Bhopal jail break: Why 8 SIMI men's encounter looks staged

Early Monday, at around 2.30am, eight undertrials of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), escaped the central prison of Bhopal taking advantage of the possible lax in security amid Diwali festivities. By 11.30am on October 31, it was reported that all eight of them were gunned down in Einthedi village on the outskirts of Bhopal.

While the Madhya Pradesh home minister Bhupinder Singh reacted to a channel that the encounter was necessitated on account of the weapons in possession of the inmates that they engaged the police with, he had categorically ruled out that they had guns with them. But soon, the Inspector General of Bhopal, Yogesh Chaudhary claimed that the inmates were in possession of guns and were killed in crossfire.

The different versions and sketchy details aside, the circumstances of the encounter did not add up right from the start. At a joint press conference by IG Yogesh Chaudhary and DIG Raman Singh Sikarwar late in the evening, it was dramatically announced that "4 firearms and 3 sharp weapons" were recovered from the escaped jail inmates though none of them were displayed.

Now, a shocking video has emerged that shows at least one of the inmates being fired upon in cold blood as if it were a premeditated operation. This raises many questions about the state of our police forces and prejudices within.

If it was a deliberate act, at which level was the decision taken to eliminate the terror suspects rather than capture them live? With such cases being politicised easily, would the facts ever be out in the public domain - because magisterial enquiries can go on forever?

A Supreme Court order in September 2014 issued fresh guidelines that have to be followed in the cases of encounters. But they are seldom enforced even today. The Supreme Court verdict came as a result of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the NGO, People's Union for Civil Liberties' (PUCL), which, along with the NHRC, had also suggested setting up a separate and independent probe agency under the NHRC or the state human rights commission to probe all encounter killings.

While the verdict did bring about some clarity on the standard operating procedures to be followed, it failed to address a very crucial component. The FIRs in encounters are always registered against the deceased rather than the policemen and this anomaly wasn't addressed in the judgment.

It is a fact that fake encounters have, for long, gone on uninhibited in this country. And it is disconcerting that, at the end of many of these instances, the concerned police officers don't attract any penalty and it is seldom proved whether these encounters took place in self defence or the force used was proportional to the threat perceived.

We choose to ignore the nuances and play up the antecedents of the deceased to justify such acts of culling. Despite the announcement of an NIA probe by chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, it remains to be seen if all the facts pertaining to this case will come out in the open in the near future.