The story so far:

The “leg-shot” doctrine appears to have become the new normal in Uttar Pradesh, emerging as a genuine crime-control model that Herbert Packer advocated in 1968, in his work — The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Between 2017 and 2025, the State Police recorded over 16,000 encounter operations. In about 97% of cases, the accused survived with a bullet wound to the leg. At this scale, the question is no longer whether something unusual happened, but what it means when the unusual becomes routine.

What is Operation Langda?

A motorcycle is intercepted on a highway. The accused attempts to flee. Shots are fired. He is injured, typically in the leg, and taken into custody. This sequence, which now recurs across the State, is now known as “Operation Langda”, or “half-encounters”, from the Hindi word langda (lame), a policing methodology cultivated by the Uttar Pradesh Police since 2017 under its “zero-tolerance” framework. What may initially have appeared as a sporadic enforcement tactic has, over time, acquired the characteristics of a routine practice governed by a dual logic of incapacitation and punishment.

 Refined through repetition, encounters have evolved into a recognisable policing pattern marked by targeted leg injury, standardised reporting, official endorsement and overt punitive logic.

How are half-encounters structured?

A study by the Centre for Criminology and Victimology at National Law University Delhi, based on official U.P. Police data and 100 verified encounter cases (January 2025–May 2026), found that these incidents follow a near-identical sequence: intelligence received, suspect intercepted, alleged attempt to flee or fire, police response in self-defence, gunshot to the leg, arrest, and recovery of a locally made pistol. This seven-step sequence is the standardised operational template of Operation Langda, repeated across more than 30 districts over nearly a decade.

What distinguishes the practice is its focus on incapacitation rather than lethality. By visibly disabling accused persons, it functions as both a disciplinary mechanism and an assertion of state authority. The standardised language of police reports further normalises this extra-procedural punishment by presenting it as routine law enforcement. Nearly 80% of 100 cases in the micro-level dataset used either “retaliation” or “self-defence” as the major justificatory framing, no matter what the alleged offence is.

The consistency of this framing across widely different offences suggests a standardised narrative template rather than case-specific accounts. This helps reproduce the practice across districts as a recognisable policing methodology.

In most of the 100 cases examined, media reports reproduced the police version without critical scrutiny. Critical coverage emerged only when direct counter-evidence challenged the official narrative. As a result, these incidents entered the news cycle largely as routine law-and-order events, that functioned as transmission rather than scrutiny. 

The emergence of this methodology must be understood against the institutional constraints faced by the Uttar Pradesh Police. Prior to 2017, conviction rates in several categories of violent crimes were below 20%, while investigative capacity lagged far behind caseloads. In this environment, ‘half-encounters’ present a pragmatic alternative.

Crucially, shooting to disable rather than kill makes the practice more legally defensible. The accused survives to be produced in court, the officer can claim self-defence, and the state records an arrest rather than a death. This distinguishes the U.P. model from the typical “fake encounter” tradition of other States. It is also a reason why the practice continues to enjoy official support. State data show declines in crimes such as dacoity and robbery, but these gains do not address concerns over due process and the erosion of the rule of law.

Uttar Pradesh publicly treats encounter statistics as indicators of law-and-order achievements. Through official recognition and accelerated promotions, an exceptional tactic has become an accepted metric of policing performance. The incentive structure is reflected in the data: 2,739 encounter operations were recorded in 2025 alone — the highest annual figure in the dataset.

This official endorsement contrasts sharply with established judicial standards. In People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. State of Maharashtra (2014), the Supreme Court laid down sixteen principles and mandated an independent inquiry in every case. While these remain the legal benchmark, they have not been systematically applied in the State.

 In January 2026, the Allahabad High Court observed that “half-encounter” practices had become routine and were often driven by official rewards and promotions.  The court reiterated that the power to punish belongs exclusively to the judiciary.

What makes reform so difficult?

The central problem is that “Operation Langda” is ; that it operates as a self-sustaining system. Political endorsement, professional incentives, media transmission and the chronic weaknesses of the criminal justice process do not merely tolerate the practice, they reproduce it. Piecemeal reforms will not be enough. What is most striking is how a practice that sits outside legal norms has, through routine and reward, become part of how the state governs.  Any durable reform must dismantle the interlocking incentives and channels that produce it.

G.S. Bajpai is the Vice Chancellor of the National Law University, Delhi. Vibhuti Sharma is an Academic Fellow, NLU Delhi. Views are personal.