Two shot dead in Aligarh police encounter, journalists invited to watch, film
Aligarh, Sept 20 (IBNS) : Two men were shot dead by the Uttar Pradesh police on Thursday early morning encounter as journalists were "invited" before the shooting and allowed to capture it in camera, NDTV reported.
Video footage from the encounter site in Aligarh shows policemen armed with guns taking aim and firing.
NDTV quoted the police as having claimed that the two men -- Mustakim and Naushad --accused of committing at least six murders in the last month, were on wanted list.
Two of their victims were stated to be Hindu priests.
"This happened around 6:30 in the morning. Two men on a bike passed a police team and when we tried to stop them, they fired at us. We gave chase and they went and hid in an abandoned government office building about four kilometres away. They were firing at us from there too. We got reinforcements. When we fired, both of these people got hit and they were declared dead in hospital. One of our officers was also wounded," NDTV quoted Aligarh's police chief Ajay Sahni as saying.
On Wednesday, six people -- all Muslims -- had been arrested for the six murders over the last month, NDTV said.
The UP government says 66 people have been killed in police encounters since March 2017, when Yogi Adityanath took charge as chief minister. The number of encounters is well over 1,000 -- hundreds of criminals have been arrested, the police say.
Recently, Uttar Pradesh police chief OP Singh had said police encounters were part of a well chalked out "strategy" to arrest hardened criminals.
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