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Glorification of police 'brutality': Where thin line between real and reel vanishes

By Bilal Shah*
In a largely, emotionally driven country like India, if there are several movies which glorify police brutality without accountability and criticism, then public in India finds not an ounce of trouble in something similar happening for real. The thin line between real and reel vanishes.
And people vouch and expect these 'heroic' acts on ground without even condemning it, leave alone Pointing out the wild and blunt unconstitutionality in it. Uttar Pradesh state alone has recorded more than 1000 encounters in a single year, 2018. under the Yogi Adityanath regime.
This brutal and wild crackdown of the Uttar Pradesh police is pinching democracy, Especially during the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, 22 individuals were killed by the Uttar Pradesh police, not a single convict among them; most of them or roughly all of them, belonging to the Muslim community.
Now one may think as to why even extrajudicial killings, custodial tortures, fake encounters fare and pose such serious concern. A reason as basic as 'right to live' will justify my argument. Though we the people of India may not practice it, this statement speaks the ultimate truth: "Innocent until proven guilty".
However, if anything, we actually practice the opposite of the statement. And which is why, exactly, it poses a threat to the social fabric of the nation. As per a Right to Information (RTI) plea filed, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) registered 1,782 fake encounters between 2000 and 2017, almost half of them being From Uttar Pradesh alone.
The police will certainly escape from the law course and its action, citing typical reasons such as 'collateral damage' or 'encounter casualties'. But if the sole breadwinner of the family loses life, the whole family comes at the brink of extinction.
In the Disha rape case of 2019, which took place in Hyderabad, people across the country cheered for the encounter carrier inspector as 'encounter raja', Which is very problematic. What should really worry the poor and common people is, at the behest of the political supremo, business tycoon pressures, emotional reasons, tomorrow a policeman may grab their family member, shoot them and declare them the criminal.
While all know the story was phony, police will cite it as an 'encounter' and get away with it, This has really happened for significant number of times during the past history of India. Jayaraj and Bennicks case, the most recent extrajudicial killings in Tamil Nadu, have once again sparked the row.
Cops appear to think that they are immune to the system of law, and the public of India appear to have time and again proved them right.
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*Student hailing from Hyderabad, has been blogging on  politics, social needs, social awareness, citizen rights, legal issues etc.

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