The Supreme Court on Monday questioned whether the Assam Police was targeting a particular committee in the state through allegedly staged gunfights, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan also asked the state government about the “slow” police investigations in such cases. The bench made the verbal observation while hearing a petition on deaths in allegedly fake gunfights in the state.

The petitioner, Arif Jwaddar, claimed that more than 80 staged gunfights have taken place in the state since May 2021, when Bharatiya Janata Party leader Himanta Biswa Sarma became the chief minister. He said that 28 persons were killed and 48 were injured in “fake encounters” in this period.

Jwaddar approached the Supreme Court after the Gauhati High Court rejected his public interest litigation seeking an inquiry into the matter.

“Are police personnel targeting a community?” Bhuyan asked the state government on Monday. “Going overboard in their duties? Petitions such as this cannot be dismissed by stating as premature in nature.”

He added: “The magisterial enquiry should not be going on till now. It should hardly take 10 or 15 days. These incidents are of 2021 and 2022. It would be futile.”

“Whatever it maybe, it cannot be said that encounter did not happen,” the court said, according to Bar and Bench. “State has a very troubled past. There are reports as well. You cannot deny that.”

During the proceedings, Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the petitioner, claimed that hundreds of staged gunfights had taken place in Assam, Live Law reported.

There were neither forensic and ballistic analyses nor a magisterial or independent inquiry in the majority of these cases, Bhushan said. Cases were instead filed against the victims of such gunfights, he claimed, adding that the police officers accused of staging them probed such cases.

Additional Advocate General Nalin Kohli, representing the Assam government, noted that the Gauhati High Court had expressed concerns about the credentials of the petitioner and the “patently false” statements, according to Live Law.

Subsequently, the top court asked whether the National Human Rights Commission had ordered any investigation into such cases.

In response, Bhushan told the bench that the petitioner had first approached the commission. The case was then transferred to the Assam Human Rights Commission, which closed it.

The bench remarked that it expected the National Human Rights Commission to be at the “forefront on these civil liberties issues”. It said it would examine whether the Assam Human Rights Commission should have gone to the court with the data instead of closing the cases.

The matter was listed for hearing on November 26 after the court asked the state government to give details of 171 “encounter” cases.

In the earlier hearing on September 10, the court said that it intended to form a commission to look into such deaths.

Since Sarma became the chief minister of Assam, the state has seen several police shootings. Many of those injured and killed belong to the state’s ethnic and religious minorities. The police have defended their actions, claiming that the accused persons were gunned down as they were trying to flee or attacking officials.

In February 2023, the Assam Human Rights Commission found two officials guilty of killing a man accused of theft in a fake gunfight in 2021.

Nevertheless, state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pijush Hazarika told the Assembly on April 4 that no one had been killed in “police encounters” in Assam. While Hazarika stated that some casualties and injuries have occurred due to police action, he claimed that the police fired in self-defence in those cases.