Killings in police encounter

KILLINGS by law-enforcers have registered an alarming rise over the last three weeks or so. Reports have it that some 13 people have been killed since the January 5 election in different parts of the country, of whom nine were victims of the so-called 'gunfights' with the joint forces, while bullet-hit corpses of four others were recovered later.
This report sends a chill down one's spine. The law-enforcing authorities while explaining the circumstances of the incidents have come up with the very familiar stories of encounters. What remains still unexplained is why the law-enforcers couldn't avoid gunfight in almost every case..  
Listing some 15 such deadly encounters taking place in January till date, in which the victims were mostly members of Jamaat-Shibir, Ain-o-Salish Kendra (ASK), a hunan rights watchdog, has condemned these incidents terming them extra-judicial killings.
In this paper, we have consistently been against such blatant use of power by the police, however serious the allegations against the victims might have been. These victims have been denied their basic human rights of defending their cases in the court of law.
By killing the victims in such encounters, members of the law-enforcement agency have themselves seriously violated the rule of law. They deserve to be held accountable and the guilty punished. We demand an independent probe into the incidents.