The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on July 22 submitted its shocking report awarding clean chit to the accused Delhi police personnel involved in the stage-managed Batla House encounter in which two innocent students, Muhammad Atif Ameen and Muhammad Sajid, occupants of L-18 apartment at Jamia Nagar, were allegedly made scapegoats and done to death on September 19, 2008.
Cops claimed the boys were involved in serial bomb blasts which had taken place in different parts of Delhi in September 2008. This is not the single case in which the innocents were killed and the accused made to move scot-free. The NHRC report is shocking and disgusting. People especially Muslims are losing faith in the administration and judiciary.
NHRC, in its 30-page report submitted to Delhi High Court, said, “The police clearly acted in self-defence. In such circumstances, the action taken by the police in which Muhammad Atif Ameen and Muhammad Sajid received fatal injuries and died was fully protected by law.”
Reacting to the Report, human rights groups and activists, Muslim representative organisations and even common people in the various parts of North India are condemning the report calling it unfair and shameful.
Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Group (JTSG) rejected the NHRC report and wanted to know what material was placed before the Commission for inspection. The NHRC enquiry into the case came far too late, and that too at the insistence of the High Court. For months, the NHRC refused to take any initiative to independently enquire into the encounter which several Civil Rights groups, including JTSG, deemed suspect. The NHRC enquiry was carried out in an inexplicably secret manner, even applications by residents of Azamgarh to depose before the Commission were not acknowledged by the NHRC. The Commission never paid attention to the People of Azamgarh, family members of the accused and slain boys and Civil Rights groups who have been campaigning on the issue.
It appears that NHRC, like the Lieutenant Governor prior to this, was satisfied by the police version alone. The JTSG Report, Encounter at Batla House: Unanswered Questions, a damning indictment of the police version was submitted to the Commission earlier this year. By ignoring all the civic voices, NHRC has proved itself to be a brazenly partisan body, and damaged its own standing and independent credibility, a JTSG statement said.
In its bid to carry out the dictates of the State, the NHRC even forgot that the Delhi Police had consistently violated even its own guidelines about encounter killings. Worse still, a body which is supposed to act in the interests of human rights of the citizens, pronounces that the encounter did not involve any human rights violation, only tells us about its flawed and distorted understanding of human rights and subverts the very basis of its guidelines.
All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat (AIMMM) expressed its dismay at the clean chit given by NHRC to the Delhi police in the encounter. AIMMM President Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan said the hasty NHRC report seems to be solely based on police briefing and papers offered by the police which have been denied to relatives of the encounter victims. There is no indication that the commission bothered to contact relatives of the victims or residents of the area where the infamous encounter took place or the civil society organisations which conducted fact-finding about the event and expressed serious misgivings about the police version. Moreover, the NHRC did not deign to even acknowledge many representations made by the relatives of the victims sent to the commission by post.
The NHRC did not take suo moto notice of the event which shook millions of people and moved only when it was asked by the High Court to probe the matter in the face of the stout refusal of the Lt. Governor of Delhi to allow an enquiry. The NHRC even failed to take notice of the fact that the police flouted the Commission’s own guidelines to conduct an enquiry in every case of killing by its officers, the AIMMM statement maintained, while rejecting this suspect and one-sided report.
“We stick to our demand for a proper judicial enquiry into the incident which led to the murder of two young students and to the arrest of dozens of youths ostensibly to justify and cover up the murder by people in khaki,” Dr Khan said.
On May 20, the Delhi High Court, acting on a petition filed by the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) and ANHAD, asked the NHRC to conduct its own inquiry into the alleged Batla House encounter and give a report upon it. The order of the High Court was issued after the Court was shown reports of four independent organisations into the encounter, including the report of PUDR, the Delhi Union of Journalists and the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group, all of which seriously questioned the version of the Delhi police regarding the encounter. These reports and the petition filed by the PUDR pointed out several specific problems with the version of the Delhi police.
Human Rights activists, including Arundhati Roy, Advocate Prashant Bhushan, Harsh Mander, etc., in a statement raised the following questions about the version of the Delhi police:
1. If these boys were killed in a genuine encounter, how did the 17-year-old boy Sajid have four bullet holes on the top of his head?, which could only happen if the boy was made to sit down and shot from above.
2. How is the skin peeled off from Atif’s back? This was clearly visible in the photograph taken before his burial which is annexed to the PUDR petition. Obviously Atif had been tortured before having been killed.
3. How are the other blunt injuries on the bodies of the boys explained by the police version of the encounter?
4. If the police knew in advance (as they claimed) that these boys in the flat were the terrorists involved in the Delhi and other bomb blasts, why did Inspector Sharma go in without a bullet proof vest?
5. How could two of the boys escape from the flat which had only one exit (two doors next to each other) as the apartment was surrounded by the cops?
It was expected that in these circumstances, the NHRC would conduct its own investigation into the matter. The report of NHRC given to the High Court on July 22 however shows that far from conducting any investigation into the matter, the NHRC has merely relied upon the Police reports. They have not even examined or investigated the above questions which were squarely raised in the PUDR petition on which the High Court order was issued to the NHRC. They have not even examined Saif, the third boy picked up by the police, nor even any of the witnesses of the Batla House area who had deposed before the People’s Tribunal. They have just swallowed the police version hook, line and sinker. And this is despite the fact that there has been no independent police investigation or even a magisterial enquiry into the encounter as mandated by the NHRC’s own guidelines, the rights activists said in their statement.
“It is extremely unfortunate that the premier Human Rights body set up to investigate Human Rights violations is becoming a rubber stamp for the police. The same attitude of the NHRC was evident when the Supreme Court asked the NHRC to investigate allegations of Rape and Murder against the Salwa Judum. The NHRC sent a team of police officers who spoke mainly to the local police and other officials and gave a white-washing report.
“The time has come to seriously re-examine the manner of appointment of members of the NHRC and its powers. The present system of appointment by a committee of Prime Minister, Home Minister, Speaker and Leader of Opposition, etc. is not working satisfactorily. All of them seem to want a toothless and tame body which will not question those in power.
“Since the NHRC report does not address or answer the disquieting questions raised by the several independent fact finding reports about encounter, it is therefore essential that there be an investigation into the encounter by an SIT appointed by the Delhi High Court,” they added.
President Rashtriya Ulama Council Maulana Muhammad Amir Rashadi condemned the NHRC report calling it ‘the greatest untruth of this century’ conducted under government pressure. “Under a pre-planned conspiracy only such evidences were placed before the NHRC team as could support the police version. The Report is the sad result of the government’s bid to save the skin of the then Union Home Minister and his loving officials,” he alleged.
He demanded the government to hand over the case to the CBI so that the truth might be revealed and the perpetrators brought to book.
Under the umbrella of JTSG, All India Institute Association and Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) hundreds of persons staged a dharna and protested the report in front of NHRC office on June 24. On the eve of the protest copies of the report were set on fire, claiming it baseless and unfair.
Addressing the dharna, Human Rights activist Shabnam Hashmi said it is shameful that the Commission presented police version. She said, “Neither anyone representing the Commission went to the spot nor they tried to talk with the eyewitnesses, neighbours and relatives of the victims but acknowledged the evidence given by the police.” She claimed that simultaneously after the incident the government decided to investigate the matter and prepared its mind to appoint the desired Justice. It is an irony that even the name of the Justice was declared, she alleged.
Lecturer at Delhi University Nirmala Mukherji said the NHRC report is not acceptable and we should not anticipate that the Commission will go against the police.
Dr. Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas, Editor Urdu monthly Afkar-e-Milli, while addressing a gathering at Jamaat-e-Islami Hind headquarters, said even after the submission of NHRC report there are a number of unsolved questions which point it to be a fake encounter.
He said it is an irony that the Commission did not bother to talk either with the eyewitnesses or the accused Mohammad Saif, who has been in police custody ever since.
He alleged, “Due to the bomb blasts in Delhi and other places the then Home Minister was under pressure, so he called the cops and wanted result. Unfortunately the following day the encounter took place.”
Talking about Mohan Chand Sharma, the police officer who had been killed in the encounter, Dr. Ilyas said, “Sharma was not an encounter specialist but a fake encounter specialist. Earlier too he had killed two innocent businessmen at Connaught Place in the same manner.”
He demanded a high level judiciary inquiry and said, “We know by doing this, the innocent victims will not come back but the other innocents will not be sent to gallows.”