The Supreme Court has asked the state of Uttar Pradesh to furnish details of the encounter killings that are taking place in the state.
In a public interest litigation filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties or PUCL, the court directed counsel Aishwarya Bhati to file details of the encounters taking place.
Among the details requested are how the encounters were conducted, how criminals were identified and so on.
Yogi Adityanath-led government has invited criticism for the high number of criminals or suspected criminals that are being killed by the police, before they’ve had a chance to plead their case before a judge.
The NGO said that about 60 people have been killed by the police in encounters in two months.
The Supreme Court did not immediately seek the intervention of the National Human Rights Commission, as the NGO wanted.
The court said the NHRC can probe the incidents if the court finds any kind of discrepancies or excesses in the way these encounters have been conducted.
The Yogi government has been under pressure to crack down upon lawlessness in India’s largest state by population.
Yogi’s predecessor, Akhilesh Yadav, had been accused of not doing enough to crack down on criminal gangs, leading to a state of lawlessness.