Jailbreak & encounter: Too many questions

There are just too many uncomfortable questions about the jailbreak by eight Simi prisoners from Bhopal Central Jail early on Monday, and their subsequent killing in a supposed encounter by the Madhya Pradesh police. Only an impartial inquiry, capable of locating guilt wherever it lies, including with the government, can help prevent similar occurrences in the future. Some questions are specific to the Madhya Pradesh government. Such as: how do jailbreaks take place with disturbing frequency when high-risk prisoners are involved? Seven Simi prisoners had escaped from Khandwa prison in 2013.

But there’s also the larger, worrying, issue of India’s name as a democracy being besmirched as a country where jailed individuals — as is being widely suspected — are permitted to break free from prison by the state and then shot dead in cold blood and the event given the appearance of a police encounter with armed runaway prisoners. In the Bhopal case, it was officially said that the prisoners had made good their escape using spoons as weapons. Can men with spoons fire back?

The whole thing looks fishy at this stage. The suspicion needs to be either proved or dispelled. A similar incident is thought to have occurred when Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat. A terrorist module had been apprehended, allowed to leave detention, and then allegedly killed in cold blood. The matter is still shrouded in mystery but strong grounds for suspicions exist. In Gujarat, the administration was in the hands of an avowedly pro-Hindu party while the deceased were Muslim. The same is the case in respect of Monday’s Bhopal incident.

Earlier, in the 1970s and ’80s, Naxalites used to be killed in encounters that were widely believed to be fake. The BJP was not in power then. Quite simply, a culture of killing inconvenient prisoners was developing. But this trend had been more or less arrested. Are we now seeing its recrudescence, in a communal reincarnation? The MP chief minister has ordered an inquiry by the National Investigation Agency. This won’t wash. A BJP government in the state being investigated by the BJP government at the Centre is worse than laughable, all the more so when the MP home minister is publicly seeking credit for killing “violent terrorists”.

A democracy must guard itself against evil-doers and those seeking to undermine it by exploiting principles that are favourable to individuals in relation to the state. But a democratic state is obliged to act according to the legal system it has created, and by allowing due process to prisoners of all kinds, including suspected terrorists.