Encounter Killings, NHRC and Rule of Law: CLAT Explainer

📑 On this page

On 27 October 2026, about twelve hours apart, two men in police custody in West Bengal were shot dead: the first in the small hours, the second that afternoon. One was accused of raping and murdering a schoolgirl in Gaighata, the other of murdering a BJP worker in Murshidabad. The police account was identical: during crime-scene reconstruction, the accused snatched an officer's firearm, fired, and was killed by return fire.

On 29 October, The Telegraph's editorial, ‘Triggered’, asked why the police are so lax about guarding their weapons, and then the harder question: why so many people cheer. The same day, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took up a report that Kolkata Police had walked three arrested men shirtless, barefoot and roped through a neighbourhood, also in the name of ‘reconstruction’.

This is exactly the kind of editorial CLAT turns into a Logical Reasoning passage, and its principles (due process, self-defence, dignity in custody) are standard Legal Reasoning material.

🎯 In a nutshell

The deaths: two accused were killed in alleged gunfights. Police say each grabbed an officer's gun and fired first; no inquiry has tested that yet.
The editorial: when law-keepers take the law into their own hands, the rule of law is perverted; public applause reflects failed policing and courts, not proof that encounters work.
The parade: the NHRC took suo motu cognizance and wants a report from the Kolkata Police Commissioner within two weeks.
The law: Article 21 allows life or liberty to be taken only by a procedure established by law. Police self-defence is lawful only against a real, immediate threat.
For CLAT: separate conclusion from premises, spot assumptions about deterrence, and apply a self-defence rule exactly as stated.

📌 What CLAT actually expects

No question will ask you which case laid down encounter guidelines. A Logical Reasoning passage will give you an argument like The Telegraph's and ask for its conclusion, assumption, or what weakens it. A Legal Reasoning passage will state a self-defence or use-of-force rule and ask whether an officer's act fits it. Read the rule's limits, especially when the threat ends.

The backstory

In Indian police-speak, an encounter is a shoot-out between police and a suspect. When the suspect dies and critics doubt the police version, people call it an extrajudicial killing: a death outside the judicial process, with no charge ever proved in court. ‘Shot while trying to escape’ is the classic official explanation, which is why it draws suspicion.

The legal starting point is Article 21 of the Constitution: no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. The Supreme Court has read this to require a procedure that is fair, just and reasonable. That is the core of due process: the State may punish, even with death, but only after a charge, evidence, a defence and a judge.

Two ideas follow. The presumption of innocence: an accused is innocent until a court finds him guilty, so an arrest is a suspicion, not a verdict. And custody adds to the State's duties: a person in police hands cannot protect himself, so the police must.

A Bengal story, four decades old

This fight has deep roots in West Bengal. On 26 August 1986, the Executive Chairman of Legal Aid Services, West Bengal, wrote to the Chief Justice of India about deaths in police lock-ups reported in The Telegraph and other papers that summer. The Supreme Court treated it as a public interest petition and, in December 1996, laid down rules for every arrest: visible name tags, a signed arrest memo, informing a relative or friend, medical check-ups and access to a lawyer.

In 2014, the Court set out a standard procedure for every death in a police encounter. In plain words:

✓Register an FIR and send it to the court without delay.
✓Get it investigated by the CID or another police station's team, supervised by an officer senior to the encounter's leader.
✓Hold a magisterial inquiry (by a magistrate, outside the police chain of command) into every such death.
✓Inform the NHRC or the State Human Rights Commission at once.
✓Make the officers surrender their weapons for forensic and ballistic tests.
✓Give no out-of-turn promotion or instant gallantry award soon after the event.
✓Let the family complain to the Sessions Judge if this is not followed.

None of this says encounters are always fake. It says the police account must be tested by someone other than the police, because the officer who fired is a witness in his own case.

What happened

Two deaths, one script

Gaighata, North 24 Parganas. A 23-year-old man had been arrested for the rape and murder of a Class 11 student. A senior officer told PTI that police took him home to recover the clothes he allegedly wore during the crime. Returning around 2.50 am, he asked to relieve himself, snatched an officer's service revolver and fired. Police fired back, and he was declared dead in hospital. No officer was hit. How he seized the revolver, the officer said, was likely to be probed.

Murshidabad. Around 2.45 pm the same Tuesday, the prime accused in the August murder and dismemberment of a BJP worker was killed by CID personnel while being taken to recreate the crime. The CID says he tried to flee by snatching an officer's firearm and firing, and died in the return fire.

The Gaighata schoolgirl's parents welcomed the police action while saying it could not undo their loss; the accused's family was angry. PTI also recalled a July case from Baruipur, South 24 Parganas, where a man accused of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl was killed during a reconstruction, with the same snatched-revolver account. State minister Dilip Ghosh said the police had to take stringent steps to win back public trust, adding: “Nobody is above the law. If someone takes the law into his own hands, this would be the consequence.”

The Telegraph's argument

Set that beside the editorial and the words point the other way: for The Telegraph, it is the police who take the law into their own hands. Its steps:

Observation: both killings follow one pattern, a snatched gun and fire in ‘self-defence’.
Context: parliamentary data some years ago showed a spike in such killings, led by Uttar Pradesh and Assam.
Principle: the Supreme Court has called such killings a violation of constitutional protections and an erosion of the rule of law itself.
Puzzle: public reaction, shaped partly by popular culture, is often positive; the mother of one dead man said she was happy, as a citizen.
Diagnosis: people believe encounters deter crime, though data dismantle that belief. It survives because police and courts have failed to bring crime down.
Conclusion: encounters and their endorsement will continue while those failures persist.

Notice the argument's shape. It never claims the dead men were innocent; its target is the method and the cheering. Its prediction rests on one causal claim: the applause comes from a broken justice system, not from evidence that encounters work.

The Kolkata parade and the NHRC

The third story is about dignity. Per the PIB release, the NHRC acted on a report that two young men and the father of one had been beaten, stripped and made to walk naked at gunpoint by members of a Kolkata family. Police arrested three men from that family, then brought them to the same locality and made them walk shirtless and barefoot for over 100 metres, roped at the waist, purportedly to reconstruct the crime scene.

The Commission said the report, if true, raised serious issues of human rights violation, and sent a notice to the Kolkata Police Commissioner seeking a detailed report within two weeks. This was suo motu cognizance: acting on its own, without a complaint. The principle is one CLAT likes: men accused of a humiliating crime still may not be humiliated by the State. In June 2026, a Calcutta High Court vacation bench said as much orally, hearing pleas against roped parades: “You may arrest them, you may prosecute them, but you cannot humiliate them.”

The debate

This is not good people against bad people. Each side has a serious case.

Question	Why many people support encounters	Why the rule of law says no
Is the anger justified?	Trials take years and victims' families wait a decade. Swift action looks like the State finally taking their pain seriously.	The anger indicts slow courts and weak investigation. Skipping the trial fixes neither.
Does it deter crime?	Supporters argue that hardened criminals fear a bullet more than a trial they expect to win or drag on.	The Telegraph says data do not support deterrence. Critics add that the certainty of conviction, not a few dramatic deaths, is what deters.
What about witnesses?	Witnesses are threatened or bribed, and accused persons walk free. An encounter removes that danger.	The answer is witness protection and faster trials; otherwise every frightening accused becomes a target.
What if police get it wrong?	Supporters assume the police usually catch the right person, especially in high-profile cases.	A wrongly arrested man can be acquitted; a dead man cannot. And the real offender goes free.
Who checks the police?	Officers face real danger; accused persons do attack escorts. Second-guessing every shot may make police hesitate.	Genuine self-defence survives an inquiry. Applause and quick rewards encourage repetition and kill the incentive to investigate.

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It is not the duty of the police officers to kill the accused merely because he is a dreaded criminal. Undoubtedly, the police have to arrest the accused and put them up for trial.

— Supreme Court in Om Prakash v. State of Jharkhand (2012), quoted in PUCL v. State of Maharashtra (23 September 2014)

The same passage notes the other side: police on duty are sometimes attacked and killed, and may protect themselves. Self-defence is allowed. Execution is not.

What is settled and what is open

Settled: the right to life protects accused persons too; deadly force by the police needs a real justification, such as genuine self-defence; every death in police firing must be independently investigated and inquired into; and arrested persons keep their dignity. Open: whether the Gaighata and Murshidabad accounts are true, which only an independent probe can establish; what Kolkata Police tells the NHRC; and whether public support drives political encouragement or the other way round.

Principles and terms to know

Principle or term	Plain meaning	How it applies
Due process	Life or liberty can be taken only through a fair, just and reasonable procedure	Punishment follows a verdict, never precedes it
Presumption of innocence	An accused is treated as innocent until a court proves guilt	Arrest for a terrible crime removes neither innocence nor rights
Private defence (police included)	Anyone, including an officer, may use force against an unlawful attack	Deadly force needs reasonable fear of death or grievous hurt, no excess, and ends with the threat
Limits on force in arrest	Necessary force to arrest; no more restraint than needed to prevent escape	Shooting an unarmed person running away, endangering no one, is very hard to justify
Magisterial inquiry	A magistrate's inquiry into a death, independent of the police	Required for every death in police firing
Suo motu cognizance	A body or court acting on its own, without a formal complaint	The NHRC took up the Kolkata parade from a media report
Dignity in custody	Custody permits restraint, not humiliation	Parading arrested people semi-clothed and roped punishes them before any trial
Rule of law	Government and police are bound by law too	Law-keepers who take the law into their own hands pervert it

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Static GK: the NHRC at a glance

Fact	Detail
Nature	Statutory (created by an Act), not constitutional
Law	Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 (amended in 2006 and 2019)
Established	12 October 1993; headquarters in Delhi
Chairperson	Justice V. Ramasubramanian, former Supreme Court judge, since 30 December 2024
Who can chair	A former Chief Justice of India or a former Supreme Court judge
Appointment	By the President, on the recommendation of a committee headed by the Prime Minister
Term	Three years or till age 70, whichever is earlier; eligible for reappointment
Powers	Inquires suo motu, on petition or on a court's direction; recommends compensation or prosecution; can approach the Supreme Court or a High Court
Binding?	No, but the government must report action taken within a month
Time limit	Cannot inquire into a matter more than one year after the alleged violation
Global standard	Conforms to the UN-endorsed Paris Principles

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ℹ️ Good to know, not to memorise

Arrest rules: D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal (18 December 1996, reported 1997). Encounter procedure: People's Union for Civil Liberties v. State of Maharashtra (23 September 2014), declared binding under Article 141. Private defence: Sections 34-44 BNS, 2023 (formerly 96-106 IPC); limits in Section 37, causing death in Section 38. Force in arrest: Section 43 BNSS (formerly 46 CrPC); no unnecessary restraint: Section 46 BNSS (formerly 49 CrPC); magistrate's inquiry into death: Section 196 BNSS (formerly 176 CrPC). NHRC: Sections 3, 4, 12, 18 and 36 of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993.

⚠️ Common confusions

Encounter is not automatically illegal. If an accused really fires at police, returning fire can be lawful. The problem is untested accounts.
Self-defence ends when the danger ends. Someone who drops the weapon or runs, endangering no one, is no longer a threat.
Accused is not convict. Neither dead man's charge had been proved in court.
The NHRC recommends; it does not punish. Unlike a court's orders, its recommendations are not binding.
NHRC is statutory, not constitutional. Contrast the Election Commission, created by the Constitution itself.
Reconstruction is investigation, not punishment. Taking an accused to the scene may be lawful; parading him semi-clothed is not.

How CLAT could test this

Read the passage, then try each question before opening the solution. Questions 1-3 are Logical Reasoning; 4 and 5 apply the passage's legal rule.

🧩 Worked example

In the hill state of Velmora, a new phrase has entered everyday talk: ‘the Ranpur method’. Over eighteen months, police in Ranpur district reported nine deaths of accused persons in what they called exchanges of fire. Each official account ran along similar lines. The accused, taken to a spot to help recover evidence, seized a weapon, fired at his escort and fell to return fire. Crowds have garlanded the officers. A popular television anchor calls it ‘justice at the speed of fear’. The appeal is easy to understand. Velmora’s courts take nine years, on average, to finish a murder trial, and witnesses in such cases often turn hostile after threats. To a family that has buried a daughter, a bullet looks quicker and surer than a courtroom. Supporters also claim that criminals in Ranpur now think twice before committing violent crime. That claim deserves scrutiny, because the state’s own figures do not bear it out. Reported violent crime in Ranpur rose by six per cent over the same eighteen months, roughly in line with the rest of Velmora, where no such deaths occurred. The deeper problem is not statistical. Velmora’s Police Code allows an officer to use force likely to cause death only when he reasonably believes that his own life, or someone else’s, faces an immediate threat of death or grievous injury, and no lesser means would remove that threat. The force must stop the moment the threat ends. A person who has thrown away his weapon, or who is running away and endangers no one, cannot lawfully be shot under this rule. Every death caused by the police must be followed by an inquiry by a magistrate, and the officers involved must hand over their weapons for examination. These conditions exist because an officer who describes an encounter is a witness in his own case. If the official account is never tested, the law cannot tell a genuine act of self-defence from an execution. Nor can it tell the guilty from the wrongly accused, since a dead man cannot be acquitted. None of this is an argument for patience with crime. It is an argument for fixing the slow trials and frightened witnesses that make the Ranpur method look attractive in the first place. A government that answers the failures of its courts with the guns of its police has not delivered justice faster. It has simply stopped asking whether justice was done.

1. Which of the following best expresses the author's main point?

AThe Ranpur police acted lawfully, because in each case the accused fired first.

BSlow courts and frightened witnesses cannot justify encounter killings; the answer is to fix the justice system and to test every police account through due process.

CEncounter killings should be permitted only in districts where violent crime is rising.

DTelevision anchors are mainly responsible for the popularity of encounter killings.

▸ Show solution

Answer: B. B captures both halves of the argument: the passage rejects the Ranpur method (crime figures, the Police Code, the need to test accounts) and closes by saying the real fix is slow trials and frightened witnesses. A assumes the official accounts are true, which the author says have never been tested. C is never suggested. D picks a detail (the anchor) and inflates it into the main point.

🧩 Worked example

2. The author uses crime figures to doubt that encounters deter crime. This reasoning assumes that:

AAll nine deaths in Ranpur were executions rather than acts of self-defence.

BNo violent crime was reported in Ranpur before the encounters began.

CRanpur and the rest of Velmora are similar enough that, if encounters deterred crime, Ranpur's crime trend should have looked different from the rest of the state.

DWitnesses in Ranpur never turn hostile.

▸ Show solution

Answer: C. The argument compares Ranpur (encounters) with the rest of Velmora (none) and finds the same six per cent rise. That comparison works only if the two are otherwise comparable; if Ranpur had special factors pushing crime up, the identical trend would prove nothing. Negate C and the argument collapses, which is the test of a necessary assumption. A is not needed for the statistical point. B and D are irrelevant to it.

🧩 Worked example

3. Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the author's claim that the figures do not support deterrence?

AAll nine men killed in Ranpur had been charged with serious offences.

BMurder trials in Ranpur take even longer than the state average of nine years.

CMost television viewers in Velmora support the Ranpur method.

DFor five years before the encounters began, violent crime in Ranpur had been rising three times faster than in the rest of Velmora; during the eighteen months, the gap closed.

▸ Show solution

Answer: D. If Ranpur's crime was rising far faster than the state's before the encounters and then fell back to the state average, the matching six per cent figure could actually show a slowdown, which supports, rather than refutes, a deterrent effect. That attacks the exact comparison the author relies on. A, B and C do not touch the statistical inference; popularity (C) is not evidence of effect.

🧩 Worked example

4. While being taken to recover evidence, an accused, Tarun, grabs Constable Iyer's loaded pistol and fires two shots at the escort, narrowly missing. Sub-inspector Mehra, with no time to do anything else, fires once and fatally wounds him. Applying only the Police Code described in the passage:

AMehra acted lawfully, since Tarun's firing created an immediate threat of death and no lesser means was available; a magistrate's inquiry must still follow, and Mehra must hand over his weapon.

BMehra acted unlawfully, because the Code never allows police to cause death.

CMehra acted lawfully, and no inquiry is needed because the self-defence is obvious.

DMehra acted unlawfully, because Tarun had not yet been convicted of any crime.

▸ Show solution

Answer: A. All the Code's conditions are met: a reasonable belief of an immediate threat of death (live shots at the escort) and no lesser means. But the Code also says every police-caused death must be followed by a magistrate's inquiry and a weapon handover, with no exception for obvious cases, so C is wrong. B misreads the Code, which allows deadly force in narrow conditions. D confuses guilt for the original crime with the immediate threat that justifies self-defence.

🧩 Worked example

5. Change the facts in Question 4. After firing once, Tarun throws the pistol into a ditch and runs into an open field. Mehra fires at his back and kills him. Which statement is correct under the passage?

AMehra acted lawfully, because Tarun had fired at the police only moments earlier.

BMehra acted lawfully, because police may use any means to stop an escaping accused.

CMehra acted unlawfully under the Code, because the threat ended when Tarun threw away the pistol and ran, and a person running away who endangers no one cannot lawfully be shot.

DMehra's act is unlawful only if Tarun is later found innocent of the original crime.

▸ Show solution

Answer: C. The Code says force must stop the moment the threat ends, and expressly protects a person who has thrown away his weapon or is running away without endangering anyone. Both apply. A treats past danger as present danger, the classic trap. B states a rule the passage does not contain. D is wrong because legality depends on the threat at the moment of firing, not on later findings about the original crime; besides, as the passage notes, a dead man cannot be acquitted.

Connect the dots

Jailed six years, then acquitted: who pays?

Yesterday's piece: compensation when the State locks up the wrong person.

Legal Reasoning

Assumptions and premises

How to find the unstated link an argument depends on.

Logical Reasoning

Strengthen and weaken

Attack or support the exact inference, not the topic.

Logical Reasoning

Criminal law for CLAT

Private defence, its limits and principle-to-facts practice.

Legal Reasoning

Constitutional law for CLAT

Article 21, due process and the right to dignity.

Legal Reasoning

National affairs and polity

Statutory bodies like the NHRC, and the static GK around them.

Current Affairs & GK

Practise self-defence and criminal law passages

A timed drill with rule-to-facts questions like Questions 4 and 5.

Start the criminal law drill

Sources

Frequently asked questions

What is an encounter killing?

It is a death in an alleged shoot-out between police and a suspect. When the police version is doubted, such deaths are called extrajudicial killings, because the person dies without a court ever deciding the charge against them.

Are police encounters legal in India?

Police may use force, even deadly force, in genuine self-defence: when there is a reasonable fear of death or grievous hurt and no lesser means will do. Shooting someone who poses no immediate threat is not self-defence. Every death in police firing must be independently investigated, and a magistrate must inquire into it.

What did the NHRC do about the Kolkata police parade?

On 29 October 2026, the NHRC took suo motu cognizance of a report that Kolkata Police walked three arrested men shirtless and barefoot, with ropes around their waists, for over 100 metres for a crime-scene reconstruction. It said the report, if true, raised serious human rights issues and sought a detailed report from the Kolkata Police Commissioner within two weeks.

Is the NHRC a constitutional body?

No. The NHRC is a statutory body set up on 12 October 1993 under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. Its recommendations are not binding, though the government concerned must report back on the action taken. Its chairperson is Justice V. Ramasubramanian.

What did The Telegraph's editorial 'Triggered' argue?

That when law-keepers take the law into their own hands, the rule of law is perverted; that public applause for encounters rests on a belief in deterrence that data do not support; and that such killings will continue as long as police and courts fail to protect ordinary citizens.

How could encounter killings appear in CLAT?

As a Logical Reasoning editorial (main point, assumption, strengthen or weaken the deterrence claim) or as a Legal Reasoning passage that states a self-defence rule and asks whether a police officer's act satisfies it. Section numbers and case names will not be tested from memory.