Raise your hands to avoid encounters: Assam CM Sarma’s advice to criminals
Sarma reiterated his government’s stand of retaliation by police if criminals tried to escape from custody or attacked policemen
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has urged criminals in the state to raise hands to avoid getting killed in police encounters.
Speaking on the motion of thanks on the governor’s address to the budget session of the assembly on Wednesday, Sarma reiterated his government’s stand of retaliation by police if criminals tried to escape from custody or attacked policemen.
“Does any encounter take place in a pre-planned manner. If someone takes out a revolver, only then the police will react. We should sensitise criminals that if you are caught with heroin, then raise your hands and not take out a revolver,” he said.
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“Assam police has changed. There is no politics of appeasement. I would request all criminals from the floor of the House, there will be no encounters. But you have to raise your hands or wave a white handkerchief if you see police. If they don’t do that and attack policemen, should I ask the cops not to do anything and get shot?” added Sarma.
On Monday, in a written reply to a question by All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) MLA Ashraful Hussain, Sarma stated that 66 persons were killed while 158 injured in police custody from May 2021 (when Himanta took charge as CM) till February, 2023.
Of them 35 were killed while 12 injured in gunfights with police and 26 were killed and 146 injured in police firing during that period.
Another five persons were killed in accidents while they were trying to escape from police custody.
In January this year, the Gauhati high court had disposed a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking independent inquiry into extra-judicial killings in the state by police since May 2021 stating that investigations into circumstances leading to those deaths were already underway.
