Is shoot-to-disable the new normal? | Explained
The Uttar Pradesh police in India have adopted a controversial 'shoot-to-disable' policing strategy known as 'Operation Langda,' which involves targeting suspects' legs during encounters. Data suggests this has become a standardized, routine practice for crime control rather than an isolated enforcement tactic.
Why it matters
It raises significant human rights and legal concerns regarding the normalization of extrajudicial violence and the erosion of due process in policing.
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.
The framing focuses on the systemic nature of police violence and uses critical terminology like 'punitive logic' and 'extrajudicial' implications.
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