Thma U Rangli-Juki (TUR) has slammed the one man Justice Vaiphei inquiry into the death of militant leader Cheristerfield Thangkhiew, saying that it is “normalising state terror”.
Calling Thangkhiew’s death a state-sponsored murder, TUR said that the government swept the incident under the carpet with a “wishy washy” inquiry, which, by not calling the killing a fake encounter, has called “into question the intent” of the inquiry.
“By normalising state terror the government is creating a culture of impunity. If the state itself becomes the lawbreaker and violator of human rights it loses its moral standing,” TUR said in a release today. “This creates a situation in which things like mob lynching (like that of the escaped convicts in West Jaintia Hills) are normalised. We demand immediate action against police personnel involved in the fake encounter of Cheristerfield Thangkhiew and the prison officials who oversaw the jail break and the people involved in the subsequest lynching of the undertrials.”
Thangkhiew was killed in a police raid in the wee hours of August 13, 2021. Police suspected him of being involved in several improvised explosive device (IED) blasts in East Jaintia Hills and Shillong. The authorities claimed he had attacked them with a knife during the raid. The Justice Vaiphei inquiry found that the police had acted hastily in conducting the raid in the middle of the night, saying that the operation was well-planned but executed poorly, recklessly, hastily and without proper application of mind.
