NHRC urged to rush team to Bhopal to prevent any fake encounter

Young wives and relatives of several undertrials held in Bhopal Central Jail have urged the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to intervene and ensure that the undertrials are not killed in another fake encounter.

Accusing jail authorities of custodial torture, denying food or providing adulterated food, denying medical attention and denying even meetings with relatives allowed by the court, they urged the NHRC to rush a fact-finding team to Bhopal.

Ever since eight undertrials, accused of being members of outlawed Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), were killed in an encounter in October 2016, the other undertrials—held on similar charges—complained that they were being treated like ‘animals’.

Claiming that the detained men were innocent, they complained that, since October, the trial was being conducted through video-conferencing instead of in the open court. With prison authorities denying even lawyers to meet the undertrials, who are being kept in solitary confinement in violation of rules, they have no way of knowing what is being recorded and what is not, they said.

Some of the undertrials, however, managed to convey to the relatives that they apprehend they would be killed inside the jail or in a fake encounter.

Alleging that the undertrials were being tried on the basis of forced confessional statements, a People Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) member said: “We have requested the NHRC to send an independent team to the Bhopal Jail to listen to the complaints of undertrials.”

Nazma Khatoon (29), married to Mohammad Zubair (37) said: “Jail authorities have threatened to murder my husband and pass it off as suicide. She says she has to travel a distance of more than 300 km from Ujjain to meet her husband in Bhopal Jail. There, I have to wait for almost an entire day along with my child before my husband is allowed to meet us. We are allowed to meet for barely a few minutes with 10-15 policemen breathing down our neck and not allowing us any time to discuss anything. He is getting insufficient food and being treated like an animal.”

An equally exasperated Amreen Bi (32) had a similar story to tell. “Even though one of my husband’s eyes has gone almost blind and he is having problems in the other eye, they neither allow us to give him medicine nor do they provide him with medical care. We gave two spectacles to jail authorities, one after another, but on both the occasions, they didn’t reach my husband.

There are several undertrials who need immediate medical care for serious ailments, said Mushtaq, citing the case of Sajid Guddu, who needs to be hospitalised, according to his relatives.

After the Bhopal encounter last October, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan had condoned the killings, saying that those who got killed were militants. But, he forgot that they were not convicts but undertrials. After a lot of hue and cry, his government appointed a one-member commission, headed by Justice (retired) SK Pandey, but by all accounts, there has been little headway in the probe.

One of the undertrials during a video conference last month is believed to have told the court that he was being pressurised into committing suicide. He complained that despite a fracture on his foot, he was denied medical treatment. He also complained that he was being pressurised into chanting anti-Islamic slogans.