Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad lashed out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and other opposition leaders for questioning the authenticity of the Batla House Encounter case of 2008. This development came a day after a Delhi court convicted Ariz Khan for the killing of Delhi Police Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma.
While addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters in Delhi on Tuesday, Prasad said, “The Samajwadi Party, BSP, Congress, Left, and Mamata Banerjee made the Batla House incident a national issue. What does this mean? Will our fight against terrorism be weakened for votes?”
In his statement, the IT Minister also said that Mamata had said that the encounter was fake and had said that she would quit politics if she was proven wrong.
“Today, after more than 100 people testified and scientific and medical evidence led to the conviction of a big terrorist in the case, Will Sonia Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, and Mamata Banerjee now apologize for misleading the entire nation over the Batla House encounter case,” the Union Minister added.
Prasad also slammed Sonia Gandhi and said, “You might have listened to Salman Khurshid saying that Sonia Gandhi had tears in her eyes when she got to know that two terrorists have been killed,”
Ravi Shankar Prasad further articulated that there was a mindful, calculated and consistent attempt to exude serious doubt over the authenticity of the Batla House incident to weaken the morale of Delhi Police and give clear support to terrorists. He claimed that this was their design for pure vote bank politics, adding why the political parties can’t speak in one voice on matters of national security.
A Delhi court on Monday convicted Indian Mujahideen terrorist Ariz Khan in connection with the Batla House encounter case 2008 in which he managed to escape. The court said Ariz Khan had intentionally murdered Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, an encounter specialist, and also caused injury to Head Constable Balwant Singh and Rajbir Singh.
For 13 years, opposition leaders, especially Mamata Banerjee have dragged the martyrdom of Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma for petty politics and termed the whole encounter as “fake”. Interestingly, then the ruling United Progressive Alliance government disowned the action taken by the Delhi police to eliminate terrorists. It is almost certain that the UPA government would have given the go- forward to eliminate terrorists, but by the end of bloody encounter, Congress and its allies negated the Batla House encounter. The UPA government used security forces as a scapegoat for vote bank politics.
In September 2008, just a day after the Batla House encounter, where Inspector Sharma was killed by terrorists, Delhi witnessed a series of protests condemning the encounter. The protest was participated by Left-liberals, human rights activists and few journalists with vested interests like Prashant Bhushan, Arundhati Roy, Kavita Krishnan and even some JNU activists.
Now, when a Delhi court pronounced the judgment regarding the Batla House case and there is an upcoming assembly election to be held in five states. A simple question arises: Will the opposition apologise for manipulating citizens of the country for 13 long years? Or will they stand with their statements and resign from whatever post they are holding now? Or at least, Will they ask forgiveness from Delhi Police for besmirching the loyalty and duty of the security forces?