By TwoCircles.net staff reporter
Boston: A number of people gathered at the historic Boston Common to protest against the recent extrajudicial killings of eight undertrials in Bhopal.
Various speakers highlighted that it is wrong to call these undertrials as “terrorists” as there were no terrorism charges against them, let alone being proven as such in a court of law.
MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan came under severe criticism for his refusal to do a judicial probe of the encounter and justifying the killings in a public program.
Speakers expressed concern about growing brazenness of Indian authorities in breaking the law and killing Adivasis, Dalits, and Muslims with complete impunity and in fact getting rewarded for it.
Some of the participants also signed a petition to be sent to the Consul General of India in New York.
Text of the petition:
To the Consul General of India in NY
Dear Madam,
We the undersigned are Indian citizen or people of Indian descent or American citizens who are concerned about human rights violations in India.
We are deeply disturbed by the recent news from Bhopal where eight undertrial prisoners were gunned down by Madhya Pradesh Police. Media reports and audio and video recordings suggests that it was a clear case of extrajudicial killings. This comes just a year and a half after similar encounter killing in Aler in Andhra Pradesh where five Muslims undertrial prisoners were killed by the police. Aler Encounter followed killings of 24 Adivasis, again with impunity by calling them Sandalwood smugglers.
1. We are very worried that lives of some of the most marginalized in India are under constant threat of persecution by state authorities.
2. We ask Indian government to constitute Judicial probes into all cases of encounter/custodial killings.
3. We ask that current Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh to be sacked for his biased role in this matter. He had reportedly called the victims of Bhopal encounter “terrorists” even though no terrorism charge was proven in any court of law. In a public meeting he justified the extra judicial killings.
We would like to take this opportunity to remind the government that encounter killings are against the Constitution of India and any official participating in it, involved in cover up, or supporting or justifying it is acting against the Constitution and should be immediately fired and punished for crime against the nation.
