8 questions as disturbing as Bhopal 'encounter' images of 8 SIMI 'terrorists'
The images are disturbing. Some bodies sprawled on the flat top of a plateau. An armed policeman with a self-loading rifle (SLR) pumps a bullet into one of the seemingly lifeless bodies. Another voice is heard asking "where is the weapon", and a man in plain clothes walks up to one of the bodies and, from the waistband, pulls out a wrapped sharp-edged weapon.
The images appear to have been filmed on a mobile phone camera. The charges against the eight SIMI accused are serious - from being involved in the 2008 Ahmedabad blast to killing police personnel on duty and robbing a bank of Rs 48 lakh.
The men were all alleged to be part of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and one of the eight had also been charged with recovery of explosives from his house in Maharashtra. The suspected "hardcore terrorists", as a top Madhya Pradesh police officer described them, had also killed a Bhopal prison official before escaping from jail.
The eight were some hours later "killed in an encounter" on the outskirts of Bhopal - some 15km from the Bhopal central prison. However, the video of a policeman firing a bullet into a seemingly lifeless body raises uncomfortable questions.
Inspector General, Bhopal, Yogesh Chowdhary, after the encounter, told journalists the "terrorists" were armed and had opened fire at the police party. He insisted that in self-defence, the police opened fire and killed the "terrorists".
The questions the Madhya Pradesh Police and the government need to answer are:
1) Where are the weapons that the "terrorists" had?
2) Is it that a joint team of the Madhya Pradesh Police, ATS, STF - all armed with sophisticated weapons - used force to kill eight "terrorists" armed with a single sharp-edged weapon?
3) If other weapons were recovered around 11.30am, when the encounter story was first broken by India Today, why were the weapons not displayed till late evening?
4) How did the eight "terrorists" escape from the high security Bhopal Central Prison (ISO 14001-2004) killing one prison staff, Ramashankar Yadav, and overpowering the other?
5) Where were the other prison staffers? What was the prison watch-tower staff doing when eight undertrials made a rope of wood and bedsheets and escaped?
6) Should at least one of them not have been taken alive so that co-conspirators if any could be unmasked with evidence?
7) Did they have outside help? Who helped them from outside the prison with clothes, watches, shoes and the sharp-edged weapon (wrapped in plastic)?
8) Why did the "terrorists" not split up to make the job of the security forces in finding them more difficult? Who helped them get to the Entkhedi village where they were found and "killed in an encounter".
Madhya Pradesh home minister Bhupendra Singh told India Today that some statements had been made by some officials without full knowledge of all facts pertaining to the case and a probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) will reveal all the details. He insists the encounter is genuine and the truth will emerge.
The sooner it emerges, the better.