Exclusive | Was Part of Many Fake Encounters, Ordered to Kill by Superiors: Manipur Cop to SC

Courtesy : News 18

Still awaiting a chance to make a judicial confession, Herojit Singh tells Supreme Court that he can help contribute to the investigation since he was “present at many of these fake encounters”.

Subhajit Sengupta | CNN-News18SubhajitSG

Updated:January 8, 2018, 1:57 PM IST

New Delhi: Manipur’s once-dreaded encounter specialist, head constable Herojit Singh has now moved the Supreme Court with a sensational disclosure that he was “witness to a large number of fake encounters in Manipur between 2003 and 2009”.

Herojit, who has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court, has further alleged that “all of these fake encounters were carried out on the direct orders of the superior officers”.

Singh was one of the main encounter specialists among Manipur commandos in those six years.

According to NHRC data, Manipur has the dubious distinction of the maximum number of fake encounters in 2008-09, only after Uttar Pradesh.

Over six years after the killing of PLA militant Sanjit Meitei, Herojit Singh had first confessed on News18 in 2016, of killing Meitei.

Singh went on record to say that he pumped bullets into the former PLA militant while acting on orders from his senior, the then Additional Superintendent of Police in Imphal. He said that he shot Meitei on the chest with a 9mm pistol.

Singh had also claimed that the Manipur DGP and Chief Minister were in the know about the execution.

Commandos of Manipur Police were in July 2009 accused of killing Sanjit, who was shot dead on a busy road in Imphal, even after surrendering. The killing of the unarmed youth led to protests across the state.

Herojit now claims that after his tell-all interview in 2016, when he wanted to file an affidavit in the trial court regarding the same, “lawyers supposedly acting in my defence abandoned me saying that since I had given an affidavit to the trial court (in Imphal), they could not defend me. Apparently, the court appointed an amicus but it was not verified. In any case, I was never given a chance to appoint a lawyer of my choice and I went unrepresented.”

His affidavit in the Supreme Court that is up for hearing on Monday, further mentions that there was a plan to kill him and that he survived an assassination bid.

The affidavit says, “On 30.4.16 at 8.30 p.m. a TATA pickup truck without lights and number plate deliberately slammed into my car about a kilometer from my house with the intention of killing me. I was seriously injured with multiple fractures and had to take 38 stitches. I continued to pose a threat to all the officers who gave orders and routinely continued to give orders without hesitation and without reason for the extrajudicial executions of innocent citizens of India and this is why I fear that I will suffer the same fate. (sic)”