Protesting against the police and state brutality in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, senior journalists from different institutions questioned the role of police and state machinery in the recent encounters in those Southern States and urged people to come together against every injustice irrespective of religion and caste. The journalists were speaking at a public meeting organised by Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in the Capital on 12 April.
Talking on extra-judicial execution, N.K. Singh, Secretary News Broadcasters Associations, said that it has become the habit of every state. Why is it happening? How dare they do so? If we have a strong legal system, they won’t dare to stage encounters in this way. These kinds of encounters happen in a situation when statecraft is weak or endorses it. We will have to make the judicial system strong.
Commenting on the role of media, he said that the Indian media is so strong that whoever are the culprits can’t escape from media. There are two malpractices, corruption and encounter regarding which our media has become highly sensitive. He also said that ignorance and illiteracy are becoming the cause of staying in jail. Only one per cent of graduate people are in jail. He also requested the Muslim community to come out of the Muslim ghetto and participate in mainstream activities and interact with the modern world.
Recounting the different incidents of fake encounter, Uma Shankar, Senior Journalist NDTV, said that the reason of these fake encounters is that the police has no strong evidence against accused. When the accused has a chance to be acquitted, the police kill him. The second reason is greed to receive award of bravery as we saw in Kashmir. The third reason is personal enmity between some police and the accused. Speaking on the duty of media, he said that it is the responsibility of media to check the facts carefully and avoid making any wrong perception about anyone. He also said that unless we as media persons will keep questioning on these incidents, it will be hard for culprits to escape.
Questioning the Warangal encounter, Adil Husain, a senior journalist, said the reason dished out is that they had become a threat to the policemen. How it is possible that five handcuffed accused became a threat to about a dozen policemen? No sensible man can approve of it. The big question is why incident after incident is happening? He also said that no policeman has any right to touch any accused during trial.
Apart from them, Waseem Akram Tyagi and Varun Sailesh also expressed their views. They urged the Muslim community to raise voice against every incident of oppression whether it is happening against Dalits, Christians or Hindus. They also asked why the Muslim community didn’t stand against Dalit massacre in Bihar church attack.
Chairing the public meeting, Parwaz Rehmani, Editor-in-chief of Urdu biweekly Dawat, appreciated the views and opinions of all speakers. He called upon the Muslim community to stand against every sort of injustice irrespective of religion and caste.