When security forces in Argentina abducted a severely disabled girl-student restricted to a wheelchair, some journalists asked how the young woman could possibly be a terrorist. From the very beginning of my researches in Punjab, I have been meeting important officers of the government, politicians, and journalists who privately admit that extrajudicial executions had become necessary in the situation that obtained in Punjab. No judge is willing to convict. No prosecutor is ready to argue. Investigating officers are policemen who live with their families in the towns and villages of Punjab.
Terrorists kidnap and kill their family members.
In this situation, when policemen catch terrorists who have committed heinous crimes, they kill them and put out stories of their death in armed encounters. This is the logic, so convincing to the susceptible but so pernicious. Law enforcing officers must know that it is no use telling the courts that so and so is a leading terrorist. Courts are supposed to operate on the rules of evidence. TADA modified the established norms of criminal trial system in India, going to the extent of shifting the presumption of guilt against the accused.