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A five-member fact-finding committee, comprising three members from Communist Party of India (CPI) (Marxist) (CPI-M), one from Rashtriya Janata Dal, and one from CPI, accused the police of "deliberately concealing the death of Ibraish Khan amidst Khargone riots to help their crusade against the minorities post violence."
The committee visited the communally charged Khargone district of Madhya Pradesh on 25 April, a fortnight after the city witnessed communal clashes on the occasion of Ram Navami.
Levelling serious allegations against the police and Khargone district administration, Jaswinder Singh, CPI(M)'s Madhya Pradesh secretary, said:
Singh further went on to say that the police's statements and the first information reports themselves are contradictory, pointing towards the conspiracy behind hiding the death.
The first point raised by the fact-finding team is about the case registered under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) section 174 (Police to enquire and report on suicide, etc) despite the police possessing the information that he was beaten up and suffered injuries.
Another allegation of the team concerns the second FIR registered under section 302.
In the matter of the death of Ibraish Khan, the fact-finding team also alleged that despite registering a case of murder on 14 April and sending his body to Indore, his family wasn't told about the unidentified dead body till 17 April and wasn't sent for identification for at least three days.
Police claimed that Ibraish's body was found on 11 April and after a short post-mortem it was sent to Indore as Khargone lacked refrigerated mortuary.
Acting Superintendent of Police for Khargone, Rohit Kashwani, however, reasoning that the details of an ongoing case can't be made public, said:
On the other hand, family members of Ibraish had earlier accused the police of hiding the fact that he was dead.
Talking to the media, Ibraish's brother Ikhlaq Khan claimed that it was only after he threatened to call media that the police informed them about the death and called them for identification. Ibraish's dead body was handed over to the family around a week after his death.
In a straight accusation, the fact-finding team blamed the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the Khargone riots, saying: "They wanted it to happen."
The fact-finding team claimed that the clashes could have been avoided had there been adequate deployment of police.
It also alleged that everything pre and post Khargone violence had been done keeping in view the fact that the BJP had lost nine out of 10 seats in the Khargone and Barwani districts.
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