What's the truth behind the Warangal encounters?

Civil liberties and human rights groups had cried foul the very day - 7 April - that the photo of Mohammed Viqaruddin started doing the rounds on television channels and social media websites. Dead men tell no tales, but slumped in a corner, with an INSAS rifle in his handcuffed hands, and dead, Viqaruddin seemed to be calling out the lies of the Telangana Police and the escort squad of Warangal Central Prison. 

Now, a fact-finding report by the Hyderabad-based Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee (CLMC) lends credence to the demand that only a probe by an external investigative agency will bring home the truth of how Viqaruddin and four of his co-inmates were killed by a police force scared about all its charges collapsing in court. 

The report, a copy of which has been accessed by DNA, goes into considerable detail to question not only the police story of firing in self-defence, but also questions the prosecution's charges of the dead men being dreaded militants. 

Incongruous defence
Aleir highway, off which the "encounter" is said to have taken place, is 75 km from Warangal and 7 km from Hyderabad. It's a double road and always sees a traffic rush. Is that why the squad stopped the prison mini-bus at a spot away from the main thoroughfare and exactly between two trees marked as 398 and 399 by forest officials? Also, since the police itself claims that Viqar was running a militant organisation Tehreek-e-Galba-e-Islami, which since 2010 specialised in carrying out murderous attacks on policemen, why would the squad take the inmates to a deserted spot just because some of them wanted to relieve themselves? Surely, dreaded militants would be hesitant to carry out an attack in the open and on a busy highway, especially since they don't belong to any fidayeen group, claims Lateef Mohammad Khan, CLMC Convenor. 

Also, the rifles alleged to have been used by Viqar and his men to fire the police, had their safety catches locked, so does this explain why none of the men in khaki suffered any bullet injuries? This is besides the question of how a locked assult rifle, or any firearm for that matter, can be used to open fire. 

According to his wife Ishrat Banu, Mohammad Haneef, a registered medical practitioner and one of the five killed, was whisked away from his clinic in Nalgonda on 11 July 2010 by policemen in mufti. After 3 days, he was produced before the Nampally criminal court and charged with harbouring Viqar. He had complained of brutal police torture during that period of illegal custody. She complains that despite her protests, the hospital authorities conducted the post mortem in a perfunctory manner and initially refused to hand over the report. 
Lawyers representing Viqar and Haneef say that the trial dates were fixed for 1- 10 April, and proceedings were about to get over in two months at the most. Till date, the prosecution hadn't been able to come up with any credible evidence to make it charges stick. On 6 April, both filed an affidavit before the magistrate, expressing serious threats to their lives, and citing how the escort sqaud personnel were threatening them during the daily journey, requested to be transferred out of the Warangal jail. They stated that it was a deliberate ploy of the police to shift them from Chellampally jail in Hyderabad to the one in Warangal, especially when the trial was going on in Hyderabad itself. All the police wanted as an opportunity. In fact, the court was to adjudicate upon this very affidavit on 7 April. 

Resisting accountability
The Aleir police station, in the jurisdiction of which the "encounter" took place, has registered an FIR - No. 35 of 2015 - under Section 307. (Attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code, but it is against the deceased, not the police personnel involved. The SHO not only refused to register Lateef's FIR (under Section 302- murder) against the policemen, but has also slapped him with a notice under Section 160 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. This means he has to present himself before the police whenever they require him to, which he claims is nothing short of a bullying tactic. 

Viqaruddin's father has already moved the Andhra Pradesh High Court, asking for exhumation of the bodies and a second post-mortem, besides a CBI probe. CLMC has also approached the court, asking for a magisterial inquiry and booking the policemen on murder charges. On 16 April, the government sought more time to file a counter-affidavit to these two writ petitions. It contested the exhumation plea by invoking "religious sentiments" of Muslims and asserting that it would lead to "law and order problems". The next date of hearing is 28 April, and this damning report would require more resilient mendacity on the part of the police and government.