Bhopal encounter: SIMI men were shot above waist

Bhopal: The counsel for the slain Simi members on Wednesday suspected that the eight accused might have been killed in a staged encounter.

The events leading to the ‘so-called’ encounter killing of the eight suspected members of Simi who escaped from the Bhopal Central Jail on Monday sparked suspicion on the claim by the police about the details of the encounter on the outskirts of the city hours later, advocate Parvez Alam told reporters here.

He apprehended that the eight accused might not have escaped from jail at all and might have been killed in cold blood and later shown as shot dead in an encounter.

“How come the eight accused could not leave Bhopal eight hours after they escaped from the jail? How could they go in same direction after their escape, instead of going in different directions in separate groups to avoid police attention and found together in one place during encounter,” Mr Alam questioned.

Similarly, he questioned why the shots were fired above their waist though the police was supposed to fire shots at the accused below the waist.

He further suspected the police version that the accused escaped by knotting 35 bed-sheets to use it as a ladder to scale the 32-ft high prison boundary wall, saying that bed-sheets were not provided to the under-trials or convicts in the jail.

He demanded a probe either by a sitting judge of Supreme Court or a HC judge into the killing of the accused and said he did not expect a fair investigation.

Meanwhile, autopsy reports of the slain terror suspects suggested that the number of bullet injuries ranged from two to five.

“Each body has at least two bullet injuries,” the forensic medicine department of the Gandhi Medical College here said. “The directions in which bullets were lodged in the body suggests that some shots were fired from behind and some from front,” said the report.

Kill them all, ordered senior cop
An audio bringing to the fore purported wireless communication among the policemen when the alleged encounter was going on between the eight suspected Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi) activists and security forces on the city outskirt on October 31 leading to their killing, has gone viral in social media, landing the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government here in acute embarrassment.

A senior police officer was heard in the audio directing his subordinates to kill the eight terror suspects who escaped from the city jail early on Monday morning, instead of capturing them. However, the authenticity of the audio was yet to be confirmed by the MP Police.

Police officers were heard communicating, to what appears to their higher authorities, on the number of the eight escapees killed at the time of relaying the wireless message.

“Five men were killed,” a voice was heard saying in the audio.The purported audio fuelled further the suspicion raised in several quarters if the encounter in which the eight accused were killed was genuine. Batting for fast-track courts to try terror cases, Mr Chouhan, who has vehemently defended police role in the killing of eight Simi activists in an alleged encounter, has said the accused stay in jail for years before they are sentenced and “keep eating chicken biryani”.

“It takes years to sentence them. They keep eating chicken biryani (in jail)... they escape and indulge in more crimes and attacks.... If we can have fast track courts for corruption cases, why can't we have fast track courts for sentencing terrorists?,” Chouhan said addressing a function on Tuesday.