MUMBAI: Even as the Delhi police claimed busting the terrorists module responsible for the blasts in Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and a few other places in the country and yesterday arrested three more suspects, a fact-finding team consisting of activists, academicians and journalists on Saturday visited the site of the police operation against alleged terrorists staying in an apartment in Jamia Nagar.
In a signed statement sent to Arab News through an e-mail by Ram Punyani of Secular Perspective group, Mumbai, the team members Shabnam Hashmi, Satya Sivaraman, Manisha Sethi, Tanweer Fazal, Arshad Alam, and Pallavi Deka, raised several questions relating to the police theory of the encounter.
Two alleged terrorists Atif and Sajid, along with Mohan Chand Sharma, an inspector of the Delhi Police Cell died in the operation while a third alleged terrorist Saif was arrested. The fact-finding team stated that on the basis of their interactions with the local residents, eye-witnesses and the reports which have appeared in the media, the team would like to pose the following questions.
• It has been widely reported (and not refuted by the police) that in early August this year Atif, who is described by the Delhi police as the mastermind behind the recent terrorist bombings in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi, underwent a police verification exercise along with his four roommates in order to rent the apartment they were staying in Jamia Nagar.
All the five youth living in the apartment submitted to the Delhi police their personal details, including permanent address, driving license details, address of the house they previously stayed in, all of which were found to be accurate.
Is it conceivable that the alleged kingpin behind the terrorist Indian Mujahedeen outfit would have wanted to undergo police verification — for whatever purpose — just a week after the Ahmedabad blasts and a month before the bombings in Delhi?
• The four-storied house, L-18, in Jamia Nagar, where the alleged terrorists were staying, has only one access point, through the staircase, which is covered by an iron grill. It is impossible to leave the house except from the staircase.
By all reports, the staircase was taken over by the Special Cell and/or by other agencies during the counterterror operation. The house, indeed the entire block, was cordoned off at the time of the operation. How then was it then possible, as claimed by the police, for two alleged terrorists to escape the premises during the police operation?
• The media have quoted “police sources” as having informed them that the Special Cell was fully aware about the presence of dreaded terrorists, involved in the bombings in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi, staying in the apartment that was raided.
Why was the late Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, a veteran of dozens of encounter operations, the only officer in the operation not wearing a bulletproof vest? Was this due to over-confidence or is there something else to his mysterious death during the operation? Will the forensic report of the bullets that killed Sharma be made public?
• There are reports that toward the end of the counterterror operation, some policemen climbed on the roof of L-18 and fired several rounds in the air. Other policemen were seen breaking windows and even throwing flower pots to the ground from flats adjacent or opposite to L-18. Why was the police firing in the air and why did it indulge in destruction of property around L-18 after the encounter?
• The police officials claim that an AK-47 and pistols were recovered from L-18. What was the weapon that killed Sharma? Was the AK-47 used at all and by whom? Going by some reports that have appeared (see Times of India, 20.09.08), the AK-47s have been used by the police only. Is it not strange that alleged terrorists did not use a more deadly and sophisticated weapon like the AK-47, which they purportedly possessed, preferring to use pistols?
The team members in their statement concluded by stating that they felt there are far too many loose ends in the current story of the police encounter at Jamia Nagar and that they demand that a fair, impartial and independent probe into the incident be initiated at the earliest to answer their question as also any other ones that arise from the contradictions of the case.
