This is the report of a fact-finding investigation conducted by PUDR and Jan Hastakshep into the police ‘encounter’ in Jamia Nagar, Delhi and subsequent events in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh from 19th September 2008. It draws light upon the inherent communal bias with which the police operate in that young Muslim-educated youth are easily labelled as terrorists and any person associated with them is also immediately brought under a web of suspicion. In this, procedural norms are repeatedly flouted and entire cases are built up on the basis of ‘confessions’ recorded in police custody which calls into serious consideration the use of torture to extract these, the use of electronic evidence etc. The police, with active assistance from the media and Hindu right-wing groups, built up a picture of entire villages and communities as being terrorist hubs, thus laying a basis for continued intimidation of people. The report reminds us that shoddy investigations and easy capturing of some ‘terrorists’, in the name of national security, actually have the effect of endangering precisely that itself. It thus calls for a judicial enquiry into the Jamia Nagar encounter, legal proceedings against guilty police personnel for procedural and other lapses and the active correction of the ‘terrorist’ label put on the Muslim community as a whole.
To download the report, click below:
Terror of Counter-terror: Jamia Nagar to Azamgarh: The ‘Encounter’ and its Aftermath
