Jamia teachers, students stopped from protesting against Special Cell

By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,

New Delhi: In a clear show of highhandedness of security forces, the Jamia Nagar Police today, with orders from higher authorities, stopped Jamia Millia Islamia teachers and students from some universities from protesting before the Delhi Police Special Cell office.


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The protesters were forcibly stopped from moving out of Jamia University area while the Delhi Police Special Cell office was 10 km away. As soon as the bus carrying the peace marchers moved it was stopped at few meters, some policemen entered the bus and forced the driver to stop. SHO of Jamia Nagar Police Station told marchers that they have been detained and they cannot move unless they change their place of agitation. After the heated argument between the police and marchers, organizers were forced to agree to protest at Jantar Mantar. The police took into custody the bus along with its passengers and escorted it to Jantar Mantar.

“We wanted to do a peaceful protest in front of the Special Cell office but we were not allowed. It is unfortunate that in this country one needs to get permission for peaceful protest but those who carry out fake encounters and implicate people in false cases do not need any permission,” Manisha Sethi, Jamia Millia Islamia teacher who heads the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Group, told TwoCircles.net.

Manisha Sethi who as head of the teachers’ group has been in the forefront to blast the police theory on the Batla House encounter told TCN: “We wanted to protest at the office of Delhi Police Special Cell as it symbolizes the brutal face of the Indian government. The CBI has just come out with a report that says the Special Cell was guilty of forging evidence to implicate some innocents as terrorist in another case. We were protesting because most of the Special Cell team members who took part in that case were also involved in the Batla House encounter. And this has made the Batla House encounter more suspicious.”

The group has demanded stringent action against Special Cell officers involved in false frame ups of innocents as terrorists.

The CBI has recently revealed that the Special Cell had falsely implicated two youths, Irshad Ali and Md. Moarif Qamar as Al Badr ‘terrorists’ in 2006. The Special Cell claimed that the two young men had been arrested while alighting from a Jammu & Kashmir Roadways bus in February 2006 and were carrying two pistols and two kg of RDX. In its report to the Sessions Court, however, the CBI disclosed that Ali and Qamar were innocent and in fact police informers, who were abducted by the Special Cell in December 2005.

“These startling revelations have brought into open the way in which such ‘special’ security agencies operate: kidnapping, framing innocents, planting pistols and explosives, and justifying their high-handedness in the name of fighting ‘terror’. The ‘Al Badar operation’ of the Special Cell is very similar to the Batla House ‘Encounter’,” said the group.

The group has also provided some facts: The Special cell team which conducted the ‘Al Badr’ operation was headed by ACP Sanjeev Yadav and Inspector Sharma – the very same people who led the Batla House operation. Moreover, there were several common members between the two Special Cell teams: Sub-Inspectors Ravinder Tyagi, Sanjay Dutt and Rahul Kumar played an important role in both events. Arms have been shown to be seized on both occasions. No seizure lists made or verified in either cases.

“This naturally deepens our suspicions about the claims that the Delhi Police has been making about the Batla House ‘encounter’. Today’s protest was against the shameful tainted past of the Special Cell. However, when the protestors were leaving from Jamia, the Delhi Police stopped the bus and detained the teachers and students, denying them the right to express their outrage at the Special Cell office,” said the teachers’ group.

The protesters were sloganeering against the Delhi Police, its Special Cell and Home Minister. When they reached Jantar Mantar they were also blocked there.

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