Jamia teachers release report on Batla encounter

Unsettled by the “contradictions” in the police version of last year’s Batla House shootout, a group of Jamia teachers have prepared a report questioning the encounter theory.

Unsettled by the “contradictions” in the police version of last year’s Batla House shootout, a group of Jamia teachers have prepared a report questioning the encounter theory.

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The report, called Encounter at Batla House: Unanswered Questions, was released on Friday afternoon in the presence of author Arundhati Roy and Supreme Court lawyer Colin Gonsalves, among others, at the Edward Said Hall of the Jamia Millia Islamia University.

The 60-page report —which is based on police statements, press reports, testimonies of families and friends of the accused and other documentary evidence—will be sent to the National Human Rights Commission to stress upon the urgency for an independent judicial probe.

“We hope to deliver the report to people in the judiciary and politicians to show them there is a possibility of a credible alternative version of what happened on September 19. The police theory of how the two terrorists escaped from L-18 during the shootout, for one, is doubtful. How could they have escaped if the officers were there on the staircase?" said Manisha Sethi, member of the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group that prepared the report.

“This precise and clean piece of work shows that the need to ask for a inquiry is valid. Injustice never goes away. The anger of what happened in Batla House will come out in a bad way unless we ask for the authorities to find out the truth,” said Roy.