Indian media cast doubt on police encounter

[LahoreEstate]

Wednesday, January 28, 2009
ISLAMABAD: The Indian media has recently reported that police in New Delhi has staged fake encounters killing innocent Muslims.

According to The Times of India, the recent encounter in New Delhi raises increasing doubts about the veracity of the pre-dawn Noida incident. The two alleged Pakistani terrorists, who were gunned down on Sunday morning, weren’t carrying either a satellite phone or a mobile, the UP Anti-Terrorist Squad said on Monday.

This would make it a first among major terror strikes in recent times where the attackers had no means of communicating among themselves or receiving instructions from their handlers. Experts say, for terror outfits, communication is a crucial element of any operation, be it the 26/11 Mumbai attack or the Delhi serial blasts. That’s not all. It now surfaces that there are two versions on where the ATS team started chasing the militants. The ATS says the pursuit began from Amity checkpost in Noida, which is around 6 km from the spot where the alleged terrorists, Farookh and Ismail, were killed.

A press note issued by the director general of police headquarters in Lucknow said that after the vehicle was spotted near the Amity police outpost and the ATS men waved it to stop, the Maruti took a right turn and tried to speed off. A hot pursuit, exchange of fire and assault by the men in uniform finally brought the curtains down on the ambush, it added.

Noida police sources, however, maintain that the terrorists who confessed before dying that they were from Pakistan were chased for 25 km starting from Lal Kuan area in Ghaziabad, where the informer first spotted their suspicious activities.

The nature of the tip-off too raises doubts. Asked how the police informer became suspicious, deputy inspector general (ATS) Lucknow, Rajiv Krishna, said he had seen them with an AK rifle.

The barrel of the rifle was sticking out of an unzipped portion of a bag, he explained, adding that the informer was actually a relative of a police constable. The barrel of AK rifles has a typical ‘A’ shaped target guide. The informer saw the bag and noticed that jutting out, explained Krishna. It appears from this version that the terrorists were incredibly indiscreet about the arms they were carrying for the mission.

According to the ATS, the informer had even communicated to them his perception that the two suspects did not appear to be locals and their dialect had a Muslim touch. “Actually, the two suspects stopped at a tea-stall near Lal Kuan, and by sheer luck, they asked our informer about the route and distance to Delhi,” Krishna said.

The terrorists, with gun jutting out of a bag, asking an informer about the route to Delhi on Republic Day eve. Sheer coincidence or a badly constructed tale? If you add this to the claim that the terrorists were trying to enter the capital in the early morning of the Republic Day when security was likely to be at its tightest.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=19937