By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net
New Delhi: The demonstrators who were peacefully demanding judicial probe of Batla House encounter before the Delhi Police Headquarters at ITO in New Delhi were manhandled by the police.
Students and teachers of Jamia Millia Islamia and other universities including Delhi University and JNU, besides people from various civil and human rights organizations, gathered under the banner of Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Group (JTSG) before the police headquarters and shouted slogans against the Delhi Police Commissioner, Delhi Chief Minister and UPA government for suppressing the public demand of judicial enquiry into the encounter.
In the September 2008 Batla House encounter in Jamia Nagar area two alleged suspected terrorists were killed and Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma got bullet injuries which he succumbed to later in the day.
While the protestors were demonstrating in front of the police building against the persistent refusal of the police to an enquiry into the encounter some policemen came up and forcibly pushed them away from the area. JTSG leader Manisha Sethi was trying to convince the police that they were holding peaceful demonstration. However, they did not allow it to be held before the Delhi Police headquarters.
The demonstrators were expressing their outrage at the affidavit filed by the Delhi Police before the High Court last week. They charged that the affidavit is “virtually a charter for a license to kill for the Police, which mocks at the very idea that the security agencies should operate within the ambit of law and be sensitive to human rights concerns,” JTSG said.
“The Delhi Police, in order to evade probe, is making grossly malicious comparisons between the Batla House encounter and the tragic violence in Bombay in November 2008,” it said.
“For the last 6-7 months teachers and students of Jamia and other universities and Jamia Nagar people as well as human rights activists have been demanding the probe as they doubted the encounter and the police version about it. But the police and the government did not heed to their demand,” said Tanveer Ahmad, member of the JTSG, while addressing the pressmen, both from print and electronic media, who had gathered in good number.
Tanveer said efforts are on to save the police. “NHRC guidelines regarding filing FIR in encounter and magisterial enquiry thereof have been ignored in this Batla House encounter case,” he said and reiterated JTSG’s demand of judicial enquiry.
At the end of the demonstration the participants burnt an effigy of the Delhi Police.