Our Correspondent
NEW DELH/ BHOPAL: Opposition parties and human right activists have raised question over the manner in which 8 SIMI activists were killed in ‘encounter’. They demanded a judicial probe into the jail break and later encounter at the outskirt of Bhopal.
BJP has accused Opposition of undermining the morale of security forces by raising questions over its authenticity of encounter.
Congress and CPI-M sought a judicial probe so people get to know the truth, but the BJP accused the Congress of coming in support of SIMI activists and politicising the incident.
“I am demanding a judicial probe because even the government must know under what circumstances they escaped. People of the state and country must know how terrorists with with such a record were able to escape from such a high security jail and within hours caught and shot dead,” Congress leader Kamal Nath, a Lok Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh, said.
CPI-M’s Brinda Karat termed the official version of the incident as “highly dubious and suspicious”. She said the versions of state government and police were “contradictory”.
“Therefore, to get to the truth, it is essential to have an independent probe under a high court judge and should be time-bound because nobody can believe what seems to be a highly manufactured version,” she said. Karat said those killed were undertrials and dubbing them as terrorists amounted to “subverting the law”.
Terming the encounter of 8 SIMI activists by Madhya Pradesh ATS as ‘dubious’, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi today demanded an inquiry by Supreme Court to bring out “all facts”.
“There is huge discrepancy in what the Home Minister and the police officials are saying. The Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh says that these undertrials were armed with spoons. If they were armed with spoons, the Madhya Pradesh ATS could have easily overpowered them, because ATS has all sophistacated weapons. They could have easily arrested them.
“But, people who have run away from prison after assassinating a guard and they only have spoons. So, to any normal person, this theory is unbelievable,” he told media persons.
Coming out in defence of the police action, BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao accused the Congress of batting for terrorists belonging to SIMI the way it had done for LeT in the past. He alleged leaders of the Congress were undermining the morale of the security forces.
“Congress, like they questioned the cross-LoC surgical strike, they are doing the same again for vote bank politics. They are undermining the morale of our security forces,” he said.
“I don’t think why Congress wants to speak up for such individuals. Politicising the encounter is certainy not a done thing. But Congress party has done this for a long time.