Sab peeche hat jao...kuch aur farzi operation karana pade to. (Everybody move back, we might need to do some more fake operations.)
Three days after the Madhya Pradesh police killed eight undertrial SIMI activists near Bhopal under questionable circumstances, audio clips emerged on Thursday that seem to show that the police might have killed them in a staged encounter.
In the audio clips purportedly from the encounter scene, a voice, allegedly that of a police officer, can be heard telling other cops:
Sabko nipta do... Sahab aanewale hain. Bilkul peechhe nahi hatna hai. Gher ke pura kar do kaam tamaam. (Finish everyone... Sahab is about to come. Don’t stop or hesitate. Surround them and finish them off.)
Interestingly, a second audio clip reveals a conversation between police teams talking about “cross-firing” and “firing from the other side,” indicating fire arms were used by the fugitive SIMI men.
On Wednesday, Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad chief Sanjeev Shami had said that the eight men were not armed at the time of the encounter.
The authenticity of the these audio clips, however, is yet be verified.
The police had earlier asserted that the SIMI men, who allegedly escaped from the Bhopal Central Jail, were carrying country-made revolvers or kattas.
The audio tapes, however, indicate that the so-called SIMI activists did not open fire on the 25-member-strong police party which had encircled them at Manikhedi Patthar, about 15 km east of Bhopal.
Sigma Seven One: Chaar-paanch mar gaye hain. Unko goli lag gayi hai. Chalo, shaabash. Koi dikkat nahi hai. Hum log pahunch rahe hain (Sigma Seven One, four-five of them are dead. They’ve been shot. Great, don’t worry. We are reaching there.)
Later, in one of the clips, a cop is purportedly heard saying:
Ek ko to zinda rakhna chahiye tha. (We should’ve kept at least one of them alive.)
This alleged statement raises the question whether the MP police had the opportunity to nab at least one of the suspected SIMI men after five of them were killed.
These tapes have surfaced days after the encounter was deemed questionable by many, with several political parties demanding an independent probe into it.
Video Editor: Mohd Irshad Alam
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