NEW DELHI: Amnesty International on Wednesday demanded an impartial investigation into the police shooting of eight alleged Muslim radicals accused of escaping from a high-security prison in Bhopal in India’s BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh state.

“The Madhya Pradesh government must ensure an independent, impartial, swift and thorough criminal investigation into the alleged extrajudicial execution of eight under-trial prisoners by the state police on 31 October,” said Amnesty International India in a press statement.

The state police say that the eight prisoners — all members of a banned group, the Students’ Islamic Movement of India — killed a guard at the high-security Bhopal central jail and escaped on the morning of Oct 31. They say that the men were killed in an armed encounter on the outskirts of Bhopal some hours later.

“The contradictory statements issued by authorities on the killings, and video clips which appear to show the prisoners trying to talk to the police before being shot, raise deeply disturbing questions. An independent investigation must determine if the police extra-judicially executed the prisoners,” said Tara Rao, the programmes director at Amnesty International India.

The inspector general of the Bhopal police initially said the men were unarmed and were shot when they resisted capture. He later said they were armed with knives and pistols.

However, the state home minister told journalists that the men had used jail utensils as weapons. The Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad chief told a news channel on Wednesday that the men had no weapons on them at the site of the killing.

Local and national media channels had aired video clips, which appeared to have been recorded at the encounter site, Amnesty said. One of the clips appeared to show some of the prisoners waving their hands and attempting to talk to the police officers.

Another clip appeared to show the prisoners lying on the ground after they had been shot, and a police officer shooting at one man who seemed to be alive. Amnesty said it had not been able to verify the authenticity of the video clips.

The prisoners had been charged with offences, including murder, robbery and terrorism-related offences. A lawyer who had been representing some of them told Amnesty International India: “Why would they want to escape a high-security prison when their court judgement was expected to come out in the next few weeks? There was no evidence against them and we were sure that the court would release them.”

“All the eight men were shot multiple times, and most of the wounds were above the waist, according to the post-mortem report,” said Tara Rao. “Too often, authorities in India have shown a lack of will in effectively investigating fake encounters and bringing those responsible to justice. This case must not end the same way.”

On Tuesday, India’s National Human Rights Commission asked senior Madhya Pradesh police and government officials to submit detailed reports on the incident within six weeks.

According to guidelines issued by the commission in 2010, all alleged ‘fake encounters’ must be investigated by an independent agency. In September 2014, the Supreme Court stated that killings in police encounters required independent investigations.

Amnesty said the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extralegal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions required that “[t]here shall be thorough, impartial investigation of all suspected cases of extralegal, arbitrary and summary executions, including cases where... reliable reports suggest unnatural death in the above circumstances.”

Published in Dawn November 3rd, 2016