[The
four men were in police custody when they were killed early Friday. A senior
police official told reporters that as part of the investigation, officers had
taken the suspects to the spot where the victim’s body was found burned. He
said two of the men grabbed police officers’ weapons while the two others
attacked officers with sticks and stones.]
By Joanna
Slater
 |
|
Indian
police officers guard the area Friday where four men accused of rape and murder
were
shot in Shadnagar, on the outskirts of Hyderabad. (Mahesh Kumar A/AP)
|
NEW
DELHI — Police officers shot
and killed four suspects in the rape and killing of a young veterinarian in the
southern Indian city of Hyderabad, a startling turn in a case that had
triggered a nationwide furor.
The four men were in police custody when they
were killed early Friday. A senior police official told reporters that as part
of the investigation, officers had taken the suspects to the spot where the
victim’s body was found burned. He said two of the men grabbed police officers’
weapons while the two others attacked officers with sticks and stones.
Prakash Reddy, a deputy police commissioner
in Hyderabad, said the four were killed in “crossfire.”
The deaths sparked praise in some quarters in
a country that has grappled with gruesome crimes against women and girls. But
activists and lawyers said the shootings bore the hallmarks of extrajudicial
killings.
Speaking to reporters Friday, the victim’s
mother expressed satisfaction that the suspects were dead.
“We did not expect that justice will be
delivered,” she said. “I have been saying that the government will not do
anything, but today they have done something.”
Activists said the official explanation for
the shooting beggared belief. This was “a planned murder,” Kavita Srivastava of
the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, a human rights group, said in a
statement. The officers involved should be charged and tried, she said.
There is “no justice” in such killings,
Kalpana Kannabiran, a Hyderabad-based sociologist and women’s rights activist,
wrote on Facebook. “Only a macho show of power . . .
that does great disservice to the memory of women assaulted, killed and
maimed.”
On the evening of Nov. 27, a 26-year-old
veterinarian had parked her scooter near a busy toll plaza in Hyderabad. Four
men nearby saw her and made a plan to assault her, police said. The men
allegedly deflated her tire to prevent her from leaving, then gang-raped and
suffocated her. Her burned body was discovered the next morning in a passage
under a highway.
Police swiftly apprehended the four suspects
and said they confessed to the crime. The Washington Post was unable to reach
lawyers for any of the men, and it is unclear whether they had legal counsel.
Officials said that they would complete the investigation as quickly as
possible and that the case would be tried in a fast-track court.
The veterinarian’s rape and killing recalled
a 2012 attack in which a young woman died after a brutal sexual assault on a
bus, prompting widespread protests. Four suspects in that case were convicted
and sentenced to death in 2013, but the sentences have yet to be carried out.
Killings by police of suspected criminals are
so widespread in India that they have their own terminology. Such incidents are
known as “encounter” killings, and the officers involved typically state that
they acted in self-
defense.
But activists say that in practice, police
officers enjoy broad impunity and that the killings are not followed by
thorough investigations.
Katthi Somireddy lives on a farm about 300
yards from the spot where the four suspects were killed. He said it was still
dark when he heard the sound of gunshots. He estimated he heard 14 rounds
fired.
On Friday afternoon, the bodies of the four
men, all barefoot, were still lying in an empty field. Two had pistols in their
hands. The suspects were not handcuffed at the time of the incident, police
said.
Crowds gathered at the spot where the
suspects were killed to praise the shootings. “Long live police officers!” they
shouted. Some showered officers with flower petals and lifted them on their
shoulders. Elsewhere, people plied officers with sweets, a gesture used to mark
happy occasions.
S. Jeevan Kumar of the Hyderabad-based Human
Rights Forum appealed to the public not to get “carried away by instant
emotions” that could allow the authorities to trample people’s rights.
“The state should have adhered to due
procedure in delivering justice,” Kumar said. “We are compelled to believe that
the government has no faith in the judiciary and its own law.”
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