Congress to file a petition in SC asking for judicial probe into MP encounter

BHOPAL: A day after the encounter of eight suspected SIMI terrorists here, the Congress party has decided to constitute a team to take the matter to Human Right Commission and the Supreme Court. Congress will be filing a plea before the apex court for a judicial inquiry into the

SIMI encounter

. Sources in

Madhya Pradesh

Congress told TOI that the party has constituted a six-member team to tail the encounter claim of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government and draw parallels with similar combats in Gujarat.

Sources in the state Congress said, three members of the team — AICC general secretary Mohan Prakash, PCC chief Arun Yadav and state Congress chief spokesman KK Mishra – will be the fact finders of the probe. Senior leaders AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh, former Union minister Kapil Sibal and Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Tankha will pursue the case in New Delhi.

State Congress legal cell chief JP Dhanopia said, “There are a lot of people hiding behind the conspiracy of the encounter. The Congress party will file a petition in the Supreme Court with all facts of the case and ask for an independent judicial inquiry into how the SIMI men escaped a high-security prison and the encounter that followed eight hours later.”

Congress leaders argued that a probe by NIA is not the answer to an encounter of this magnitude. “NIA cannot be trusted with an inquiry on such an incident. It has to be a panel under the Supreme Court or by a sitting judge of the High Court,” Dhanopia added.

Speaking to TOI, state Congress spokesman KK Mishra said, “After the encounter, the chief minister called a press conference and announced a probe into the jail-break and the encounter by the NIA. But as videos of the shoot-out showing the SIMI men unarmed went viral on the social media, the government changed its stand. Now, home minister Bhupendra Singh says that NIA will only investigate the jail-break incident.”

On Tuesday, home minister Bhupendra Singh told reporters that encounter will not be part of the NIA investigation. Mishra argued that denying a probe into the encounter means the government has already admitted that it was “fake”. “Why otherwise would the government shy away from a probe into the encounter as well? And the BJP government both here and at the Centre cannot be trusted with the probe,” Mishra said.