Keeping Alive the Struggle for Justice: AISA’s torchlight procession demands a judicial probe into Batla House ‘encounter’

This 19th September will mark two years since two young men were killed by police bullets in a flat in Batla House. While the police and government claimed the killing as a major success of its counter-terrorism operation, alleging that Atif and Sajid were the key operatives of an organization called Indian Mujahideen, civil rights activist pointed out the loopholes in the police story. What strengthened the suspicion of local residents and rights activists was the refusal of the government to concede to the demand for a judicial probe into the incident. Despite the NHRC requirement of a magisterial probe into encounter killings, the Delhi government and the Lt. Governor stalled even that. However, electoral politics compelled the ruling Congress party to send its liberal and secular face to the people of Azamgarh, suffering from the stigma of being branded ‘Atankgarh’ and the trauma of having many of their sons killed or arrested as terrorists. Digvijay Singh’s visit was advertised as the Congress’ healing touch.

More than six months after this supposed healing touch, nothing concrete has materialized on the ground. Despite the publication of the post mortem reports which clearly established that the two slain youth were killed from close range and that they did not receive a single bullet wound in the frontal regions of their bodies—an impossibility in the case of a genuine shootout. It is obvious to anyone now that the NHRC enquiry was sham and partisan in its conclusions. There has been no sign that the UPA government is willing to order a free and fair probe. This should not cause any surprise though. Earlier even in the Ishrat Jehan fake encounter case, the so-called ‘secular’ UPA consistently bulldozed demands for an enquiry and also filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court stating the Ishrat was a Lashkar operative.

Indeed, both the BJP and the Congress governments have been united in unleashing a communal witch hunt in the name of combating terrorism. The recent revelations about the deep involvement of Hindutva organizations like Abhinav Bharat in planning and executing bomb blasts reveals the biased nature of the investigations so far. It shows who easy it is to execute Sohrabuddins and Ishrats and legitimize it as a counter terror operation; and how difficult it is to even conceive of Hindutva organizations as terrorist outfits.

AISA’s torchlight procession was taken out against this politics of witch hunt and stereotyping; and to assert the struggle for justice and truth, on the eve of the second anniversary of the ‘encounter’. Students and teachers from Jamia, Delhi University, and JNU, as well as civil rights activists and filmmakers participated in large numbers.