Why police theories on jailbreak ring hollow
LOOPHOLES Missing item from inventory, conflicting eyewitness accounts raise doubts over veracity of encounter that killed 8 SIMI men
BHOPAL: Spent bullet casings weren’t among items recovered from a place on the outskirts of the MP capital where police gunned down eight members of the banned group, SIMI, on Monday after they escaped from prison.
This missing item from the inventory is important to prove the police account that the prisoners fired at the policemen searching for them after the jailbreak and they were killed in retaliatory firing.
TheBJPgovernmentinthestate defended the police action, which human rights campaigners and Opposition leaders called a staged, extra-judicial murder.
Eyewitnesses gave conflicting versions of the alleged shootout in Khijradev village, about 15km from Bhopal central jail. Some villagers said both sides shot at each other, others claimed the fugitives threwstonesandshoutedanti-India and pro-Islamic slogans, but never fired shots. “They pelted stones and were shouting slogans. Then they ran into the thickets,” said Rakesh Meena, a resident of the area.
A video that purportedly shows the SIMI operatives atop a hillock, waving hands, fits the narrative.
Another villager said a gunfight ensued as the SIMI men fired at police and started pelting stones.
Also, a knife recovered from one of the slain men is among a raft of unanswered questions.
Police recovered a crude, sharp weaponthattheprisonersallegedly used to slit the throat of jail warder Ramashankar Yadav before they climbeda30-feetperimeterwalland escaped. The weapon was allegedly found on one of the slain men, but media reported its discovery and details three hours before police said they had tracked down the fugitives and killed them.
Then, a purported video of the shooting emerged, showing policemen recovering a sharp metallic object from a slain man. The weapon fitted the description of the knife reportedbyTVchannels.Thevideo showedaman,probablypoliceman, reach straight for the knife inside the dead man’s shirt — almost as if he knew where to find it.
Questions arise about how it was possible to know Yadav was killed with a knife made out of kitchen utensils even before any such weapon was found.
The prisoners chose to scale a stretch of the outer wall that was next to a watch tower manned by two sentries round-the-clock, who were from the special armed force of state police.
The Bhopal central jail has an outer wall and a 12-feet inner barrier. Barracks are inside the inner perimeter, making it nearly impossible to escape undetected. The jail has more than 2,000 prisoners and hundreds of guards and watch towers. After crossing the first perimeter, they successfully crossed at least 200 meters of well-lit distance between the two walls. Curiously enough, the surveillance cameras weren’t working either.
Parvez Alam, the advocate for the slain SIMI activists, said: “Four of them were near acquittal and it defies logic to believe they would do something like this. We will go to high court for an independent inquiry.”