ever since Adityanath has come to power. The chief minister has reiterated it several times that police have full freedom to deal with rising crime rates and asked criminals to either surrender or leave the state. Soon after, ‘Operation Clean’ was launched.
However, leaders of opposition parties, including Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, have spoken out against the way the issue was being handled. Yadav has alleged that most of the encounters were fake and only people from certain communities were on the target list of the government.
In 2017, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had served a notice to the UP government seeking a detailed report on the issue. Quoting official day, the NHRC said 433 encounters took place within six months since the new regime took charge. In these encounters, 19 criminals were killed, while 89 were injured. Besides, a police officer had died and 98 officers suffered injuries.
The notice also stated that the state government seemed to be presenting these encounters as achievements that led to improvement in law and order. “Even if the law and order is grave, the state cannot resort to such mechanism that may result in the extra-judicial killings of the alleged criminals,” the NHRC statement read.
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