UP-style policing fears surface as encounter killings, custody deaths rise in Bengal
Back-to-back encounter killings, custodial deaths and public parading of accused raise fresh concerns over due process and police accountability in Bengal
While cases of vigilante justice and mob attacks have gone up in BJP-ruled Bengal, custodial deaths and encounter killings have made an appearance as well.
Two men accused of serious crimes have been shot dead by the police within hours of each other, while the death of an undertrial prisoner in a hospital has raised questions about the treatment of accused in police custody.
In Gaighata, North 24-Parganas, Prahlad Das, accused of rape and murder of a teenage girl, was shot dead by the police when he allegedly snatched a service revolver and opened fire while being taken back from a crime scene reconstruction late on Monday (October 26).
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In Dhulian, Murshidabad, police made a similar claim after Samiul Sheikh, accused in the murder of Sujit Mondal, allegedly seized a firearm and fired at officers during a reconstruction exercise on Tuesday. He, too, died in retaliatory firing, according to the police.
Uncanny action replay
The shootings follow the July killing of Prabhas Mondal, the prime accused in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Baruipur, who, too, had snatched an officer’s revolver during a crime scene reconstruction, police claimed.
That incident, the first reported encounter killing of an accused under the BJP government, prompted a legal challenge and demands for an independent inquiry.
The recurrence of a strikingly similar sequence of events within four months has fuelled concerns that encounter killings could become an increasingly accepted feature of policing in Bengal.
Undertrials found dead in hospital
Concerns over police accountability have been further fuelled by a series of custodial deaths in recent months.
Basudeb Naskar, an undertrial prisoner arrested on allegations of practising medicine without valid qualifications and issuing fake death certificates, died at Baruipur Subdivisional Hospital on Tuesday (October 27).
His wife, Sonali Naskar, alleged that she found him tied to a hospital bed and was not formally informed about his hospitalisation or death. The cause of death remains to be established.
Another undertrial prisoner, Azharul Laskar, died at the same hospital earlier this month.
Following UP model?
Separately, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari acknowledged in August that Trinamool Congress worker Birju Keot had died in police custody and ordered a magisterial inquiry.
The political context makes the latest encounters particularly significant.
During the campaign for the 2023 panchayat elections, Adhikari, then the BJP’s Leader of the Opposition, advocated an Uttar Pradesh-style encounter model in response to a schoolgirl’s murder in Darjeeling district. Human-rights activists condemned the suggestion as a call for unconstitutional action.
Open support for extrajudicial punishment
After Mondal was killed in July, BJP leaders again publicly welcomed the police action. The party’s state spokesperson Debjit Sarkar described it as “divine justice”, while state president Samik Bhattacharya linked it to the BJP’s promise to improve women’s safety.
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Opposition parties, including the TMC, Left and Congress, criticised the killing as extrajudicial punishment, while the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) warned that the government’s rhetoric risked encouraging such actions.
Criticising the police action, APDR vice-president Ranjit Sur said the use of extrajudicial means to punish the accused could not be justified.
Reconstruction or punishment?
Another incident in Kolkata on Tuesday (October 27) raised similar questions about the use of extrajudicial methods in dealing with accused persons.
In Sarsuna, in the Behala area, police made three men—accused of forcing a young man, his father and a friend to walk naked along a public road—walk through the neighbourhood shirtless and barefoot.
Police described the exercise as part of a crime-scene reconstruction, but human-rights activists and opposition leaders questioned whether the treatment was justified and whether making them walk publicly in a state of undress amounted to punishment before trial.
Bengal’s history of encounter killings
Encounter killings are not new to Bengal. Human-rights activists have documented allegations of staged encounters under successive governments, from the crackdown during the Naxalite movement to killings during the Left Front and TMC years.
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The killing of Maoist leader Kishenji in 2011 and the death of murder accused Sajjak Alam near the Bangladesh border in January 2025 also drew criticism from rights groups.
The concern under the BJP government, however, is that political endorsement of the encounter model could weaken the distinction between lawful policing and punishment outside the courts, a risk flagged by rights activists such as Sur.
Need for transparency
In the two latest shootings, the police accounts have yet to be independently established through investigations.
A genuine armed attack may justify force in self-defence, but the circumstances must be tested against forensic evidence, ballistic findings, medical reports, witness accounts and available CCTV footage. Investigators must also examine how accused persons under police control were able to gain access to service firearms.
The Supreme Court’s 2014 judgment in People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. State of Maharashtra laid down safeguards for investigating encounter deaths, including independent investigations and magisterial inquiries.
These procedures are intended to ensure that officers involved in a killing are not left to determine the legality of their own actions. Custodial deaths demand the same commitment to transparency.
