Vivek Tiwari murder: CCTV footage nails Prashant Chaudhary’s lie; ex-IPS officers deplore police’s ‘trigger-happy’ approach
Recently-released CCTV footage has exposed the lie of Uttar Pradesh police constable Prashant Chaudhary, who claimed that he had fired at Apple executive Vivek Tiwari’s car in self-defence. The footage shows him driving his car at a normal speed, and not in a suspicious way, as claimed by Chaudhary. It also shows Chaudhary and another policeman driving behind the car on a motorbike at 1.24 am. And yet six minutes later, Tiwari was dead, shot in the head by a single bullet.
In an impromptu press meet, Chaudhary said to the media that he was forced to fire in self-defence. He also claimed that when he tried to stop Tiwari for routine checking, the latter tried to run him over and to damage his motorcycle.
These claims have been rubbished by the UP ADG (Law and Order) Anand Kumar, who admitted that this “was a shameful incident for the police force.” He pointed out that neither did Chaudhary sustain any injury, nor did the motorcycle sustain any damage. Tiwari, the autopsy showed, was shot from the front with the bullet going through his chin and getting stuck between the neck and head.
Two separate FIRs have been filed in the case. According to Sana Khan, Tiwari’s colleague who was travelling with him, she was made to sign a blank piece of paper giving a watered-down and lopsided version of the sequence of events. According to this statement made by her, Tiwari was hit by a stray bullet.
Family members of Vivek Tiwari mourning his death. PTI
Tiwari’s wife Kalpana subsequently filed a second FIR on Sunday, emphasising that the bullet which killed her husband was fired with the intention to kill.
Lucknow-based IPS officer SR Darapuri (retd) is horrified at just how “trigger happy” Uttar Pradesh police personnel have become. He says, “A large number of encounters have taken place during Yogi Adityanath’s regime, leaving 78 people killed and another 300 injured on their knees and ankles. The kind of manipulation of evidence that is taking place can be gauged from the fact that Navbharat Times has carried two photographs of Tiwari’s car. One was taken at 2 a.m on Saturday morning which showed the car having suffered minor damage. The second photograph, taken at 2.45 a.m, showed a smashed car with extensive damage. The obvious implication is that the car was deliberately damaged after Tiwari’s death.”
Following his retirement from service, Darapuri is now actively associated with the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). He believes that “the license to kill” policy being pursued by the state government has very dangerous consequences and that Uttar Pradesh has now “become a police state.”
Darapuri is also critical about how some of Chaudhary’s colleagues had tweeted in his support on social media. “If these tweets are genuine, then these serving constables sound as though they are in a mood to revolt. That is a very dangerous trend, against which the state government will have to take immediate steps,” he said.
Dr Vikram Singh, retired Director General of Police, is horrified at the “audacious and irresponsible manner in which Chaudhary was taking to the media in the police station in Lucknow. How can such indiscipline be tolerated?,” asked Singh.
He adds, “Action must be taken not only against Chaudhary, but also against his superiors who issued him an out-of-turn pistol and ammunition, thereby allowing him to carry out this shootout.”
Singh remarked, “Chaudhary was obviously trying to accost Tiwari to get some money out of him, and when he did not get the anticipated response, he acted in this irresponsible manner.
Kalpana Tiwari’s second FIR on Sunday further claimed that police officials at the crime scene did not allow Khan to receive or make calls.
The government is trying to distance itself from the erring constable. Uttar Pradesh law minister Brijesh Pathak said that strict action will be initiated against the senior officers who tried to cover up the incident.
“All the lax officers who tried to cover up the issue will also face action. I never expected that our police could stoop to such a level. The statement of the only eyewitness and the FIR did not match at all,” said Pathak.
A source close to Kalpana Tiwari said that when she met Yogi Adityanath, he expressed sympathy and promised financial assistance. However, the source said that the family remains traumatised.
“Both her young daughters remain in a state of shock,” he said.
Suhas Chakma, director of Asian Centre for Human Rights, quoted NHRC data which shows that there have been 3,000 deaths in police encounters in the last decade. Chakma added that out of these, Uttar Pradesh accounts for 30 percent. He further said that the actual number is likely to higher.
One of the factors which may have contributed to this breakdown of institutional machinery may be that there are 24 percent vacancies in the police force.
Chakma points out, “Neither does Uttar Pradesh face a problem of insurgency nor is it a Naxal-affected state. Then why have the police been given this license to kill?”
The Supreme Court is currently hearing a public interest litigation on encounters by the police. In early July, the apex court had asked the Yogi Adityanath government to respond to a petition seeking a CBI probe into 1,100 alleged encounters which are said to have killed 49 people and injured 370 in Uttar Pradesh in 2017.
PUCL — the petitioners — have described these encounters as “massive administrative liquidations.” Ram Kumar, a senior member of the PUCL in Lucknow said, “The present hue and cry over Vivek Tiwari’s killing is because he was an upper-caste Brahmin and worked for an MNC. Why was a similar reaction not there on the killings of members of the minority and Dalit communities?”
A senior police official pointed out that in the long run, encounter killings result in the brutalisation of both the polity and society. He said that the only way forward is to “sensitise officials about the lawful processes and procedures in order to address the structural reasons behind the high rate of crime in the state and how it should be addressed within the framework of the criminal justice system.”
