Khatri’s Jai Ho Foundation demands judicial inquiry, compensation for victims

Advocate Adil Khatri, president of the Jai Ho Foundation, a Non-Govenmental Organisation, has submitted a letter to the chairperson of the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission demanding a judicial probe in the Aurangabad riots.

According to the letter submitted by Khatri, “The violence at Aurangabad took lives of a 17 -year-old minor boy and a 65-year-old senior citizen and left more than 70 people seriously injured including 12 policemen. The minor was hit by pellets fired by the police to rein in the crowd while the second victim died after the roof of his house, on which a petrol bomb was hurled, collapsed. It is clear that the loss of life and property was partly due to the state machinery’s inability to act in time. Despite prior information on the possible communal violence and rioting, the authorities failed to take adequate measures and prevent the loss of not only property worth hundreds of crores but also precious lives.

The Aurangabad police force has been doing so without a full time Commissioner for the past two months.

“If unverified images and videos that have emerged on Twitter are to be believed, last week’s riots could very well be an appalling case of the authorities themselves orchestrating the violence. It is my humble request that the Maharashtra government must appoint a judicial commission under a retired judge to conduct a probe into the Aurangabad violence.”

“The committee must look into the sequence of events that eventually led to the violence. There must be a probe regarding who were the persons or organisations responsible for the violence and if there was adequate police presence at the spot at the time of the incident. The probe must be to understand the economic, social and political reasons that led to the recent spate of communal violence.”