Encounter killing

An encounter killing, often simply called an encounter, is an extrajudicial killing by police or the armed forces in South Asia, supposedly in self-defence when they encounter suspected gangsters or terrorists. The officers typically described the incidents as a shootout situation, often allegedly starting when a criminal grabs for the gun of a police officer.^[1] The term encounter came into widespread use for such incidents in the late 20th century.

Critics are sceptical of the police motivation behind many of these reported incidents,^[2] and further complain that the wide acceptance of the practice has led to incidents of the police staging encounters to conceal the killing of suspects when they are either already in custody or are unarmed or have surrendered (or would have been willing to surrender if given the opportunity).^[3] Such instances are called fake encounters.^[4] In some cases, surrendered criminals are shot in the leg as an extrajudicial punishment; these are called half encounters.^[5][6]

Sometimes police officers are also killed in such incidents, although relatively rarely. Over a two-year period in Uttar Pradesh, for example, encounters reportedly resulted in the death of 103 alleged criminals and 5 police officers.^[7][8] Several individual police officers have reportedly been involved in more than 100 killings in encounters, and Pradeep Sharma was reportedly involved in more than 300.^[9]

In the 1990s and the mid-2000s, the Mumbai Police used encounter killings to attack the city's underworld, and the practice spread to other large cities. In Pakistan, the Sindh Police are notorious for extrajudicial killings through fake encounters, especially in Karachi.^[10]

In the six years between 2016/2017 and 2021/2022, a case of encounter killing has been registered once every three days in India, with 813 such cases of encounter killings, according to National Human Rights Commission of India data. There were no convictions of any officials involved in these killings during that period.^[11]