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Jamia
Teachers’ Solidarity Group extends its heart-felt condolences to the
family of Ranbir Singh, the youth who was killed in a police
encounter in Dehradun last week. This encounter again brings to the
fore the trigger happy ways of the Indian police who kill and
torture for medals and promotions. We demand exemplary punishment
for the guilty policemen.
However, the
manner in which the Indian State and the mainstream political
parties have responded to the encounter in Dehradun is in striking
contrast to the reaction to the shooting down of two young men in
Batla House in Delhi last September. Both encounters were followed
by mass anger and upsurge which spilled onto the streets of the
capital cities of Uttarakhand and the country. While the ‘secular’
Congress has put its weight behind the agitation in Uttrakhand,
joining the peoples’ demand for fair probe and crying foul over
human rights violation, the BJP not to be left behind in the Human
Rights race sent its emissary in the form of BJP President’s and
Ghaziabad MP’s son to the family of the slain youth to reassure them
that the probe into the encounter would be fair and independent,
without the involvement of the accused Dehradun Police. A CB-CID
enquiry has already been ordered and all police men involved in the
shootout have been charged for murder.
Recall now the
jingoist hysteria created by Congress and BJP alike, aided by a
section of pliant media, in which all calls for independent and
impartial enquiry in the Batla House encounter were branded as
unpatriotic and downright insulting of the bravery of Special Cell
cops. The Congress, which today preens on the retrieval of its
minority vote, persistently bulldozed all demands for a probe into
the Batla House ‘encounter’. So much so, that even the simple,
procedural requirement for a magisterial enquiry was subverted
through the Lieutenant Governor, who refused to grant permission for
an enquiry on flimsy grounds. The post mortem reports of the
deceased—the killed boys as well as Inspector Sharma—have been
accorded the status of State secret.
So, what could
be the reason for this speedy demonstration of justice for Ranbir
Singh, and the obstinate refusal to concede to the widespread demand
for an enquiry into the killings of Atif Ameen and Mohammad Sajid?
Except that Atif and Sajid fall in that unfortunate category of
‘encounterables’—those whose killings can be justified, explained,
and remain unmourned by our society and polity. It is all right to
snuff out the lives of young men as long as they are drawn from a
certain demographic and reside in areas identified as ghettoes. What
we are being told here is that Atifs and Sajids cannot claim the
framework of democratic rights—the only framework that they must
exist in is that of national security.
JTSG
reiterates its demand for a judicial probe into the Batla House
incident, and the application of the same standards of justice for
Atif and Sajid as those applied in the unfortunate and tragic case
of Ranbir Singh.
The authors
are teachers at Jamia Millia Islamia
and are attached to Jamia
Teachers’ Solidarity Group
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