When the Applause Comes Before the Inquiry: The SP's Real Test After Bengal's Custody Killings

The Shot Has Been Fired. Now the SP Has to Choose.

Imagine you are the Superintendent of Police in the district where Prahlad Das died. He was in your force's custody, remanded for 10 days and accused of raping and killing a 17-year-old schoolgirl. Your officers say he grabbed a service revolver during a crime-scene reconstruction, fired, jumped into a pond and was shot as they fired back.

Within hours a second accused, Samaul Sheikh, died in Murshidabad with almost the same account attached. The Chief Minister has said the police have complete freedom in such cases. A Cabinet minister says criminals will now be afraid.

The victim's father says it was good. Everyone is applauding. Your signature on the next file decides whether the applause becomes policy.

The easy answer and why it is too easy The easy answer is to treat this as a crime story with a satisfying ending: back your men, file the routine paperwork and let the matter fade.

But three facts make that impossible for an honest officer.

• The man was in custody. In custody the State holds every advantage: handcuffs, escorts, numbers and timing. A death in those conditions is the hardest kind for the State to justify, so the law presumes it needs justifying.
• The script keeps repeating. Das, Sheikh and Prabhas Mondal in Baruipur in July were each killed during a reconstruction after supposedly reaching for a weapon. One such account may be true. A pattern of identical ones is evidence that needs testing.
• The 2019 Hyderabad case shows how this can end. Four suspects in a veterinarian's rape and murder were shot during a reconstruction, the public cheered and the Supreme Court-appointed Sirpurkar Commission later found the encounter was staged.

The hesitation that is not weakness Holding back from a full inquiry is not simply cowardice and the case for it deserves to be stated honestly.

Your officers may really have been attacked; the GAP_FILL account says one officer jumped into a pond to escape the gunfire. An FIR naming your own men, a magisterial inquiry and an NHRC report will put people who may be innocent through months of scrutiny. That will happen while a government that praised them watches you appear to betray them. Force morale is real. So is your career.

What the

obligation actually requires Article 21 does not stop applying to people accused of the worst crimes. It is tested most by exactly those people. Article 14 means that how heinous the accusation is cannot change the procedure owed. PUCL v. State of Maharashtra (2014) turns that into duty:

• an FIR on the encounter - an independent investigation by the CID or another station - a magisterial inquiry under BNSS Section 196
• intimation to the NHRC or SHRC - no out-of-turn rewards for the officers involved

The resolution You follow PUCL in full, visibly and without delay.

Your public statement neither endorses the killings nor condemns your men. It explains that the procedure is the protection. This has a real cost: the government's goodwill, some of your force's trust and possibly your posting.

But think about what the other path costs. The girl's family loses the trial that would have established, on record, what happened to her. Every future accused in your district loses the presumption that custody is safe.

And the next officer who is tempted learns that a reconstruction can serve as a sentence. The father's question deserves a court's answer, not a gun's.