Killing of five youth while they were handcuffed on their way to court in a police van warrants judicial probe
By TCN News,
Washington: The Indian American Muslim Council ( IAMC ), an advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding India’s pluralist and tolerant ethos has called the Telangana police killing of five detainees in a transportation van, a fake encounter and a case of “custodial killing.”
“The five youth with alleged links to Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), were being transported to a Hyderabad court for a hearing. Video footage of the police van given to Amnesty International by a journalist, shows five youth in the van after they were killed. All five were seen handcuffed in the video. The custodial killings are widely seen as revenge for two separate encounters in which fierce gun battles involving alleged members of SIMI with law enforcement in Telangana left four policemen dead,” IAMC said in a statement here.
Indian American Muslim Council is the largest advocacy organization of Indian Muslims in the United States with chapters across the nation.
“The killing of police personnel is condemnable in the strongest possible terms,” said Umar Malick, president of IAMC. “However, the fact that the state chose to respond with the custodial killing of five handcuffed under-trials in a police van, should send alarm bells ringing for all who care about accountability and the rule of law,” Malick added.
Killing of five youth while they were handcuffed on their way to court in a police van warrants judicial probe, it said.
In a separate incident, 20 suspected sandalwood smugglers were brutally gunned down by the police in Andhra Pradesh, prompting the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) to call it a “serious violation of human rights.”
IAMC has echoed calls by Amnesty International and other civil liberties organisations in India for an independent probe into the Telangana killings. In a statement reported in the media, Abhirr V P, senior campaigner at Amnesty International India stated, “Impunity for extrajudicial executions is a serious issue in India. Authorities in Telangana need to urgently conduct an independent criminal investigation into the case to determine if it involved extrajudicial executions disguised as ‘encounter’ killings.”
One of the prisoners gunned down was Viqaruddin, who had been framed by the police in the Mecca Masjid bomb blasts in 2007, and was among the 50 people that were later acknowledged as “wrongly arrested.”
“This custodial killing is similar to several others that have taken place in recent years, such as that of Mohammed Qateel in 2012 and Khalid Mujahid in 2013, whose lives were cruelly snuffed out while in police custody or serving time in prison. During Narendra Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat, there were several infamous cases of fake encounters involving victims from the Muslim community. Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old girl from Mumbai was gunned down by the Gujarat police along with three other men in 2004. The encounter was carried out by disgraced Deputy Inspector General of Police D G Vanzara, who was also implicated in the fake encounter killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in 2007.
Vanzara has been released from prison after the Hindu nationalist government of the BJP came to power. In a resignation letter while in prison, he had gone on record stating that fake encounter killings in Gujarat were carried out with full knowledge and sanction of the Gujarat state government, then headed by Modi as Chief Minister. Forty other policemen accused of fake encounters have been released in Gujarat alone, under the new administration,” said the statement.