SHILLONG: The Centre has expressed unhappiness over the style and functioning of the police forces both from the State and the Centre deployed in the North East as they had failed to address the problems of unrest in the region including insurgency in a balanced manner since there were several cases of human rights violations.
The NHRC had recently pulled up many state governments in the North East for several cases of fake encounters and custodial deaths especially in Meghalaya and Manipur.
An official source said the stand of the Centre is that despite spending crores of rupees for modernization of police forces, the output was not encouraging.
Though the security heads of the Northeastern states met on Thursday to discuss the need to have better coordination in dealing with insurgents, the issue of respecting human rights was not part of the agenda, sources said.
Recently, the Meghalaya government had to disburse Rs.20 lakh in a fake encounter case involving four militants. During the early hours of December 10, 2010 GNLA leader Joking Momin and three other cadres were killed in an encounter with the police at Gajingpara in North Garo Hills.
After the direction of NHRC, the Political department has initiated the move to disburse Rs 20 lakh (Rs 5 lakh each as ex-gratia) to the relatives of four slain militants in the fake encounter case.
Moreover, in the case of custodial death of Witson Sangma, the State government has already released Rs 5 lakh to the victim’s wife even as disciplinary actions against five police personnel involved in the crime in still awaited.
The NHRC had recommended action against several police personnel in these cases, but in vain as the Meghalaya police failed to act, sources added.
An official with the Political department said the matter was taken up with the Meghalaya police headquarters. Earlier, the Political department had also recommended action against police personnel involved in the Mookhep firing incident which resulted in the death of two civilians, but there was no follow up action from the police headquarters.
When contacted, a senior police official said he will verify the pending cases.
Furthermore, there was a case involving army personnel who had on November 25 night last year shot dead a school teacher Alphius M Momin (35) and his friend Sweetbirth D Marak (30), in a case of mistaken identity at Rajasimla, North Garo Hills, when they were travelling on a motorcycle.
However, the relatives are yet to get justice as the Army has not fixed responsibility on anyone.
