Confessions of an Encounter Specialist

My wife has never been comfortable with my encounters. She would go to the temple and pray for forgiveness

Encounter specialist is not a designation officially recognised by the police. It is an expression created by crime reporters. From Mumbai, it spread to other cities and any policeman who shot down criminals was referred to as an encounter specialist. We in the Mumbai team liked it. Our seniors hated it.

We were specially-trained sharp shooters with an amazing network of informants. Once we laid a trap, there was always the question of who would get to shoot at the gangster and whose tally of killings would go up.

I was obsessed with individual scores (of gangsters killed). Particularly, after the press wrote about us. Initially, all the encounter specialists were friends but we started having differences after we started maintaining individual scores. Whose bullet was responsible for the death of a gangster became a matter of heated debate. I personally think that it is the media who brought us down as we got obsessed with the numbers.

We did not get anything from the encounters. Most of us are facing inquiries and have been suspended. We the hunters are the hunted now. Julio Ribeiro called us ‘rascals in uniform’ which is totally unfair. Ribeiro was an encounter specialist himself. Did he not keep in touch with gangs? Where did he get his tip-offs from? Now that he is with NGOs, he calls us ‘rascals’.

When I was an encounter specialist, people would look at me with tremendous respect. I had a boss who told me the personality in uniform should be such that women should want to marry me. I cultivated a sophisticated image, the media romanticised it and I became a real-life hero.

I enjoyed being an encounter specialist. I miss it very much. I’ve never regretted it. My wife blames all my troubles on my ‘bad karma’. She’s never been comfortable with my encounters. Every time there was one, she would go to the temple and pray for forgiveness. She begged me to stop. I could not then and will not ever if given another chance at my job. I need the thrill of just one encounter to be at peace with myself.

A suspended encounter specialist, he has over 80 encounters to his credit. Numerous films have been made on his skills as a sharp shooter

About The Author

Haima Deshpande