By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: Surprised? But it’s true. The official data of the official human rights watchdog, National Human Rights Commission, has included Batla House encounter among fake encounters in the country. In the last 16 years (1993-2009), there were 1224 fake encounters across the country. The September 19, 2008 Batla House encounter in which two alleged terror suspects were killed was also registered as a fake encounter, the NHRC data say.
According to the information accessed by RTI activist Afroz Alam Sahil from NHRC after more than one year of struggle, Delhi saw 22 fake encounters between October 1993 and October 2009. The Batla House encounter is one of them. There were 1224 total fake encounters in the country in that period. Of 22 fake encounters in Delhi there are 8 cases in which Muslims are victims.
First Page of fake encounters list
Afroz Alam Sahil, a Jamia Millia Islamia student filed an application with the NHRC using RTI Act on 24/09/2008, a week after the Batla House encounter, seeking information about the number of police encounter cases reached NHRC so far. He got reply on 20/10/2008. “As per record available with the Commission, so far 2560 cases of police encounter/alleged fake encounter have come up before the NHRC,” the reply said.
Afroz filed a fresh application on 02/03/2009 seeking specific information about the number of cases of fake encounters, communal riots/caste violence, death in police custody, exploitation of women and exploitation of Dalit registered at NHRC since October 1993. The answer he got about six months later, after making several rounds of the NHRC office, said that the number of cases registered in the Commission since October 1993 in respect of fake encounters is 1224, communal riots 432, police custody deaths 2320, exploitation of women 4502 and exploitation of Dalit 17998.
Page which mentions Batla House
The 51-page state-wise report detailing 1224 fake encounters has details like case number, complainant, victim’s name, and incident place.
The case No 2811/30/8/08-09FE of Batla encounter was registered at NHRC on September 23, 2009 on the complaint of social activist Kamran Siddiqi.