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New Delhi: In an unusual turn of events, the Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh finds itself pushed on the defensive on the issue of police encounters and arbitrary police action. A damaging rebuke by the Allahabad high court has compounded trouble for the government in Lucknow, at a time when its own state ministers have asked sharp questions of it.

The political and legal pressure on the government converged this week following a scathing observation by Justice Vinod Diwakar of the Allahabad high court in a judgment dated June 3. “The vertical loyalty of officers runs not toward the Constitution but toward the ruling dispensation. Field officers, acutely conscious of the transfer-posting economy, calibrate their conduct to satisfy political superiors,” the court said.

“Encounter killings, selective crackdowns, and targeted use of the Gangsters Act against inconvenient individuals have periodically attracted judicial notice.”

Justice Diwakar’s devastating appraisal of the state of the police under Adityanath came while quashing the entire proceedings under the Gangsters Act against a man, his son and daughter-in-law in Ghaziabad.

The court’s remarks could not have come at a worse time for the Adityanath-led government. It directly coincides with a fierce political backlash and pressure the government is facing following the recent killing of a 28-year-old man, Kamlesh Bind, in an alleged “encounter” in Ghazipur late on June 3.

Not just the opposition, even members of Adityanath’s own government, in particular a crucial ally, Sanjay Nishad, are questioning the alleged encounter killing, in a rare public fracture of the ruling alliance.

Kamlesh Bind, associated with the Samajwadi Party, was killed late on June 3 after being wanted in connection........

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