“The boys have been killed, and then charged post-facto of heinous terrorist outrages. They have no way now of defending their names or their lives,” writes Harsh Mander, who following the Gujarat 2002 massacre quit his Indian administrative service to serve the nation as human rights activist and who is recipient of the 2002 Rev. M.A.Thomas National Human Rights Award from the Vigil India Movement, in his article entitled “The real travesty” on Batla House “encounter” published in The Hindu on October 19.
“The National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan, described the demand for a judicial enquiry into the “encounter” as a “travesty”. I hope this does not reflect the views of the government at the highest level. If this is a travesty, why has the National Human Rights Commission instructed that every case of death by police firing should be registered as a case of culpable homicide and investigated accordingly? All deaths in police custody, as well as deaths resulting from police firings, are required under the law routinely to be investigated by a magistrate, although governments are increasingly failing in ordering this, in a growing culture of impunity,” he adds.
“The mothers of some of the boys accused of terror acts have appeared on television, and declared that their children should be publicly hung if it is proved that they are terrorists. They only plead that the charges should first be proved. Is it too much to seek only the due process of law? An entire community fears that the Jamia “encounter” was faked to target their innocent youth, and there is a growing body of independent opinion which shares these apprehensions. If the government has nothing to hide, it should be ready to allay the fears of so many of its citizens by coming clean in a judicial enquiry. It is not the demand for a judicial enquiry but its stubborn refusal that is the real travesty in a democratic polity,” thus he concludes his article.