By IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, 18 Sep 2014: To commemorate the sixth anniversary of the Batla House encounter on Friday (19th Sep) in Delhi, a political outfit’s leaders and members boarded a train this afternoon in the eastern Uttar Pradesh district of Azamgarh which the two alleged terror suspects killed in the Delhi police shootout six years back belonged to.
Rashtriya Ulema Council, which has unsuccessfully contested Lok Sabha and Assembly elections since formation, has been bringing a trainload from Azamgarh to Delhi since 2009, the first anniversary of the incident to reiterate its demand of a judicial probe. However, many of its critics take the annual train ride just as a political ritual to justify its birth and existence.
The encounter happened on 19th Sep 2008 at a flat in the Batla House locality of Jamia Nagar area of the National Capital. The outfit was formed couple of weeks after the shootout with a cry to seek justice for Atif Ameen and Mohammad Sajid who they say were innocent and the encounter in which they were killed was fake. Some human rights groups had also raised questions about the encounter and demanded a judicial probe. However, the government and National Human Rights Commission have since maintained that it was a genuine encounter and rejected the demand. An inspector of the Delhi Police Mohanchand Sharma had also sustained bullet injuries during the shootout which he later succumbed to.
The shootout took place six days after the Delhi serial blasts (13 Sep 2008) in which over 50 people were killed. The Delhi police claimed the Azamgarh youths killed in the encounter were involved in the blasts. Trials in both the cases of the blasts and the encounter are going on in courts.
