Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Wednesday that his Ministry was yet to receive a letter from the Madhya Pradesh government seeking a probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the Bhopal jailbreak case.
Eight undertrial prisoners alleged to be members of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) are suspected to have killed a prison official before escaping from the Bhopal Central Prison on October 31. Hours later they were gunned down in an alleged encounter with the police.
Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of a press conference, Mr. Singh said, “we are yet to receive any letter from the M.P government seeking an NIA probe.” Earlier while addressing the press on Asian Disaster Management of Risk Reduction Conference, Mr. Singh had said that the M.P government has already ordered an enquiry into the Bhopal encounter.
NIA reports to the home ministry and its charter of duties clearly says that it will only probe terror cases.
Madhya Pradesh home minister Bhoopendra Singh Thakur told The Hindu that they were still deliberating whether to give the jailbreak probe to NIA. “We are still debating on the probe and it will be done only when the union home ministry agrees to it. Retired DGP Nandan Dubey has already been asked to probe the jailbreak,” said Mr. Thakur.
He also said the state police has submitted its preliminary report into the encounter which said that “terrorists fired on them and they were killed in retaliation.”
On the day of the encounter, M.P Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief Sanjeev Shami was quoted by several newspapers that the undertrials were unarmed and no policeman was injured in the encounter. On Wednesday, in an interview to news channel NDTV he reiterated that he stood by his earlier statement.
Contradicting this, Inspector General Yogesh Chowdhury told a press conference the same evening that four guns were found on the prisoners. As reported by The Hindu on Wednesday, several eye witnesses at Malikheda village, where the encounter took place said the prisoners had no guns on them.
On being asked to clarify on this contradictory statement by the ATS chief, Mr. Thakur said, “there is some confusion whether the prisoners were already carrying guns when they escaped the prison or they were helped by someone while on the run.”
He said the state CID was enquiring into the matter and the public persons would be asked to submit video footage and other evidences about the encounter.
He ruled out any judicial enquiry into the encounter.
Parvaiz Alam, counsel for the eight killed undertrials, told The Hindu that he had seen the post-mortem report of the deceased and all of them had firearm injuries above their waist.
“They were fired upon from the front and had gun injuries on their head and chest,” Mr. Alam said.
He said he would move the court for an independent inquiry into the case.
