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Social media abuzz as Bhopal jailbreak and encounter leaves trail of questions

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Special Correspondent

NewsBits.in

Bhopal: Soon after news, details and photographs of the gunning down of eight SIMI operatives, who had earlier in wee hours escaped from Bhopal Central Jail, came to light, questions started emerging on MP government’s claim of ‘encounter’.

Social media went abuzz with the reported discrepancies in the encounter theory floated by the MP police and government. The questions peaked when a video clip showing a policeman firing at one of the prone operatives and taking out a brand new knife wrapped in plastic from another's body surfaced later in the day.

MP Congress (state president Arun Yadav) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) (state secretary Badal Saroj) issued statements questioning the discrepancies and negligence in the alleged jailbreak by and encounter of SIMI operatives.

Senior Congress leaders including Digvijaya Singh and Kamalnath also questioned the lapse in security and the discrepancies in sequence of events.

Activists and senior journalists took to social media –Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp to point out the several alleged discrepancies in the jailbreak and encounter theory.

The fact that the MP home minister Bhupendra Singh said that the operatives did not have firearms while Inspector General of Police of Bhopal range claimed they (operatives) had fired on police, only added to the range of questions raised.

The MP government and senior police officials broadly stood ground on the version that the operatives had been spotted by villagers and upon tip, they were cornered, asked to surrender, fired at and pelted stones at police and police had to gun them down in self-defense.

 

The major questions raised are:

#How did the SIMI men get access to branded clothes, sports shoes, wrist watches and bands that they sported when killed?

#What weapons did the operatives exactly use in the alleged encounter with police? Bhopal IG (Yogesh Choudhary) said details would be given later.

#How and where did they procure these alleged weapons as they were gunned down within 10km of jail in 10 hours of escaping?

#A local senior journalist who was among first to reach the spot reported firing in air by police (apparently to show bullet shells at the spot)

#The journalist also said that the bodies were sprawled at a spot from where there was no escape route. The rocky ledge ended in a deep gorge and if the operatives tried to run they would fall to death.

#Why were the escaped operatives moving around together, something that would make them highly suspicious?

#If they could procure weapons, why did not they procure a vehicle to make quick escape? Why did they move towards open space where they couldn’t hide?

#How did they scale 30-feet wall of jail using bed sheets, something physically impossible?

#Weren’t there other security guards present on the jail campus and these operatives opened/broke lock after lock?

#Why no other jail inmates escape when these operatives left a wide trail and open doors behind them?

(Photo courtesy: Bhaskar.com)