By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net
Bhopal: The one-man judicial commission appointed by the Madhya Pradesh government to probe the encounter of eight alleged SIMI activists after their escape from Bhopal Central Jail on October 31, 2016, has termed the police action reasonable under the “prevailing circumstances.”
“The police tried to affect the arrest and in doing so, directed the deceased person to surrender. Instead of making compliance, deceased persons started firing from firearms on the police party and public, in general, surrounding the area at that time. As such it was necessary for the police to open fire on persons,” Retired High Court judge Justice S K Pande made the observation in the report.
The findings of the report are quite similar to the facts given by the Bhopal police which led to the gunning down of eight undertrials.
On October 31, 2016, eight under trial prisoners who allegedly escaped from the Central Jail in Bhopal, were gunned down about 10 km away in a village under the Gunga Police station.
The ten-page report majorly relies on the affidavits filed by the jail officials of the Bhopal central jail and the policemen involved in the encounter. While taking note of affidavit filed by Chandan Singh, the jail guard on duty on the night of the alleged escape, the commission believes that the facts given by him regarding the undertrials tying him and killing his fellow guard quite believable.
While making observations on the affidavits filed by the family members of the eight under trails, the report says, “They are neither witnesses of the incidents alleged nor they have any personal knowledge of what actually happened in the intervening night of 30th and 31st of October, 2016 and on 31st October at the scene of occurrence, the encounter site.”
“My son was tortured inside the jail and was killed in a staged encounter and we had told this in the affidavits and when we had put our faith in judicial enquiry it also sided with the police,” Mahmooda Bi, 61, the mother of Khalid Machala who was one of the 8 SIMI activist killed in the police encounter told TwoCircles.net .
“It has been done to shield the culprits and I along with other victim families will knock the doors of the courts against the report,” she added.
“The commission set up by the government was a farce. It quotes the government stand and brings out nothing more than that,” Navaid Hamid President of the All India Muslim Majlis –e-Mushawarat (AIMMM) told Twocircles.net.
“Fake encounter”
From day one, the activist and fact-finding committees by civil society groups have been terming the encounter fake.
A fact-finding team led by Ansar Indori of National Confederation of Human Rights Organization along with journalists and researchers in November 2016 had raised many questions on the encounter.
“The village close to which they were shot dead is a populated one with a dead end. To reach this village from the Bhopal Central Jail one has to cross three highways. Naturally, the question arises as to why those fleeing law will choose to cross three highways and head this way,” notes the fact-finding team.
The team had raised questions over the timing of encounter.
“ There are different timings, ranging from 8:30 – 11:00 a.m. in various statements. The most consistent claim in official statements is that encounter took place around 11. However, in our interviews with villagers, most of them said they reached after the incident. Few of them clearly said that they reached around 10:00 a.m. and encounter had already taken place. This again raises serious doubts about what exactly happened and when.”
The team noted that the dead bodies were lying very close to each other. “All the bodies lying together raises serious doubt about the Police version of the story. If all the accused were standing next to each other, the greater possibility is of them offering to surrender, rather than them being in a gun-battle situation as proclaimed by the police,” the team notes.
Manisha Sethi the author of book Kafkaland had also alleged Bhopal police of staging the encounter.
“It’s so obviously staged,” she told in an interview with a news website in November 2016.
“The photographs, video, and now the audio evidence all point to the fact that the killings have been executed in cold blood. The story – or rather the stories, given the many contradictions in the official statements – is simply too fantastic,” she said and added, “The great escape using wooden keys, spoon and plate weapons, the fact that the escapees were dressed in new clothes, had suitcases lying strewn next to their bodies, all point to something amiss. There are local eyewitnesses now who say that the eight killed were unarmed.”