“Half encounter” – or what the Uttar Pradesh Police call “Operation Langda” – is a practice in which police shoot suspects in the leg to capture them alive. Once hit, the accused collapses, and the police make the arrest.

This is the story of Hemant from Mathura, who runs a DJ system business for a living. On March 1, police picked him up from a shop in Aurangabad Bazaar. In the intervening night of March 3 and 4, police claimed there was an encounter, and shot Hemant and another young man in the leg.

However, the incident of Hemant being taken away was captured on nearby CCTV cameras. Strangely, his family had already filed a missing person complaint at Sadar Bazaar police station on March 2, raising serious questions about the police’s encounter narrative.

According to the Uttar Pradesh Police, there have been 14,973 encounters, in which 238 alleged criminals were killed and 9,467 shot in the leg since 2017. Additionally, 30,694 suspects have been arrested.

DGP Rajeev Krishna says most encounters took place in western UP’s Meerut zone, with 7,969 arrests and 2,911 injured. In the Agra zone, police arrested 5,529 suspects, injuring 741; in the Bareilly zone, there were 4,383 arrests and 921 injured.

For this report, we travelled to Mathura, including the spot about 35 km from Hemant’s home where police shot him.

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