Manipur Fake Encounters: Supreme Court Rebuffs Army and Police Personnel’s Contention

Terming the contentions of over 700 serving Army personnel and Manipur Police officers as utterly misconceived and made with a design to thwart an ongoing court-monitored CBI probe into the Manipur staged encounters case, a bench of Justices comprising Madan B. Lokur and U.U. Lalit on November 12 declined to recuse themselves from hearing the matter.

In its 20 page Order, the bench firmly rebuffed the petitioners’ contentions that the comments made by the judges at an earlier hearing could demoralise the armed forces, and that the CBI enquiry they ordered into the spate of extra-judicial killings is unfair and biased.

The present application of the petitioners, drafted by Aishwariya Bhati and argued by former Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, is connected to an ongoing PIL (Public Investigation Litigation) seeking investigations and prosecution for 1,528 cases of extra-judicial killings in the state of Manipur. Earlier in 2017, the apex court had appointed a Special Investigation Team to probe the alleged cold- blooded murders.

This application was triggered by Justice Lokur’s remark in the court in July asking the CBI why it had not conducted custodial interrogations of men in the armed forces who have been charged with murder. As reported widely in the media at that time, when the CBI did not have any reply, Justice Lokur remarked wryly that accused murderers were “roaming” around in Manipur while survivors were living in fear.

A Misplaced Cross-Appeal

The armymen and policemen’s application for the judges’ recusal is part of a cross-appeal against the top court’s 2017 judgement, filed by a large number of military officers and personnel across ranks, contending that the Supreme Court’s taking up the matter of the extra-judicial killings and directing prosecution of guilty officers amounts to a dilution of their immunity granted by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), and would have a debilitating effect on the maintenance of internal and national security in disturbed areas rife with insurgency.

This appeal is wrong and dangerous, as reputed retired military officers of high rank and achievement have argued (see here and here) that this can be taken as the army directly challenging the authority of the Supreme Court, resisting all efforts at bringing accountability for its wrongdoings.

Interestingly, this case was also drafted by Bhati and is being argued by Rohatgi who, during his tenure as Attorney General, had strongly resisted the Supreme Court’s attempts to reopen the cases of the Manipur extra-judicial killings.

In the present case, the judges saw through the armed forces’ dishonest machinations, and remarked that the application for recusal was only to scuttle the probe ordered by their 2017 judgement.

‘Allegations of Demoralisation- Baseless’

One of the major contentions of the petitioners was that Indian army, paramilitary forces and Manipur police have been “demoralised” by observations made by the Supreme Court judges regarding extra-judicial killings in Manipur. The judges’ reply to this, contained in paragraph 30, is terse. They said :

“This is a rather overboard submission. In any event, in our opinion, it should be clear to everyone that officers and personnel of the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the State Police are made of much sterner stuff than is sought to be projected and they can hardly be demoralised by observations said to have been made by anybody. It is unfortunate that a bogey of demoralisation of the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the State Police is being raised…. As mentioned earlier, the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the Manipur Police are made of sterner stuff and are disciplined forces strong enough to take everything in their stride. To contend that some observations said to have been made by this Court have demoralised the Indian Army, the paramilitary forces and the Manipur Police is suggestive of a weakness in them. Be that as it may, this is really stretching the argument to the vanishing point.”

What is to be noted here is the harsh language used by the court- that the argument has been stretched to its vanishing point. Most significantly, the judges call out the armed forces and police for using a “bogey”- that of morale and national security- to try take a supremacist position, devoid of any accountability.