BeyondHeadlines Special Correspondent
New Delhi: The Rajasthan Government has ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) enquiry into the Bharatpur communal clash. Simultaneously, a retired high court judge will also probe into the incident, state officials told the media.
The hasty enquiry was called after a fact finding team of Shabnam Hashmi-led NGO ANHAD (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy) held a press conference in New Delhi and alleged the police high headedness.
There team claimed that is “tension, fear and apprehension.”
According to the police, incorrect entry of a land meant for digging a pond as a graveyard in government records by a local patwari (a land record officer at subdivision or Tehsil level) lead to communal clash.
The report of the fact finding team alleges: “In the villages, we heard stories of indiscriminate police firing on Meos (Muslim inhabitants of Mewat, a region in north-western India), petrol being thrown on people before burning them, people missing, search for bodies still scattered over places etc. The villagers were constantly being threatened by the police not to give any information.”
The team also informed the media that they were constantly threatened by the police, being stopped form going inside villages and asked to leave. “Where ever we went, the police in hundreds of numbers reached to us to prevent from going further,” the team told media.
The team also “found two charred dead bodies floating in a well at a local eidgah (an open-air mosque usually outside the city or at the outskirts to perform Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-al-Adha prayers) and smoke coming out from the other side of the eidgah wall.”
“There was nothing inside the mosque, which was not broken. Inside and on the roof, at least at 8-10 places, there were big blood marks and marks of either injured or dead being dragged. Some of them leading to dead wall ends from which obviously bodies/ injured must have been thrown down. The outside wall had more than 15-20 bullet marks and so did the inside walls. There were torn pages of Holy Quran scattered in two places, broken glasses, bricks, blood soaked clothes, utensils etc,” claimed the fact finding team.
The team was later packed and escorted outside the border of the Rajasthan.
According to officials, eight people were killed and 21 others injured on Wednesday. But Shabnam Hashmi said that although they would not want to speculate, the figure is certainly higher.
A survivor, according to ANHAD team, narrated the horrified incident: “We were completely helpless as police joined Gujjars (ethnic group in the country) in opening fire. We saved our lives by running from the spot and jumping into the pond. But I could clearly see the police and Gujjars opening fire at people in the mosque, killing most of them on the spot. They were also burning people.”
Meanwhile, Bharatpur District Magistrate Krishna Kunal and Superintendent of Police Inglaj Dan have been suspended and a compensation for the deceased has been announced.
