By Amit Kumar, TwoCircles.net
On October 2, Innocence Network, an all-India collective of individuals and organisations working for the rights of the people wrongfully prosecuted or convicted, especially under charges of terrorism organised ‘Peoples’ Tribunal on Acquitted Innocents’ in Delhi. A dozen people, all of whom had been dubbed terrorists before being acquitted by Supreme Court, spoke of struggles against a system which seemed almost hell-bent on punishing people for their religion. Twocircles.net documented some of the stories which can be seen here.
The day was a crucial reminder of what a terror undertrial in India can potentially suffer, and what their families had to, and continue to, go through.
But it is unlikely that the families of Mohammad Aqeel Khilji alias Abdullah s/o Mohammad Yusuf, Mehboob Guddu alias Malik s/o Ismail of Khandwa (MP), Mohammad Khalid Ahmad s/o Mohammad Saleem of Sholapur Maharashtra, Mujeeb Sheikh alias Akram alias Wasim alias Nawed alias Nitin alias Faizan alias Chintoo alias Yusuf s/o Zamal Ahmad resident of Juhapura (Ahmedabad) Gujarat, Amzad s/o Ramzan Khan, Zakir Hussein Sheikh alias Vicky don alias Vinay Kumar s/o Badalul Hussein and Abdul Majid s/o Mohammad Yusuf of Ujjain (MP) will ever get justice. The eight, who allegedly escaped from the Central Jail in Bhopal, were gunned down about 10 kms away in a village under the Gunga Police station.
By evening, a number of media outlets, including the Times of India, had started the usual game, calling them SIMI terrorists, even when they were clearly under trial. This has now become standard practice for Indian media now that it hardly comes as a surprise.
Around the same time, as videos of the encounter surfaced, it also became clear that there were an absence of any firearms along the bodies of the suspects. While the MP government said they were not carrying any firearms, the police says otherwise. They were, in fact “armed” with plates and spoons.
So if we are to understand the turn of events: eight people manage to jailbreak, run 10 kms over the next eight hours, together all the time, into a village and then into an open field, where cops find them and shoot them down?
Also, if the official report is believed and they escaped around 2 am and had firearms, what stopped them from getting a vehicle? If they are the SIMI terrorists that the police have made them out to be, and extremely dangerous, surely they could have arranged for a vehicle? And as if killing was not enough, the video shows cops shooting bullets into dead bodies. Towards the end, a person says, “Aur nahi..bus” (No more, stop).
There are of course, numerous such questions that would be asked, and most people who will raise these questions would be called anti-nationals. Political parties will jump in; enquiry committees set up (incidentally, the jailbreak incident will be investigated by the NIA. The encounter? That part was not mentioned) and the media will go into a frenzy.
A month later, everything will be forgotten. Remember the Aler encounter? Maybe you do not. The point being, that in a country where being Muslim itself can land you in trouble, there is almost no news that can now shock people. If it had not been an encounter, it could have been a hate crime; a lynching at the hands of cow vigilantes, or even a WhatsApp message forwarded to a friend.
If you are a Muslim, living to tell the tale of your oppression is an achievement in itself. This encounter, like most encounters, is an attempt to seal the debate over anyone that is dubbed a terrorist in India. As these unfortunate souls found out, you may never get a chance to prove yourself.