The lawyer of the eight SIMI terror-accused killed in an encounter by the Madhya Pradesh police has demanded a CBI investigation alleging that their jailbreak hours before they were killed was a set-up.
“They were fired upon from the front and all of them sustained injuries in their head and chest, above the waist,” lawyer Parvez Alam said. He claimed that he has seen the post mortem reports of the SIMI men.
Repeating his claim that it was a fake encounter, he said that according to a Supreme Court ruling, the police should fire below the waist.
The lawyer Parvez Alam has also questioned the police’s claim that the prisoners scaled multiple high walls and opened doors at the high security Bhopal Central Jail with keys fashioned out of toothbrushes.
He said the families of the eight men, who belonged to the banned Student Islamic Movement of India or SIMI, will approach the Madhya Pradesh High Court seeking a CBI inquiry into their killing by the police, which they allege was “cold-blooded murder”.
Alam said that he will petition the local court for medical examination of the remaining members of the banned organisation lodged in the jail here and alleged they were assaulted. He also claimed that there was threat to his life.
The activists were killed on the city outskirts at Malikheda following their escape from the high-security jail after slitting the throat of a security guard and scaling the 32-ft wall using bedsheets in the wee hours of October 31.
“I am going to move the Bhopal Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) court today seeking to conduct medical examination on 20-odd so-called SIMI members in jail,” he said.
“I have learnt that they have been brutally beaten,” he alleged.
“Besides, I am going to meet MP Director General of Police and seek security for myself,” Alam said.
“As I am openly speaking against the encounter, now I fear for my life and family members after the cold-blooded murder of my clients,” he added.
However, contrary to MP police claimed Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) Chief Sanjeev Shami said on Wednesday that the 8 SIMI men killed in an encounter by Special Task Force did not have any weapons with them.
Shami’s statement is in contradiction to that of the Inspector General of Bhopal Police, Yogesh Choudhry, who claimed on Tuesday that the men had four country-made pistols and shot at the cops who confronted them six times.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state and at the Centre has also taken the line that the terrorism accused were killed because they opened fire.
But Shami also said that the police were well within the law to have shot the men dead if they thought that they were dreaded terrorists escaping.
