When the news of the jailbreak from Bhopal prison broke on Monday morning, all fingers pointed at the laxity within the prison administration in Madhya Pradesh. It had led to a terrifying situation where eight dreaded Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) terror operatives were out in the open after killing a head constable inside jail.

Eight hours later, the Bhopal police announced all eight terror suspects had been killed. The police confirmed that four weapons had been found on the men.

But by evening, the emergence of three unverified videos gave the encounter story an entirely new spin. It raised questions about whether the encounter was indeed above board. In one video, a plainclothesman is seen shooting at the bodies lying on the ground.

Another shows damning evidence. It shows four prisoners waving at the police. Were they indicating a willingness to surrender? On the walkie-talkie, an officer is heard saying that five men are standing on the hillock, “trying to talk to us” while three men are behind them. He also says one of the men is limping. The voice then asks other cops to surround them from all sides. In the footage, there is no indication of the men firing at the police.

The question that arises is if it was possible to capture them alive, why were they shot dead? Inspector General of Madhya Pradesh Police Yogesh Choudhary says no mobile phones were found on the eight men. Then how did they communicate with their helpers outside jail to procure the weapons as soon as they stepped out? This is assuming the men had firearms (something not visible in the footage). And if the men were dead by then, why was the cop shooting all over again at the bodies lying in a line on the ground?

Did the Bhopal police stage a fake encounter, hoping to ride on the public sentiment against terrorism? A look at the two videos would make anyone want to connect the dots and all you get is a big question mark.

Rewind to the jailbreak. One outlandish conspiracy theory suggests that the SIMI operatives were allowed to escape, to lead them into a trap. This would be a bit farfetched for two reasons. Jail authorities would never agree to a plot that makes them look incompetent and two, one of their own got killed by the operatives when they were escaping from prison.

There were fortunately no casualties on the police side. But it would be interesting in this context to go back to April 2015.

Three of these eight SIMI operatives had their footprints in south India after their escape earlier in 2013 from Khandwa prison. Two other operatives who escaped with them were killed in a fierce encounter with the Nalgonda police in April 2015, in which two policemen died. Senior Telangana officers who monitored that operation say Aijaj and Aslam, the two operatives, were such good sharpshooters that “they could shoot between the eyes with accuracy with just a country made pistol”.

The Madhya Pradesh police are at pains to point out that the men they have neutralised are no saints but “dreaded terror operatives”. What is left unsaid is that they broke out presumably to carry out a terror hit.

Which makes one ask if this SIMI group was a hit squad of the Lashkar? Were their handlers across the LoC?

Investigators who interrogated three of the eight SIMI activists – Amjad Khan, Mohammad Salik and Zakir Hussain – after their arrest in Rourkela in February this year say they realised that the SIMI activists were a highly motivated and radicalised group. The impression the sleuths gathered was that Khan, Salik and Hussain were averse to working for any international terror outfit. Instead they wanted to operate their own SIMI group and relied on the modus operandi of bank robberies to generate funds.

If this interrogation report is anything to go by, it rules out the likelihood of their freelancing for a Pakistan-based group, unless some kind of contact was established during their stay in Bhopal prison. A scrutiny of other terror suspects lodged inside jail by the National Investigation Agency would give a sense of any relationships that may have been formed behind bars.

The police admit the SIMI activists were streetsmart operatives. Three of them knew the craft of bomb-making. After their escape from Khandwa jail, they travelled to Bijnor to learn the technique and in fact, met with an accident when a bomb exploded during assembling. But they escaped before the police arrived. Their skills, police believe, would be in great demand in the world of terror.

But in less than 24 hours, the attention has shifted dramatically from SIMI operatives to the Madhya Pradesh police. The onus is now on the NIA to establish what happened between jailbreak time of 2.30 am and the encounter time of 11.30 am. It will have to go back in time to unravel any plot that may have been hatched as well. Chief Minister Shivraj Chouhan’s police will have to prove that it was not trying to indulge in an extrajudicial hit.

For the moment, on available audio-visual evidence, it is in the dock.