New delhi,March 17 :With an eye on muslim votes bank and bungling of “BATLA HOUSE” fake encounter the congress wants to gain the sympathies of muslims and trying to push chidambaram to order a judicial enquiry into batla house encounter.
Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Tuesday met home minister P. Chidambaram to demand that all 26 cases against terror suspects from Azamgarh should be clubbed for a speedy trial.
He raised concerns about five additions made in the list of accused in the Delhi serial bomb blast case and the Batla House encounter, sources said.
During the meeting, Singh also demanded the setting up of a special court to try the 26 cases against the terror suspects.These cases have been lodged by the Delhi Police, Gujarat Police, Maharashtra Police, Rajasthan Police and Uttar Pradesh Police over the past two years.
The fathers of two of the accused, who are currently on the run, accompanied Singh to the meeting, as did many political and academic personalities from Azamgarh — the UP district to which most of the accused belong.
It was said Chidambaram made no specific assurance to the team and said he would first seek the Union law ministry’s view. However, a senior home ministry official said the Centre may think about setting up the special courts.
Sources said one of the reasons why Chidambaram refused to make concrete promises to the delegation was that the home ministry wants to “ steer clear” of the Batla House controversy.And that is because the ministry had officially backed the Delhi Police’s claim that the two boys who were killed in the September 19, 2008, encounter were indeed terrorists.
The home ministry had also approved an Ashok Chakra for the deceased Delhi Police inspector, M. C. Sharma, who had died in the Batla House encounter.But Singh’s impassioned support for the terror accused has left the Congress red- faced on more occasions than one. He has often raised questions about the encounter and had even rapped a National Human Rights Commission inquiry report, which had given the Delhi Police a clean chit.
Singh had recently visited Azamgarh and met the families of the two suspected terrorists who were killed in the 2008 encounter.
He also met the families of other Azamgarh youth who have been arrested for allegedly triggering blasts in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Varanasi, Faizabad and Hyderabad.
Police of various states have claimed that these men were part of a terror module of the Indian Mujahedeen, which had owned up to a series of terror attacks in India in 2007 and 2008.
There has been no judicial probe into the Batla House encounter.