New Delhi: Addressing a press conference at Press Club of India, New Delhi, noted human rights activists exposed the fake encounter of Naushad and Mustaqeem and willfulness of UP police. There have been over a thousand encounter killings in the state since Yogi Adityanath became the CM, and the Aligarh encounter has taken the death toll in these encounter killings to 67. A team of United Against Hate presented a report on the Aligarh encounter. Student leader and activist Umar Khalid is also a part of the United Against Hate campaign.
Mustaqeem and Naushad were shot dead by the Uttar Pradesh police in an alleged encounter in Harduaganj, Aligarh, on September 20. Their mothers have demanded justice for their sons while addressing the media here on Saturday. Shaheen, Naushad’s mother, demanded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention. The families have been kept under house arrest. They are threatened by Bajrang Dal workers.
On the 27th of September, a team of United Against Hate along with journalists and lawyers visited Atrauli village in Aligarh. They spoke to the family members of the deceased and their neighbours. The report by the fact-finding team of the United Against Hate pointed out that media accounts were at variance with that of the deceased’s kin. They also went to meet police officials, but the later intimidated the team in connivance with goons of the Bajrang Dal.
Neighbours and family told the team how police took away Naushad and Mustaqeem when they had come home to have lunch. They were beaten up on their way. The next day police informed the family that Mustaqeem and Naushad have “escaped” from police custody. 4 days after the family of Mustaqeem was informed that the boys are injured and admitted in Malkhan Singh hospital. The family didn’t have the money to visit them so the police even paid their bus fares. They went there only to find the dead bodies of the two boys. According to them the dead bodies were bruised and battered with injury marks on their faces and heads. Their jaws were also broken and the blood on their bodies had turned black after clotting.
Police also took away all their id cards, including their Aadhar cards, PAN cards and Mustaqeem’s Nikahnama. All the neighbours testified these boys were innocent and there was no previous criminal record. When the fact-finding team went to speak to the Atrauli P.S. the SO Parvesh Rana refused to talk about the encounter. Bajrang Dal people barged into the P.S. and started intimidating and heckling the team. They shouted, “those guys were terrorists and therefore were killed, those who are supporting them should also be killed”. Around 200 people had gathered in the P.S and began shouting slogans like “Jai Shri Ram”, “Vande Mataram” and “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”.
The next day an FIR was filed against the Fact Finding team. The current president of Aligarh Muslim University Students’ Union (AMUSU) Mashkoor Usmani and former AMUSU President Fauzul have been accused by Bajrang Dal of ‘abducting’ mothers of Naushad and Mustaqeem.
A Fact Finding Report released by the Rihaai Manch has stated that Sadhu Ramdas’s family have denied any remote possibilities of these boys being involved in the murder and even they have maintained that they were innocent.