SIMI man’s mother lodges complaint

The mother and widow of Khalid Ahmed, a SIMI operative who was killed along with seven others in an alleged police encounter in Bhopal on Tuesday, handed over a complaint letter to Solapur’s MIDC police station seeking the registration of a murder and criminal conspiracy case against Madhya Pradesh (MP) home minister Bhupendra Singh, MP’s director general of police, the state’s ATS chief and the police officers involved in the encounter. Khalid’s family stays within the jurisdiction of the MIDC police, which, as per the request, can register a case via a zero FIR and then hand it over to the police authorities concerned in MP.

“The MIDC police had initially refused to register an FIR or even give in writing that they would not take Khalid’s mother’s complaint against the police. Khalid’s mother had gone to the MIDC police station around 1 pm and when the police refused to do anything in this regard, we met the commissioner of police Ravindra Sengaonkar and informed him that Khalid’s mother cannot travel to Bhopal because of health issues and hence is requesting the MIDC police to register the zero FIR and transfer the case to the police station concerned in Bhopal,” said advocate Tahwar Khan Pathan, Khalid’s defence lawyer, on behalf of Jamiat-e-Ulema Maharashtra.

He further said that on the instructions of the police commissioner, the MIDC police finally took her complaint letter around 5 pm in the evening.

Confirming that the complaint letter had been received, a police inspector from Solapur’s MIDC police station said, “We received the application from the mother of the said person and have accepted it. We will send it to the Madhya Pradesh police as the case falls under their jurisdiction.” The inspector, however, also clarified that they have not registered any FIR. According to him, they have made an entry in the police register and would send Khalid’s mother’s letter to the Bhopal police.

According to advocate Pathan, the complaint letter seeks that an FIR be registered under relevant sections for murder, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence against Madhya Pradesh home minister Bhupendra Singh, DGP Rishi Kumar Shukla, IG Yogesh Choudhary, Bhopal jail superintendent Akhilesh Tomar, MP’s ATS chief Sanjiv Shami and other policemen involved in the encounter.

Decoding a ‘zero FIR’ Irrespective of the jurisdiction in which a crime has taken place, an FIR can be filed in any police station and later be transferred to the right police station with regard to jurisdiction. Such an FIR is called a ‘zero FIR’, and it is what Khalid Ahmed’s mother wanted to file at MIDC police station in the case concerning her son’s death due to an alleged encounter in Madhya Pradesh.