By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: “Why does Inspector Sharma not have the bullet wounds that were supposed to have killed him in pictures taken after the shooting? Why was he shot from the back at close quarters if he died in a gun battle? Where are the bullets that killed him? How did two ‘terrorists’ escape when there was no way for them to have got away?”
These questions are not new to the readers of TwoCircles.net who have read and heard in these pages neighbours of House No. L-18 in Delhi’s Jamia Nagar where the encounter took place on September 19, and later human rights activists, religious leaders and common people. Thus you might be thinking these questions have again been raised by one of these people. But no.
Keeping mum almost for two weeks after the encounter while the print and electronic media had been unfortunately working as mouthpiece of the police rather than being objective and neutral, some senior journalists are now coming to fore and expressing their views on the Jamia Nagar encounter in which two youths described by the Delhi police as masterminds of all recent blasts in the country were killed and Delhi police Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma also had bullet injuries to which he later succumbed.
The questions above have been raised by renowned journalist Vir Sanghvi in his weekly column ‘Counterpoint’ in Hindustan Times on October 5.
Talking about the Jamia encounter, he recalls the Ansal Plaza encounter a few years back. The police told that they had shot two terrorists who were planning to attack Ansal Plaza and kill Diwali shoppers. But the truth came to light later that the police had brought two men to the parking lot of Ansal Plaza and killed them in cold blood. Sanghvi writes that “something similar seems to have happened at Jamia a couple of weeks ago.”
Blasting the police version about the Jamia encounter, Sagarika Ghose, Senior Editor, CNN-IBN, says: “In the “encounter” in Delhi’s Jamia Nagar, 17 year old Sajid, 24- year old Atif and Inspector MC Sharma of Delhi’s Special Cell, died. The slain boys had a photo of themselves in their laptop accompanied by the popular teenage caption: “India’s Most Wanted,” enough evidence, the police claimed, to confirm their “terrorist” credentials. A citizens’committee which launched a fact-finding mission into the Batla House “encounter” severely challenged the police’s version.”
According to the police Atif and Sajid, the two killed in the encounter, were masterminds of the all blasts in the country and leaders of the shadowy terrorist organization Indian Mujahideen. The police had also arrested about half a dozen people from Jamia Nagar in connection with the Delhi blasts. The arrested ones were described as members of the IM module. But one week after the encounter some blasts took place in Delhi’s Mehrauli, Modasa, Gujarat and Malegaon, Maharashtra.
“With all “masterminds” either dead or in custody, what happens? More blasts in Delhi, Gujarat and Malegaon, Maharashtra. Whoever is planting the bombs certainly has no fear that the police will ever catch them,” says Ghose in an article on CNN-IBN.
She in fact has blasted the Indian intelligence and police claim that bombings in India are Indian version of global Al Qaeda activities.
“If our “terrorism” is of the Al-Qaeda variety, why are there no suicide bombers in any of the recent urban blasts? If Islamist radicals can access high end global explosives such as RDX and inflict mass causalities, then why are they simply making do with crude bombs of ammonium nitrate, ball bearings and tiffin boxes? Why do bomb blasts sometimes take place in election season? If bombers are being driven by “Islamist” motives why do they often target masjids? Organized crime knows no religion. Criminal activity is readily available for a price to advance any social, economic or political cause.”
What has surprised Barkha Dutt, Group Editor, English News, NDTV, is the regular life of the two youths killed in the encounter whom the police described as hardcore terrorists and masterminds of all blasts in the country.
“Could it be possible that a 13-member squad of terrorists successfully exploded bombs and killed people in major cities and then settled into a regular life in Delhi, straddling university programmes and management schools in between planning the next assault?” she asks in an article in HT on October 4.
Sanghvi and Ghose are concerned over the fact that those who have questioned the police version of the encounter are being branded as anti-national.
“Worse still, to raise any questions about any encounter is considered ‘anti-national’. The HT was vilified when we questioned the official version of the Ansal Plaza shooting. And already, there is a move to brand anybody who wants to know what happened at Jamia as a ‘terrorist-sympathiser,’” says Sanghvi.
Instead of answering the questions of human rights activists, among them many distinguished academics and lawyers, “they have been dubbed as “anti-national,” says Ghose.