Need high court monitored probe in SIMI encounter: Lawyer

The encounter of eight suspected SIMI operatives who were gunned down hours after they escaped from a Bhopal jail needs a high court-monitored probe , their lawyer said on Sunday.

The encounter of eight suspected SIMI operatives who were gunned down hours after they escaped from a Bhopal jail needs a high court-monitored probe , their lawyer said on Sunday.

Parvez Alam, who represented the slain SIMI activists, said that the state government should have moved the MP high court and waited for it to name a sitting or retired judge to investigate the ‘fake’ encounter.(Mujeeb Faruqui/HT PHOTO)

Parvez Alam, who represented the slain SIMI activists, who were facing terror cases, termed the Madhya Pradesh government’s order of judicial probe into the incident as ‘mockery of judicial system’.

“It is baffling that the culprit of the encounter, which is the state government, has chosen its own investigator to probe its serious crime,” Alam said.

“This is a sheer mockery of democratic and judicial system. The state government, instead of requesting the MP High Court to order a judicial inquiry into the cold-blooded murder, has itself appointed an investigator, which is against the natural justice,” Alam told PTI.

He said that the state government should have moved the MP high court and waited for it to name a sitting or retired judge to investigate the ‘fake’ encounter.

“We are going to petition the High Court for a judicial probe. We want the probe to be monitored by the High Court and it (probe panel) should have lawyers of both sides--the government and the deceased,” he added.

Meanwhile, when asked if he had received any written communication from the government asking him to start judicial inquiry, the retired MP High Court judge S K Pandey said, “I don’t have any information (yet).”

The MP Government announced judicial probe by Justice Pandey three days ago after the alleged encounter came under severe criticism. Home minister Bhupendra Singh had till then maintained that no judicial probe into the encounter was necessary.

Earlier, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had announced a NIA probe into the jail-break during which the fleeing SIMI activists allegedly murdered a head warden.