Friends, The New York Times has just covered a story entitled "Questions Mount in India on Executions Attributed to the Police". It is about the Ishrat Jahan case that took place in early morning of June 15, 2004. It says- "The sensational case has fed a heated national debate about the longstanding Indian police practice of killing suspects." It goes down to define the phenomenon as "Known euphemistically as encounter killings," adding its own point of view- "such extrajudicial executions have been a tolerated and even celebrated method of dealing swiftly with crime in a country with a notoriously slow and sometimes corrupt judiciary." The Article also tries to present the general methodology of such cases- "An officer in such cases invariably "encounters" a suspect and kills him, supposedly in self-defense." The same incidence has also been the subject matter of the Cover-story in the latest issue of the fortnightly Frontline. The US columnist and anti-war activist Norman Soloman recently wrote an Article "George Orwell in 2001: Speaking from The Grave". Is Ishrat Jahan turning into being in the same league as Orwell ?
Amitabh Thakur IIM Lucknow # 94155-34526
