The jailbreak by eight members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in Bhopal and their subsequent gunning down in an ‘encounter’ with the police a few hours later on the outskirts of the city have brought to the fore the chinks in the jail’s armour. Recognising the security lapse, five senior jail officials have been suspended and one transferred in the aftermath of the event at the Bhopal Central Jail. They include the deputy inspector general, superintendent of police, deputy superintendent of police, assistant superintendent of police, and chief jail warden. The additional DIG (jails) has been shifted to the police headquarters. The undertrials had escaped Bhopal Central Jail around 2 am on Monday, after scaling the 32-feet wall of the jail, killing a guard and taking another guard hostage until their escape. The men had broken the gates of their cell and scaled the jail wall using bedsheets after tying them together.
The prisoners were facing trial for terror incidents, sedition and robbery. They were all housed in the same cell. Three of the terror suspects had recently been caught after they escaped in an identical jailbreak in Khandwa, around 280 km from Bhopal. The SIMI undertrials were allegedly involved in several incidents of terror and bank robbery while they were on the run. Significantly, SIMI, accused of carrying out several attacks and having links with Pakistan-based terror groups, was banned in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.
On the face of it, the killing of the SIMI activists appears fishy. While the police said they had opened fire before they were gunned down, the State Home Minister said they had weapons made of aluminium plates and spoons which they took from the jail. Video footage of the ‘encounter’which went viral on social networking sites purportedly from the site, showed a policeman firing at a body and another placing what appeared to be a knife next to the body of one of those killed. Whether these videos were themselves genuine or doctored is still not known.
The eight men killed belonged to the Abu Faisal module of SIMI and the cold reality is that when such alleged terrorists are put on trial, witnesses do not come forward to depose against them for fear of being killed. This is the ground on which the police tends to justify many ‘encounters’ unofficially, though officially they claim that the terrorists were killed in an ‘encounter.’ Members of the same SIMI module had earlier been involved in many terror incidents including the Ahmedabad blasts of 2008, the Chennai Central blast of 2014, several bank robberies in Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Orissa besides the Khandwa jailbreak in M.P. in 2013.
That the commander of the SIMI operatives is still in Bhopal jail in solitary confinement and was not involved in the escape is reason enough for the jail authorities to be extremely vigilant. Faisal alias Doctor had drawn up several terror blueprints including plotting the assassination of Prime Minister Modi. Faisal had also formed a separate wing within SIMI to fund terror. While a strict vigil must be kept on Faisal, an impartial inquiry must establish whether there is any truth in the allegations that the Bhopal encounter killings were fake. No one can be allowed to take law into his own hands and any digression from that principle must be punished while fixing accountability. Reports show up the high-security claims of the fortified jail campus as humbug. Curiously, night patrolling was discontinued a few days ago. Also, the guard deputed to the rooftop of the Jail Training Centre for a wide-angle view of the campus was absent. Since the cells in which the SIMI men were lodged were clearly visible from the rooftop, the jailbreak perpetrators would have been under the roof guard’s gun while scaling the wall. This reminds one of the Khandwa jailbreak in 2013 when the policeman on the roof was asleep when the jailbreak occurred. The jail department wrote to the police to provide a round-the-clock force of 11 armed men over a year ago but that has not been complied with to this day. There are also unconfirmed reports that the CCTV cameras were not working.
Now that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is to probe the jail break it must look at all aspects — among them lax and ill-equipped security, and the credibility of the claim that the SIMI men were killed in an encounter which was genuine. An independent judicial probe into the encounter must also be carried out.
Article 21 of the Constitution of India guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. The governments of the day, in Madhya Pradesh and at the Centre, must fulfil their duty to uphold the Constitution.
