By IANS,
New Delhi: The probe by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which gave a clean chit to the police in a south Delhi shootout last year, “was not fair”, an NGO told the Delhi High Court Wednesday.
The Batla House shootout took place Sep 19, 2008 in which two suspected militants and a police officer were killed.
Counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Act Now For Harmony and Democracy before a division bench of Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice Manmohan, said, “The NHRC did not conducted a fair probe into the matter. It just relied on the police version and filed the report on the same lines.”
“The NHRC did not visit the spot, nor did they talk to Mohd Saif, the lone survivor of the gun battle and relied only on the police version of the shootout,” Bhushan said.
Bhushan said there was urgent need of a judicial probe by a retired Supreme Court judge into the incident.
The court will hear the matter Aug 19.
A four-member team, headed by NHRC acting chairman G.P. Mathur, in its 30-page report submitted last month, said: “We are clearly of the opinion, with regard to the material placed before us, that it cannot be said that there has been any violation of human rights by the action of the police.”
The action taken by police in which two people were killed “is fully protected by law”, said the report.
“There is ample and sufficient material before us which leads to the irresistible conclusion that there was imminent danger to the life of the police party,” the report added.
Two suspected Indian Mujahideen terrorists were killed in the gun battle. ‘Encounter specialist’ police inspector M.C. Sharma also lost his life in the shootout.
It was alleged that police had staged the incident to ward off pressure after
serial blasts in Delhi a week before the gunbattle had killed 20 people.