NEW DELHI, 7 November — An eyewitness has claimed that two men who were gunned down as suspected militants by Delhi police on Sunday were unarmed when they were fired at, a report said yesterday.
The Asian Age newspaper quoting H. Krishna, a doctor who claimed he was in the basement parking of Ansal Plaza shopping complex when the incident took place, said there was no encounter between militants and police as claimed by the authorities.
Krishna said he noticed two men in their early twenties coming out of a car and both were hardly able to walk.
"Being a doctor I could make out that either they had not slept for several days or had taken a heavy dose of sleeping pills," he said. "The two boys were shot dead in front of us," Krishna said, adding that they were not armed at that time.
"They were empty handed when they stepped out of the car. Had there been a real encounter other people in the basement would have been injured," the doctor said. "The cops fired about 30 to 35 bullets. It lasted hardly for a minute. They were unarmed," he said.
Krishna said he had tried to tell representatives of the media at the shopping complex that the men were unarmed but was hushed up by a policeman. He said he feared that the police may try to silence him.
The Asian Age said when a team of its staffers reached the doctor’s house they found some people who appeared to be plainclothes policemen hanging around the house.
It said the doctor’s house was locked and a man who answered the doorbell said Krishna had left the house.
Police officials claimed that the two "terrorists" suspected to belong to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group were gunned down in the basement parking lot of the shopping complex.
Acting on a tip-off received two weeks earlier, police officials intercepted the armed men before they could enter the shopping complex, which was packed with shoppers on the eve of the Hindu festival of Diwali.
Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani had hinted at Pakistan’s hand behind the incident saying that a "neighboring country" was trying to incite communal tension in India through such an attack.
But Islamabad denied the allegation as baseless and said the government of India would be well-advised to undertake an impartial investigation into such incidents and desist from finger-pointing at Pakistan.
Rights body quizzes police
Meanwhile, India’s rights watchdog yesterday asked the Delhi Police for a report on the gunning down of the two alleged militants, at the Ansal Plaza shopping mall.
The National Human Rights Commission has asked the police to report within a week on what exactly happened at the mall Sunday evening.
Delhi Police claimed that the militants, identified as Dawood Ali and Ijaz Ahmad from Pakistan’s Punjab province, belonged to the Lashker-e-Taiba group.
The NHRC notice wa0s issued on complaint filed by senior journalists Kuldeep Nayar and Praful Bidwai, who alleged that the gun battle was stage-managed.
The NHRC also asked police to provide security to the 60-year-old doctor, who lives in the Greater Kailash neighborhood of south Delhi. Said Joint Commissioner of Police Neeraj Kumar: "The Delhi Police Commissioner (R.S. Gupta) has directed that the doctor should be provided extra security cover.
