Since the day Yogi Adityanath government was sworn in, UP’s criminals have gone into a state of complete pandemonium. UP Police’s relentless crackdown on criminals has sent shockwaves across the state. A record 1,142 encounters have been recorded, killing 38 criminals since the new dispensation took over. A whopping 2,744 arrests have been made.
Seasonal Humanitarian Organizations like the NHRC and Amnesty who remain oblivious to excesses committed by the people on the other side of the law, took notice of it and unsurprisingly sent notices to the UP government demanding an explanation over such ‘Widespread killings’ in the state alleging that the UP Police is misusing the powers vested in their hands on the orders of their ‘higher-ups’. They even claimed that the UP Police is using it settle scores.
One can always wonder where were these so-called Human Rights organisations when the same criminals were wreaking havoc in the state riding high on the special love bestowed onto them by the SP government. Despite the fact that police and magisterial inquiries have been ordered into every encounter killing and absolutely no one has accused the police yet of staging a fake encounter, the decision to send a notice to the UP government is nothing but a case of pointless wailing by the likes of NHRC and Amnesty. Amnesty India went ahead and tweeted that over 900 people have been killed under the tenure of Yogi government. But Yogi’s police were in no mood to take that lying down. UP Police sent a savage reply mentioning that Amnesty’s report is shoddily researched. the NGO subsequently changed the tweet to ‘900 people killed or injured’. UP Police sent a counter notice to Amnesty.
Yogi Adityanath’s critics expected the encounters to reduce dramatically after his government received notices from the NHRC. However, Yogi Adityanath is not the one to be intimidated easily and his reply to NHRC’s notices is surely going to give sleepless nights to the criminals, who weren’t having much of a sleep anyway.
Here’s what Yogi Adityanath said: “Everyone should be guaranteed security, but those who want to disturb the peace of the society and believe in the gun, should be given the answer in the language of the gun itself. I would tell the administration, that there is no need to worry on this”.
A man of his words, no notice was going to hamper Yogi Adityanath’s work. The last 25 days alone has seen UP Police conducting 60 encounters, killing eight criminals. A couple of days back, just before the dawn, Manoj Kumar Singh, wanted in 17 criminal cases was killed in retaliatory firing by the UP Police.
The problem in Uttar Pradesh was not that of a weak law and order structure but about the total absence of it. It was paradise for organized Mafia which went about their business, unbridled and unchecked. The last Samajwadi Government was not just lenient on them, but it even facilitated their operations. The relentless crackdown has made the lives of criminals extremely difficult and it is only natural that the ones in power who used to support them, at times act like their apologists have been rattled too. During the UP-Assembly’s Budget session, Governor Ram Naik was met with abuses and slogans raised by the SP MLAs who even hurled paper balls and balloons at him while he was making an address to the joint sitting of the state legislature. But there is a big takeaway, the state that saw gunfires at an alarming regularity has been reduced to paper balls. This perhaps is one of the greatest achievements of the Yogi Adityanath government till date.