The eight activists of the Student's Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) who escaped from the Bhopal Central Jail last week after allegedly slitting the throat of a prison guard, were gunned down in cold blood, their lawyer Parvez Alam has said. Alam's comments came even as a video that purportedly showed police talking about staging a "false encounter" surfaced and was played out by several media organisations, adding to doubts raised over the manner in which the men were shot down.
Alam, who has defended members of SIMI in several cases in Madhya Pradesh, also slammed state Chief Minister Shivraj Singh for addressing the SIMI men as 'durdant aatankwadi' (dreaded terrorists).
"They were under-trial prisoners. I have defended many SIMI members and in all those cases prosecution failed to even prove that they were members of SIMI, let alone conviction on terror charge," Alam told HuffPost India.
"They mostly present similar photo-copies of certain documents in all the cases to press charges of the accused's association with SIMI. This is the kind of evidence they use and it doesn't stand trial," he said. Even in the past, during the trial of State Vs Muneer Deshmukh and State Vs Md Tahir, the accused could not be linked to SIMI, he said.
Alam said he would approach the High court for justice and that a sitting judge should head the inquiry. Chouhan has ordered a judicial probe into the sensational jail-break which will be conducted by retired High Court Judge Justice SK Pandey.
"This is cold-blooded murder. Cases of murder have to be registered for the conspiracy and the killings," Alam said.
"While everybody can see through the story of wooden key, opening of locks and using sheets to scale the high wall, the point is that, as per the jail manual, the locks of barracks have to be changed. Was this procedure not being followed?"
There are a host of loopholes in the police story.
"While everybody can see through the story of wooden key, opening of locks and using sheets to scale the high wall, the point is that, as per the jail manual, the locks of barracks have to be changed. Was this procedure not being followed?"
"Nine persons died in mysterious circumstances, including the jail security personnel. The silence of his companion in the jail suggests that he has been asked to keep mum about the happenings," he said.
This is what Alam had to say about the alleged "encounter".
Cameras being dysfunctional:
The cameras couldn't be dysfunctional for months in the high-security, ISO-certified jail. This is just not possible. They were made dysfunctional so that hard disk could be tampered with, to delete the evidence about what happened on that night.
On jailbreak and scaling the wall:
If they were able to scale first the 32-feet wall and later the 20-feet wall, why didn't they just jump off the last 5-feet short boundary wall? Instead they broke the metal gate. Was it deliberate to create noise so that everyone knew they were escaping?
Photographic evidence
There is photographic evidence that the shoe of the policeman at the site of encounter and one of the dead were same. Prisoners don't get belt, shoes and new dress. How come they were so dressed up? Bullets hit them from the back too, lodged in their body and head, from behind.
Rules not followed
The SIMI prisoners were in judicial custody--not in police custody. As per norms, in this case the court had to be immediately informed but this information was not given to the court under the premise of search operation. The post-mortem report may not reflect the truth. Which government doctor would want to incur the CM's wrath? In case of custodial death, the judicial magistrate should be present during post-mortem and a video recording needs to be done. But this didn't happen.
Bhopal IG should clear the air on ATS chief's statement
MP ATS chief Sanjiv Shami said that SIMI members were not armed and the same was local sarpanch's statement earlier in the day. IG (Bhopal) Yogesh Chaudhary claimed that they were armed. The IG should clearly say that ATS chief is not speaking the truth or accept that he himself is lying.