Bhopal: It has been ten hours now and the Bhopal police officials that were successful today in killing eight under-trial SIMI members, the cops are still not able to convince most of the media houses whether the encounter was real or “staged”. As three unverified videos have appeared one by one in last few hours raising doubts about today’s killing.
On Monday evening Bhopal’s Inspector General Yogesh Chaudhary briefed media about the incident. Apart from giving basic details, Yogesh Chaudhary was unable to answer most of the questions asked by the media and he concluded with one answer that it’s a part of an investigation.
Veteran journalist Shekhar Gupta and former editor-in-chief of Indian Express on Monday tweeted, “God knows I’ve seen/known too much to be judgemental about staged killings & black ops. This looks the clumsiest. Even compared to Ishrat”. He further wrote, “MP police needs to learn encounter “art” from Punjab/Gujarat/Maharashtra. A few AKs thrown on the bodies would’ve made a less curious story”.
Rahul Kanwal, Managing Editor of India Today, tweeted, “Exposing a fake encounter is not anti-national. Staying silent when you know that an encounter appears fake is what is truly anti-national”.
A video has started surfacing on social media which further raises questions about today’s encounter. In the video, four to five prisoners can be seen raising their hands while on radio cops said, “Yeh baat karnaa chaah rahey hain inko gher loo (They want to talk, surround them). But no one yet knows what happened in between that the angry cops killed them rather arresting them. In another video, it is clearly seen a cop shooting the body while a policemen is displaying a brand new knife, wrapped in plastic which he took out from one of the dead men.
After the encounter conspiracy theory is at large. Former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt wrote on his Facebook post, “Another first! The first ever planned jailbreak where the escapees stick together for 10 hours after breaking free. Nice script. Quite original”.
Apart from media, Tahawwur Khan, defence lawyer of eight SIMI members had also raised his doubt over the encounter and said that there is a conspiracy behind the killing. He reportedly said, the trial of four SIMI members were about to end and there was no ample evidence against them, factually or legally. Khan further said that the court was about to give judgment in few weeks.
Khan rubbished the claims of jailbreak and said, “Why they will do such things when they knew they were going to be acquitted”. Khan has also demanded a high-level inquiry into the encounter killing.
Source: India.com