Khurshid recounts police treating ex-Union minister Sibal as 'stranger' during visit to Batla House

New Delhi, Aug 6 (PTI) Recounting the Batla House encounter, Congress leader Salman Khurshid on Tuesday said he and then Union minister Kapil Sibal had visited the site after the incident but Sibal was treated as "stranger" by the police personnel.
     Speaking here at the launch of book 'Shikwa-e-Hind' written by academician Mujibur Rehman, Khurshid said he was not a part of the government when the Batla House encounter took place in 2008, but he convinced Sibal to visit the site.
     The Congress-led UPA government was ruling the Centre when the Batla House encounter had taken place.
     "When the Batla House encounter happened, I was not in government. Kapil Sibal was in government. I went to him and I persuaded him to visit Batla House," he said.
     Sibal agreed but later said he was being advised not to go to the site, Khurshid said.
     "Just before we were to leave for Batla House, I got a message from him (Sibal) saying he is being advised not to go. And I said, no, please, you promised me and you have to go... And he finally agreed," Khurshid said.
     He said when Sibal arrived at the site, the police personnel "looked at him as though he's a stranger".
     "Not one moved a step to go and greet the minister who had come," he said.
     Khurshid said Sibal suggested they should go around the colony.
     "We came and walked up the steps of the building where the incident had happened. We got to the roof of that building," he said.
     He said they looked from the roof of that building, and pointed out as to how possibly anyone could have escaped from that building. The two leaders then came down, he said.
     "Not a single cop came up to say that you're a minister. If you want to come and see the building itself, you're welcome. Please, we will escort you," he said.
     "And you know what Kapil Sibal said? He said 'my mind is exploding'. And of course we tried to go and see what could be done, whether there could be an investigation, whether there could be an inquiry set up and so on," he said.
     Khurshid said it is "another long story".
     "And when I refer this to my leadership in the Congress party, at the very top I was told, just look at what is happening to us. Look at what is happening to our country," he said.
     Following serial blasts in Delhi in September 2008, an encounter took place between police and terrorists.
     Two suspected Indian Mujahideen (IM) terrorists were killed in the operation. Two others, Ariz Khan and Shehzad Ahmad, were arrested while another fled from the scene.
     Mohan Chand Sharma, an officer of the Delhi Police's Special Cell, succumbed to bullet injuries on the same day.
     Ahmad was arrested from Lucknow in February 2010 while Khan was arrested in 2018.
     Ahmad was awarded life imprisonment by the trial court in 2013. Khan was awarded death sentence by trial court, but later, Delhi High Court commuted it to life imprisonment.
     Later while campaigning during the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election in February 2012, Khurshid, when he was the Union law minister, said pictures of the Batla House encounter case had brought tears to the eyes of then Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
     "I was not a minister at that time but still took the issue of the Batla encounter to Sonia Gandhi and she had tears in her eyes," Khurshid said at an election meeting in Karmaini village under Sagri Vidhan Sabha area.
     The BJP attacked Khurshid and the Congress for appeasing Muslims.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)