Clean chit to MP cops in SIMI activists encounter

Anup Dutta

Bhopal, June 25

The judicial inquiry into the encounter of eight SIMI activists who had escaped from the Bhopal Central Jail on the intervening night of October 30-31, 2016, has given a clean chit to police. The state government today tabled the probe report in the Assembly. 

“The deceased persons were asked to surrender but instead of complying, they started firing at the police and public. So, it became necessary for the police to open fire... even after the police opened fire they showed no intention to surrender and, as a result, sustained injuries and died on the spot,’’ the probe report said. “The use of force resulting in the death of the escaped persons was quite inevitable and quite reasonable...” it stated.

During the probe, the one-man commission of Justice SK Pandey (retd) visited the Bhopal Central Jail from where the  undertrials escaped after killing a jail security guard and Manikhedi Kot Pathar, the village on the outskirts of Bhopal where the encounter took place.

Justice SK Pandey submitted his report to the government in September 2017. However, it was tabled on the inaugural day of the MP Assembly’s monsoon session on Monday. After a host of questions on the encounter of SIMI activists were raised, Chouhan ordered a judicial probe into the incident. 

Use of force ‘reasonable’: Probe 

The judicial panel has justified as “reasonable” and “inevitable" the use of force by the police that resulted in the death of eight members of the banned SIMI after they escaped from the Bhopal Central Jail in 2016