| From
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 39, Dated Oct 04, 2008 |
|
| CURRENT
AFFAIRS |
|
terror puzzle |
|
Police Theories
Encountered
The official narration is shooting holes into their own story
on the Delhi operation, triggering demands for an inquiry
SHOBHITA NAITHANI
New Delhi
IT’S 11 AT night on September 22. Sombre
activity is in progress at the Nizamuddin
burial ground, but a stunned, occasionally
resentful uncertainty pervades the
air. A group of some 150 armed policemen
stand round, keeping grim watch over a
gathering of over 250 people. Some of those
attending the funeral are irate. They are questioning
the veracity of the rationale that brings
them to the burial of Atif, alias Bashir, and Mohammed
Sajid, blamed for the September 13
New Delhi blasts and shot dead three days earlier
in a police encounter in New Delhi’s Jamia
Nagar. Now the two are being
buried in the presence of the
Shahi Imam of the Delhi Jama
Masjid, Syed Ahmed Bukhari,
local politicians and numerous
Muslims visiting the city to mark
Ramzan. Speaking at the funeral,
Bukhari reiterated what many
civil society organisations have
been saying since September 19,
the day of the encounter: “The
police cannot label anyone a terrorist.
It’s for the courts to decide
whether a person is guilty.”
Has A Cover-Up Begun?
AIIMS doctors say crucial evidence may have been lost during Inspector MC Sharma’s operation
HIS COLLEAGUES call him the bravest. But his death during the Jamia Nagar encounter has raised uncomfortable questions. In a startling disclosure, a senior doctor who conducted the postmortem on Inspector MC Sharma at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences spoke to TEHELKA of the damage to his vital organs. “It was difficult to establish the entry and exit points of the bullet because conclusive evidence had been wiped out by the interventions of the doctors at Holy Family [where Sharma was rushed to].”
Once considered the right-hand man of late ACP Rajbir Singh, another encounter specialist, Sharma was instrumental in the killing of 35 alleged terrorists and the arrest of 80 supposed others. It is believed that Sharma also killed 120 gangsters in a career just short of two decades. A close Special Cell colleague said there was a time when Sharma and Singh were measured on the same notoriety scale. “But post-2003, once the two encounter specialists fell out, Sharma sorted his ways.”
Jamia Nagar residents want to know how a veteran officer could make the mistake of not wearing a bulletproof vest to an encounter site. Senior officers have varying answers. “He probably wanted to garner all the credit,” said one, who requested anonymity. According to another, “He was under tremendous pressure as his son was suffering from dengue.” Least satisfactory was the response from Deputy Com missioner of Police (Special Cell) Alok Kumar, who said, “He must have wanted to maintain secrecy in a cramped area like Batla House.” Why then could he not have worn the vest under his shirt?
(Rohini Mohan contributed to this story) |
There are two versions of the
events of that day. Badr Taslim, 48,
a long-time resident of L-17, Batla
House, the building adjacent to the
one where the ‘terrorists were
holed up’, first heard the sounds of
gunfire at about 11am and after
that a scream. Soon, armed men
rushed to the spot and told him to
get inside his house. Taslim ran to
the flat opposite his and saw two
men coming down from the fourth
floor of L-18, supporting Inspector
Mohan Chand Sharma by his arms.
Sharma would die later that night
of wounds sustained during the operation. But
Taslim is unsure how serious Sharma’s injuries
were. “A small stain of blood was visible under
his right arm,” he says. “There was no wound in
the front of his body. There was no blood on the
staircase either.”
Some residents recall the sequence. Several
gunshots, the police said 30, audible till about
11:40am. Then, the silence. Finally, the bodies of
two ‘terrorists’ — 23-year-old Atif and 17-yearold
Sajid — carted away. Taslim didn’t see the
police arresting Saif, who is suspected to have
planted the Regal Cinema bomb that was
defused. Masih Alam, a lawyer who lives in the
flat opposite L-18, agrees with Taslim’s version.
In the police story, Atif was the Indian
Mujahideen mastermind who
designed and coordinated the five
blasts that went off in three
crowded New Delhi shopping centres.
Sajid was supposedly Atif’s
close aide. The police claim the
Special Cell team had received
information that two of those suspected
in the blasts were at Jamia
Nagar. At about 10:30am, a subinspector
posing as a Vodafone
salesman knocked on the door of
the fourth-floor flat in L-18 Batla
House. The residents of the house
said they didn’t want the Vodafone
offer. As was arranged, the sub-inspector
sent a signal to Sharma by
giving him a missed call. Minutes
after getting the cue, Sharma was
up the stairs with six other officers.
As he entered the flat, men rushed
out of another room and opened
fire at him. Sharma fell to the
ground, and the bullet aimed at
him hit a constable. The shootout
continued. Sharma was pulled out
and taken to the Holy Family Hospital,
closeby. The police later said
Sharma was bleeding heavily. By
then, the police had taken over the area and cordoned
it. Later, the police claimed that the
shootout had accounted for three terrorists: two
dead, one arrested. The police said two others
escaped. An AK-47 assault rifle along with two
.30 pistols and a computer were recovered from
the alleged hideout, a seizure the police would
have to prove once the trial starts.
Over the weekend, the police claimed that
two more terrorists were on the run along with
the two from Batla House. So, that made it
four on the run. The police claimed that an
additional four — Zeeshan, Zia-ur-Rehman,
Saquib Nissar and Mohammad Shakeel —
were arrested by September 21. Zeeshan was
the first of these four to be arrested on September
19. But before that, Zeeshan had
appeared on a news channel, after he saw his
name flash on television as a suspect. On
television, Zeeshan said he wasn’t involved.
Hours later, the police picked him up and
claimed he had confessed.
IN THE aftermath, the loopholes in the police
theory are becoming evident. Why weren’t
the policemen in bulletproof jackets? Eyewitness
Taslim wonders how the two terrorists
who managed to escape got away, considering
that L-18 not only has just one entrance and exit,
but also has a gap between its terrace and the
roof of the next house. “The only option was to
jump. Had they done so, they would have died,”
Taslim says. The alleged terrorists had also applied
for tenant verification on August 21, with
their personal details, including permanent addresses,
driving license details, and the address
of their previous residence. “Why would those
involved in the Ahmedabad blasts in July and
those preparing to bomb Delhi in September
give their verification to the police?” asks Asif
Mohammad, a former councillor of the area.
Civil rights lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who is
leading an independent fact-finding mission
into the incident, feels that the police
did not set out for Batla House thinking
they were after terrorists. They
would have planned the operation better,
Bhushan said. And therefore, he says, the police
story describing the dead men’s role in the blasts
is false. “This is clear from several facts. Their
tenant verification is authentic. Zeeshan was
taking an MBA exam. Atif is a registered Jamia
Millia Islamia student. All these point to the fact
that there is something amiss in the police
theory,” says Bhushan.
But the big question is: How did Sharma
die? Bhushan says there are three possibilities:
those inside the house were armed and fired
at Sharma, or he fell victim to a form of
‘friendly fire’, having been accidentally shot by
a police gun. The last and most sinister, utterly
cynical possibility is that he was shot by his
colleagues, perhaps a bitter fallout of his
chequered career.
So, while the Delhi
Police are buoyant after the ‘cracking’ of the terror module, a section
of the media and civil rights activists like Shabnam Hashmi, John Dayal
and Yogendra Yadav doubt the police theory. For now, there is a demand
for a fair, impartial and independent probe into the puzzling incident.
WRITER’S E-MAIL
shobhita@tehelka.com |
