AMN
Indian American Muslim Council has termed 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.
“The killing of police personnel is condemnable in the strongest possible terms,” stated Mr. Umar Malick, President of IAMC. “However, the fact that the state chose to respond with the custodial killing of five handcuffed undertrials in a police van, should send alarm bells ringing for all who care about accountability and the rule of law,” added Mr. Malick.
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 to call it a “serious violation of human rights.”
IAMC has echoed calls by Amnesty International and other civil liberties organizations 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.”