Voices seeking probe into encounters grow louder

With the Ishrat Jahan encounter case under fresh scrutiny, an organisation formed to bring out the truth about last year's Batla House encounter in New Delhi has sought to put the spotlight on similar encounters across the country.

The Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association, which has been seeking an independent judicial probe into the Batla House encounter, on Thursday organised a conference that brought together those who were fighting for the victims of alleged state injustice in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Manipur and Hyderabad among other places.

Kavita Srivastava, the Jaipur-based general secretary of People's Union for Civil Liberties, said Bengali-speaking Muslims are still being subjected to attacks in Rajasthan.

"The Ajmer blasts virtually unleashed a spate of illegal detentions of Muslim youth across the state, and not a single case has been filed against the police for illegal detention and torture," she said.

Soon after the Jaipur blasts, the police had turned their attention to settlements and slums housing Bengali-speaking Muslims in Bagrana on the outskirts of Jaipur. While there are quite a few illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in such settlements, there are also a high number of Bengali-speaking Indian Muslims in these areas.

Mukul Sinha, the lawyer for the family of Ishrat Jahan, also attended the conference and presented a report on the encounters in Gujarat and focussed on the evidences that proved the Ishrat Jahan encounter was staged.

"While the number of encounters in Gujarat may not be as high as in other states, Gujarat is significant because encounters are a political strategy to reap electoral victories for the BJP and to create the image of Narendra Modi as a Hindu icon," he said.

While leaders from across the political spectrum were invited, the organisers kept out leaders from the Congress and the BJP.

"There is no difference between the two mainstream parties. While the BJP is openly communal, the Congress is covertly communal. We wanted to boycott the two parties," said Manisha Sethi, of the JTSA.

The conference also resolved to strengthen the movement for the demand of an independent and fair probe into the Batla House encounter. It demanded that the prime minister must immediately institute a judicial enquiry into the encounter, a demand that the Association has been making for many months now.

The association also criticised the National Human Rights Commission for what it called a partisan and a biased enquiry.

"The NHRC failed to even visit the site of the encounter to meet possible eye witnesses and neighbours," the association said in its resolution demanding a judicial probe.