2016 Bhopal jailbreak: SIMI chief Abu Faisal imprisoned for three years

The Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) court in Bhopal has convicted Abu Faisal, chief of the banned group Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in the Bhopal jailbreak of October 2016.

Abu Faisal is already serving life imprisonment for murdering a constable of the Anti Terrorism Squad in 2009.

Abu Faisal along with an another accused Sarafat Ali have been sentenced to three years of imprisonment. The court has also imposed a fine on the two convicts who had been named in the jailbreak of eight activists of the SIMI were subsequently shot dead by policemen after they escaped from the jail.

Several questions were raised over the manner and circumstances under which the suspects were gunned down in the capital city of central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. 

WION News had accessed an audio clip in which a senior police officer can be heard on the radio ordering his subordinates engaged in action to kill all eight men, ‘Sabko nipta do.’ (Kill all of them). 

The Madya Pradesh government had ordered a judicial probe into the killings in November last year.

 In 2013, SIMI operatives were involved in a similar jailbreak in Khandwa, around 280 km from Bhopal, when a similar plan was used, ANI reported. Abu Faisal masterminded the jailbreak.