The security forces are the biggest killing machine in the country. This has been confirmed by a startling revelation by the national human rights commission (NHRC) which says that half of the cases of police encounters referred to it for investigation turned out to be fake.

In response to a RTI application filed by Afroz Alam, a student of Jamia Millia Islamia university, the NHRC informed that of 2560 cases it had been probing since its inception in 1993, 1224 cases proved to be fake. In essence, the NHRC's finding confirms the worst fear that the state forces are increasingly becoming trigger-happy.

Various social organisations have been raising this issue every since the security forces started resorting to extra-judicial execution after branding even innocents as criminals. In fact, this trend had begun in West Bengal in late sixties and early seventies when the then chief minister Siddharth Shankar Roy gave the police unbridled power to execute anyone after branding them naxalite without trial. In Uttar Pradesh, the police earned notoriety by staging fake encounter during VP Singh's stint as chief minister who ordered execution of dacoits in Chambal and Yamuna ravines.

Perhaps, the police forces of Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra found the exetra judicial execution as the easiest way to deal with the crime. In Mumbai and Delhi where the police was equipped with most modern weapons and facilities, trigger-happy cops were not only pampered but also given unfettered right to liquidate people with suspected criminal background. This was the precise reason which led the Delhi police to kill two innocent businessmen at connaught place in broad day light. Similarly in Mumbai, police officers known as encounter-experts cropped up in large scale. Even as the security forces continued their extra-judicial execution with impunity, human rights groups have been raising the issue at every fora, including Parliament.

The NHRC's finding procured through the RTI is expected to give a new boost the human rights groups who can launch a vigorous campaign to humanise the security forces. As per the NHRC records, the facts point to a grim scenario about brutalisation of the forces. For instance, the NHRC received 432 cases related to communal riots/ caste violence; 2320 cases of deaths in police custody and 4502 cases of exploitation of women in the last 16 years.