As anyone even remotely familiar with India knows, most of the so-called ‘encounters’ in which the police kill their victims are fake.

Encounters are a shame and a blot on the Indian justice system in which the policemen go scotfree because they falsely justify killings on the grounds of self-defense.

But some Indian policemen seem to be taking these fake encounters to a new level – they are faking their presence at the fake encounters and getting real gallantry awards from the government of India.

Apparently, getting these gallantry awards is financially lucrative to the policemen. Some estimates value the benefits from the awards at Rs 3 crore.

The Times of India has an interesting story today on three senior police officers from Andhra Pradesh (including an additional director general of police) landing in trouble:

for allegedly faking their role in a Naxalite encounter case and obtaining gallantary awards based on these misrepresentations.

This is one of those Only in India stories.