(Per Goda Raghuram, J.)

Comoetina interoretations of recurrent. contemooraneous events:

Since the inception of the naxalite movement in Andhra Pradesh in 1969, 551 police personnel were killed including one DIG, two S.Ps, five D.S. Ps; 16 Inspectors and 49 Sub-Inspectors. 2928 civilians were killed; public and private property worth hundred of crores of rupees was destroyed; the extremist groups indulged in mindless violence and committed brutal murders. The naxal violence increased since 1991. They deliberately ambush and attack police with sophisticated firearms and explosives. In order to create terror the Maoists are also targeting functionaries of ruling political parties and killing them brutally - (counter affidavit of the Director General of Police in W. P. No. 154191 06 including Annexures 2 and 7)

2. The State Executive for the first time started extra-legal killing which is popularly known as Encounter since 1968 and as on today in the name of alleged encounter the State has snatched away lives of about 4000 people during the last four decades (written submissions dated 4.3.2008 of Mr. V. Raghunath, Advocate for APCLC, in W.P.Nos. 790612000, 14475102 and 440103)

3. The lesson for the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) is thus clear: it should advise state governments that brutal repression is no answer to the Naxalite movement; that the Naxalite ideology must be fought politically; that Naxalite criminal actions must be dealt with under the existing criminal and human rights laws; and that Naxalite social base, which springs from exploitation, inequality and injustice must be countered by purposeful political and administrative action to implement the promises made in the Preamble and the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution. Police repression is attractive and easy to adopt by a government armed to the teeth with paramilitary forces, equipment, firepower and mobility! However, police repression only goes to strengthen the Maoist thesis on the class character of the Indian State. It is counter-productive and helps to increase the mass base of the Naxalites, which arises out of the failure of the State to deliver the developmental goods as mandated by the Constitution - Political Violence and the Police in India'.

4. Steven Pinker observes: The most important and under appreciated trend in the history of our species: is the decline of violence. Cruelty as popular entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, genocide for convenience, torture and mutilation as routine forms of punishment, execution for trivial crimes and misdemeanors, assassination as a means of political succession, pogroms as an outlet for frustration, and homicide as the major means of conflict resolution - all were unexceptional features of life for most of human history. Yet today they are statistically rare in the West, less common elsewhere than they used to be, and widely condemned when they do occur.

5. According to the eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm: The twentieth century was the most murderous in recorded history. The total number of deaths caused by or associated with its wars is estimated at 187 million, the equivalent of more than 10 percent of the world's population in 1913. --At the start of the twenty-first century we find ourselves in a world where armed operations are no longer essentially in the hands of governments or their authorized agents, and where the contending parties have no common characteristics, status or objectives, except the willingness to use violence.

6. State action against terrorism (including the domestic variety), blurs legal, moral and ethical definitions of appropriate substantive and procedural rules of peacetime law enforcement engagement under constitutional norms of governance on the one hand; and war on the other. War is also a species of conflict;

1. K.S. Subramanian: Political Violence and the Police in India pp 139-140 - Sage Publicat