Warning: pictures contain graphic images

Indian police have been photographed apparently killing a hospital attendant in a busy market in northeastern India in the first such exposé of a practice that rights groups say is rife within the understaffed and poorly trained force.

The police said originally that they shot dead Chongkham Sanjit, 27, when he fired on them as they chased him through the market in the northeastern state of Manipur, on the border with Burma, on July 23.

The Manipur police commandos said that they found a 9mm Mauser pistol on the dead man, whom they accused of being a member of a banned separatist group — one of dozens operating in the north east of India.

Photographs published by the investigative magazine, Tehelka, however show police commandos approaching an unarmed Mr Sanjit, frisking him and taking him into a pharmacy while one officer reaches for his pistol.

The officers are then shown dragging out his corpse and loading it on to the back of a truck. The body of a pregnant woman, who was shot dead in the crossfire of an earlier police shootout, can be seen in the vehicle.

The apparent summary execution took place in Imphal, the state capital, at about 10.30am only 500 metres from the building where the legislative assembly was meeting.

Tehelka said that the images were taken by a local photographer who did not publish them in Manipur for fear of recrimination from the police.

Human rights campaigners said that it was the first time they could remember there being such incriminating visual evidence of what is known in India as a fake encounter killing. “Is this the first time there has been such compelling evidence? I’d say yes,” Meenakshi Ganguly, a senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, told The Times.

Suhas Chakma, the director of the Asian Centre for Human Rights in Delhi, said: “This is the first case where the actual [incident] has been caught on camera.”

Police in India often kill alleged suspects in staged shootouts but it is almost impossible to prove because they always claim that the victims were armed.

The practice began in the 1980s as a way to eliminate dangerous suspects who could not be convicted in court because of corruption and witness intimidation.

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