Are we now an established Goonda Raj?

VIKAS DUBEY KILLED, said the headlines of all major news websites this morning. Wait a minute! Was not Vikas Dubey, who allegedly killed eight policemen in Uttar Pradesh a few days ago, taken in police custody yesterday from Ujjain? Yes, indeed he was.

Though, of course, it is difficult to say whether it was a successful police action by Madhya Pradesh police or if Vikas Dubey himself surrendered at the Mahakal Temple. Apparently he told a policeman to inform the force and allowed himself to be arrested. The choice of the famous temple as the venue was to avoid an encounter – extrajudicial killing.

There are reports of both kinds emerging, definitely a video in which he is seen strolling with a police constable in tow. In any case, he was in Madhya Pradesh police custody last night.

The news of his killing is spun in a story that says police was taking him to Kanpur when their car overturned. Vikas Dubey tried to escape. That is when he was shot and killed. The story seems too thin, too flimsy. If indeed Dubey surrendered he would not have tried to escape. If he was arrested, why was he seen in videos that emerged as voluntarily, easily walking from the temple while police escorted him?

Given how the incumbent Central government and the UP state government have thrived on communalising the nation and state, as soon as the news of the eight UP policemen came and Dubey’s name emerged, there was a huge question in social media: what if Vikas Dubey were not Hindu and a Brahmin? What if he were Muslim? What would have been the response of national media, of TV studios, of the right-wing that thrives on othering the Muslims?

As soon as he was arrested, there was another huge question: will he be encountered? There are enough stories to link Dubey to BJP functionaries. Dubey’s mother claimed he was at present in Samajvadi Party. It was clear that Vikas Dubey knew a lot about murky activities of political parties and his statements could inconvenience many. The best way to contain all that was to silence him. He was silenced.

The irony is Vikas Dubey’s killing is not even a shock to most people. In fact, it was expected. The question then is: have we normalised extra-judicial killings so much that now we do not even question them? What are the implications of such acceptance of cold blooded murder by the state?

This killing is not about this case alone. This is the question Punjab has been asking about thousands upon thousands of its young men and women who were disappeared by police and killed extra-judicially during the militancy period in the state.

This is the question that Manipur has been asking, Kashmir has been asking. This is the question that rose when Tulsiram Prajapati and Ishrat Jahan were killed in Gujarat. This is the question that rises when four men accused of a heinous rape and murder of a veterinary doctor were murdered in Hyderabad in November 2019, or young Muslims were killed in Bhopal in November 2016 to assuage a public bloodlust.

This the question to be asked of the incumbent Ajay Mohan Bisht government in UP that claims the end of Goonda Raj through over five thousand encounters, killing over a hundred alleged criminals.

Goonda Raj has not ended. Instead the State has become Goonda Raj. If we allow the State to forego the Right to Life of citizens accused of heinous crimes, to take law in their own hands, to not allow due judicial process, to eliminate them extra-judicially, it actually means you, I, no one has any guarantee to life. When citizens support breakdown of due law, we all become vulnerable.

If we accept such cold-blooded murders we basically support laws being thrown to the dustbin. Then we are complicit if tomorrow you or I am implicated and become targets, we can make no claims to law, to the Constitution. It means that any evidence of our being safe does not lie in laws but in supporting the draconian State and those who hold power in it. This is gross violation of the nation based on the Constitution.

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