Tough questions are being asked of the police’s actions in the two separate killings, one in Andhra Pradesh and the other in Telengana.
A day after the Telangana police gunned down five people who were being transported from Warangal to Hyderabad, many have raised doubts over the credibility of the encounter and questioned if it was staged.
The News Minute has accessed a 37-second video related to the incident which clearly shows that all five accused were handcuffed––with one or two seemingly handcuffed to the seat.
Watch it here.
The incident which occurred between Aler and Jangaon, about 80 km from Hyderabad saw the police shoot and kill Viqaruddin Ahmed and his four associates, Syed Amjed, Izhar Khan, Mohammed Haneef and Mohammed Zakir on claims that they tried to snatch guns and escape.
The five men allegedly involved in the killing of two policemen were arrested in 2010 after a series of attacks on the police in Hyderabad, and were lodged in Warangal Central Jail.
There are many questions being raised by various individuals and groups, including Viqaruddin’s father who has refused to claim his son’s body and demanded a CBI probe into the incident.
The family’s lawyer has demanded to know why they were lodged in the Warangal jail when there were three jails in Hyderabad with ample security. He also questioned why five people who were confident of getting released soon would try to escape.
You can watch the reactions of the families in this video.
A report in the Times of India also contested the details given by the police with statements of locals who said that the traffic was stopped for a brief time when the firing happened on the highway.
Questions have been raised by human rights activists as well.
Why was no policeman injured if there really was a struggle as claimed by the police? Why was there no blood on the AK-47 that the accused was holding in one of the photos released to the media?
Hyderabad MP and All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) President Asaduddin Owaisi has called the encounter “murder and retaliation by the police.”
A postmortem is currently being conducted on Viqaruddin and the others at the Mahatma Gandhi Hospital in Warangal. The results are awaited.
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