Does India need (fake) encounters to deal with terrorists?

These days there is increasing focus on the encounters in different states. Public becomes very much outrageous when the news of encounter of MBA student in Dehradun comes or the report of fake (?) encounter of Ishrat Jahan becomes public. There are four different scenarios in any encounter that need to be understand before making any opinion otherwise the whole debate on encounter killing is meaningless.

There is encounter or fake encounter (staged operation) and there is a target. The target can be a dreaded terrorist or an innocent. Everyone agrees that any innocent should not be killed in any encounter (fake or genuine). What is debatable is whether police force should have power to kill a terrorist or any other anti-social element without trying to bring them before the court of law? Human right activist and some other civic value supporters want to abolish encounter at all. This is very ideal situation and is perfect when everything works as it should. But it is not pragmatic. When the criminal cases drags for years in the court and there is no hope of solving the cases in future either then how can one trust the court? It is not that the judiciary does not try to solve the cases but there is too much work in the courts and also the investigating agencies do not provide proper documents quickly. Even after 2o years case of Bofors bribery is not solved, one year has passed Indian government has not provided any concrete evidence against 26/11 terrorist, even daud ibrahim will get bail eventually because CBI will not be able to provide all evidence against him at the time. It took decades to find and kill sandal wood bandit Veerapan when he was not living far from habitat.

Should the police force let these well-known anti-social elements walk free on bail from court and let them continue there activities and wipe out the evidence against them and kill the witnesses or kill them in encounter even if it is fake? General consensus is police should be aloud to kill them as soon as they are captured. This consensus gives extra-ordinary power to police, directly, and politicians, indirectly. Many of the so-called encounter specialists have been convicted of extortion and working on behest of someone. And using this extra-ordinary power they have killed many innocent people sometime to please someone and sometime under pressure to solve some criminal cases quickly.

As the consensus supports existence of encounter, the misuse of this extra-ordinary power develops the need for proper and independent monitoring of these encounters. There is currently system in place for the enquiry after each encounter but it is not efficient and there are cover up to protect the fellow police officers. This needs to be abolished. Any police officer found guilty of encounter of innocent people should be punished without showing any leniency. When these police officers will be punished for the crime they commit, public faith will be restored in the police and encounter will become non-debatable issues.