Following sharp criticism over recent encounters of criminals, particularly in Sultanpur and Bahraich, the Yogi Adityanath government on Monday issued some guidelines to counter the attacks.

The guidelines have been issued by Director General of Police Prashant Kumar on Monday. Under this, it will be necessary to get the scene videographed in case of death or injury in the encounter.

Also, if a criminal is killed in an encounter, the post-mortem and its videography will also be done by a panel of two doctors. Besides, the forensic team will inspect the scene of the encounter.

Not only this, the DGP has said that the cops of the police station of the area where the encounter takes place will not investigate. It will be investigated by the official of another police station or the crime branch. Officers of a higher level than the officers involved in the encounter will investigate it.

These instructions have been issued by the DGP to the police chiefs of all the districts along with in-charges of police commissionerates.

The guidelines say that if a criminal dies in an encounter, the family members should be informed immediately and the weapons recovered from the criminal will definitely be subjected to ballistic investigation. Not only this, separate copies of the videography of the scene are to be kept as a record.

It is worth mentioning that after the encounter of Mangesh Yadav, who was carrying a bounty of Rs 1 lakh in the Sultanpur robbery case, questions were raised by the Samajwadi Party. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had questioned the encounter, alleging that Mangesh Yadav was killed in a fake encounter. He also linked the encounters happening in UP to the PDA (Pichhada, Dalit and Alpsankhyak). He alleged that the UP Police were carrying out fake encounters of the PDA people.