Safeer Hashmi

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Hindutva groups in Orissa should be dealt with strictly: Justice AP Shah

“saffron terrorism” on Tuesday. “There is the recently uncovered

phenomenon of saffron terrorism that has been implicated in many bomb

blasts,” he said, addressing a conference of police chiefs from

mentioned saffron terror while reminding his audience the terror threat

had not gone away. “There is no let up in the attempts to radicalise

young men and women,” he said. Predictably riled, the BJP was quick to

respond. BJP spokes-man Rajiv Pratap Rudy said Chidambaram needed an

excuse to divert the attention since the country was “witnessing a lot

home minister’s comments come in the backdrop of investigators finding

clear links between Hindu extremist outfits and at least five bomb

blasts in recent years: at Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid, at Ajmer, Goa,

Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat. Chidambaram also hoped to

reach out to protesters in the Kashmir Valley, and lamented the Maoists

literature and brass knuckles at Houston airport, is a former RSS

pracharak committed to the cause of “protecting the ethos of Indian

civilisation”, says D C Nath, former special director of the

Intelligence Bureau. Nath and Kumar are close friends, both members of

Patriots’ Forum, a charitable trust. Nath said Kumar was originally a

New Delhi resident who shifted to Mumbai three years ago to make

documentaries on illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Illegal Bangladeshi

migrants and the change in demographics was Kumar’s chosen subject, Nath

interest in real estate and tried his hand as a consultant in both new

Delhi and Mumbai, Nath said, but what kept him busy was his

documentaries on human rights, gender injustice and illegal migration.

Advocate Navin Chaumal too said Kumar was once associated with the RSS.

He had been planning a PIL on Bangladeshi migrants and researching the

subject. “He met me days before he left for US, and said we should move

said Kumar had spent his earlier part of life “following spirituality

in the Himalayas” after which he moved to New Delhi and tried to set up a

company in security services. He set up a company that did not take

off, then moved to real estate consultancy, said Nath. “There are two

specific custodies Kumar is involved in, the criminal case custody (for

the brass knuckles) and the immigration custody (for the jihadi

literature),” criminal defense attorney Grant Scheiner told Newsline

moving court today to get the criminal court case hearing postponed. The

state is set to revoke his visa. He is expected to be in immigration

custody till September 2. The next hearing in the criminal matter was

kept for August 27, but with Kumar inside he will not be able to attend

Justice and Peace (CJP), Teesta Setalvad, has demanded that the G.T.

Nanavati-Akshay Mehta judicial inquiry commission – which is probing the

Godhra train carnage and post-Godhra communal riots in Gujarat in 2002 -

compel Chief Minister Narendra Modi and several others to compulsorily

file affidavits disclosing their “role in the conspiracy” during the

riots. The others that Ms. Setalvad wants the commission to issue

directives to include the then Chief Minister V.B. Subba Rao, then

Health Minister and presently Speaker of the State Assembly Ashok Bhatt,

then Urban Development Minister I. K. Jadeja, then Minister of State

for Home Gordhan Jhadaphia, members of the State Assembly Haresh Bhatt,

her oral submission before the commission here on Thursday, Ms.

Setalvad said the extended terms of reference of the commission -

authorising it to probe the roles of the Chief Minister and other

ministers – should have ensured that senior civil servants and policemen

filed second affidavits on the roles of the Chief Minister and the

others. She particularly named the then Additional Chief Secretary

(Home), Ashok Narayan, then Director-General of Police A.K.

Chakravarthi, then Ahmedabad Police Commissioner P.C. Pande, and several

others who could have “exposed” the Chief Minister and other Ministers,

Setalvad also asked for an inquiry into the destruction of original

police control room records by the Gujarat Police in 2007, when the

commission was in existence and the Supreme Court had been seized of the

matter since 2002. She demanded that the commission call for the entire

records of the telephone exchange at the Ahmedabad Police

Commissionerate, a set of special phone numbers manned by the Ahmedabad

police control room staff with direct connections to some senior police

officers, and the telephone records of the concerned police stations and

chowkies. She said these records should be summoned, examined and

analysed. Ms. Setalvad’s submissions were an elaboration of the detailed

documentary evidence filed by her before the commission on May 14 and

issued by the CJP said that Justice Nanavati observed that the

commission would probe the alleged destruction of evidence by the State.

Ms. Setalvad also pointed out that the Editor’s Guild report on the

media and press coverage at that time needed to be examined, especially

in connection with the transcript of Mr. Modi’s comments on a television

channel talking about the “action and reaction” theory. In this report,

she maintained that the fact that Mr. Modi had selectively

congratulated those newspaper barons who had inflamed passions and not

CJP submissions were also annexed with detailed analysis and graphs of

individual call records and the call records of Mr. Modi’s office and

residence and those of several senior police officers. Ms. Setalvad also

claimed that the then Joint Commissioner of Ahmedabad Police, M.K.

Tandon, had under oath made contradictory statements before the

commission and before the trial court hearing the Gulberg Society

killed in Panderwada during the 2002 riots in Gujarat would be getting

the remains of their near ones on Thursday. Panchmahals police officials

said the remains of six victims out of the 21 whose bodies were found

in the Panam river bed have been identified, with the DNA samples

matching those of their family members. “I will be burying my father

Habib Ashraf and my brother Bismillah tomorrow near Navagam, where we

have our community kabrastan (graveyard),” Hussain Abdul Shaikh told The

yet to get compensation for his house damaged during the riots as the

Panchamahals administration recently found a scam worth Rs 1.38 crore,

in which a village sarpanch, a relief worker and three Taluka

Development officials, aided by engineers and surveyors, had siphoned

off relief funds by giving false names as victims. While Shaikh now

hopes to put the rest of his family members, or at least their skeletal

remains, to rest, the fate of his grandmother Dulhan Bibi Ashraf – who

is also believed to have been killing during the riots – remains

Shabbir Dasod Shaikh, a resident of Panderwada, would be among those

lining up at the Bakor Police Station to collect the remains of his son

Saleem Shabbir Sayyad. His widow Maksuda has since remarried. Kotdi

Sayyed would be looking to collect the remains of her husband Abdul

Abbas Sayeed. Her son Yusuf Abdul Sayyed, 18, can’t take the day off as

he runs the family from what he earns, ferrying passengers from

Abbas Shaikh is also hoping the burial of her husband Abbas Nathu

Shaikh may finally lay some ghosts to rest. The struggle to know the

fate of their family members has been a long-fought one for all of them.

Lunawada police officials had even filed a case against an NGO member,

Rais Khan, and five others, accusing them of “hurting religious

sentiments and committing criminal conspiracy”, when they had unearthed

March 1, 2002, in the midst of the post-Godhra riots, Panderwada had

witnessed lynching of 21 people in a ravine on the bed of the Panam

river on the Godhra-Lunawada highway. Lunawada police officials had

allegedly conducted their burials on March 3, 2002, without letting the

family members know. In 2006, the family members obtained an order from

the Gujarat High Court for an independent DNA matching investigation

outside Gujarat. The remains were sent to the Forensic Science

Laboratory in Hyderabad and in May 2006, it confirmed prima facie that

the “blood samples of the relatives of victims matched with several

it the investigation of the killing of Tulsiram Prajapati as part of

the Sohrabuddin encounter case for unravelling the role of the former

Gujarat Minister of State of Home, Amit Shah, and police officers. In

its response to the petition filed by Narmada Bai, mother of Prajapati,

for a CBI probe, the agency said it came to light during investigation

that Prajapati was eliminated as he was a key witness in the criminal

conspiracy for the abduction and killing of Sohrabuddin and his wife

Bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan took on record the

CBI’s response and adjourned by four weeks the hearing of Narmada Bai’s

petition. The CBI said its investigation revealed that Prajapati knew

that his death was imminent at the hands of the Gujarat police in

connivance with the Rajasthan police. He expressed his apprehension in

his applications filed before the trial court and in his letters to the

also emerged that police officials of the Anti-Terrorist Squad,

Ahmedabad, were involved in the abduction and killing of Sohrabuddin and

Kausar Bi and for fair investigation, the police officials concerned

were transferred to non-sensitive posts in other locations. However, Mr.

Amit Shah ensured that D.G. Vanzara, DIG, was transferred, just 12 days

prior to the killing of Prajapati, to the Border Range where the

alleged fake encounter to eliminate him was executed on December 28,

cold-blooded murder of Prajapati is in utter contempt of the Supreme

Court order, and was carried out in the most brazen manner by the

powerful and influential accused when the investigation of the main

matter of abduction and killing of Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi was being

monitored by the court,” the CBI said. In the interest of public

justice, the Prajapati fake encounter case should be tried along with

encounter case, an accused in a 2006 rioting case submitted an

application before a Vadodara court on Friday, stating he was offered a

Rs 10 lakh supari by Sabarmati central jail authorities to kill

suspended deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Narendra Amin. The DSP

wants to become an approver in the fake encounter case, which is being

probed by the CBI. Shakeel Sheikh alias Teja claimed that when he turned

down the offer, the jailers beat him up and broke his arm. He has told

the court that he would like to be shifted to another prison as there

plea before the court to become approver in the Sohrabuddin case was

also accompanied by a request to shift him to another jail. But the

court rejected his plea and gave him more security. Other accused in the

case – D G Vanzara and Co – also filed a plea protesting against his

becoming an approver. Shakeel was arrested for rioting after a mazaar

was demolished in Vadodara near Champaner Darwaza by Vadodara Municipal

Corporation in 2006, leading to widespread violence. He was shifted to

Ahmedabad as he was branded a dangerous criminal. He has a history of

Saturday when he was presented in the court of additional sessions

judge K J Dasondi, he submitted an application seeking transfer of

prison. He claimed that three Sabarmati jail officials – jailer Jadeja,

Makwana and Gadhvi – had called him on August 11 and offered the supari.

When he refused, they beat him up. Shakeel was brought to the Vadodara

court as the riot case was being tried here. Further hearing on the plea

will be held on September 4. Additonal DGP P C Thakur has ordered an

Kandhamal communal violence at New Delhi concluded on Tuesday exposed

the abject failure of police, judiciary and the Orissa Government to

protect its weakest and poorest citizens during Kandhamal violence in

2007-08. Varied depositions by the violence victims 15 jury panel having

expertise in the field of housing, law, media, culture and

administration made it clear that anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal

report of the Jury Panel released by the NPT said, religion was used as

an excuse to execute their plans. The hearing marked the second

anniversary of the start of the riots. Sectarian “forces used religious

conversions to incite horrific forms of violence and discrimination

against Christians of low caste origin and their supporters in

Kandhamal,” the report said. The objective of the violence was “to

dominate” the poor “to ensure that they never rose in social status so

they would remain subservient to higher castes,” it said. The 12-member

jury heard evidence from 43 victims and testimonies of bishops,

officials and social activists from Orissa’s Kandhamal district, the

tribunal was established by the National Solidarity Forum, a coalition

of some 50 volunteer organizations and rights groups. “What happened in

Kandhamal was a national shame, a complete defacement of humanity,”

said jury chief A. P. Shah, a former New Delhi chief justice. Survivors

continue to be intimidated, denied protection and access to justice,

Shah added. “Coercive tactics have been used for the conversion or

re-conversion of people into the Hindu fold, including threats, and

intimidation, as well as institutionalized humiliation rituals,” the

district authorities “on no occasion, intervened to protect freedom of

religion and freedom of expression,” it added. The report also

recommended the establishment of a special team to investigate existing

and fresh allegations of crimes committed during the violence. Trials

have been compromised by ineffective prosecutions and the willful

state government must “greatly increase” compensation packages and take

steps to strengthen the justice system, the tribunal said. Some 400

people including 95 survivors from Kandhamal attended the meeting The

NPT was organised by the National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over

65 organisations and peoples’ movements that have come together to

highlight the plight of victims and survivors; and attempt to bring

(NHRC) Justice K. G. Balakrishnan on Thursday asked top police

officials to understand that a misplaced protective approach towards

acts of omission and commission by their subordinates raised an attitude

of impunity, which was very harmful in the long run in protecting human

rights. Addressing the conference of the State police chiefs,

Inspectors-General of Police and senior intelligence officials here, he

said : “They [senior police officers] need to ensure that their

subordinates work with the spirit to promote rule of law which alone can

was for the first time that the annual conference, organised by the

Intelligence Bureau, devoted an hour-long interaction with the NHRC

chairperson and four NHRC members on sensitising senior police officers

about creating a security environment that promotes good governance and

upholds human rights. Union Home Secretary G. K. Pillai and Intelligence

Bureau chief Rajiv Mathur were present during the interaction, which

saw many police chiefs raising queries and narrating their experiences.

“You have to ensure that, as the very first step, policemen do not,

directly or indirectly, become violators of human rights. Only then they

can act as protecters of human rights. They should be sensitive and

sympathetic to the plight of victims of crime who, many a times, are

out that the police were the ultimate vanguards of human rights, the

NHRC Chairperson flagged two areas where police performances besmirches

their image – police encounters and custodial violence. In the past

three years, the Commission received 212 complaints of deaths in alleged

“fake encounters,” which seriously eroded the credibility of police and

did not act as a deterrent or controlling crime. “The senior leadership

has to give serious thought to it and guard against a tendency of

accepting that such fake encounters enjoy public support,” Justice

concern over custodial violence, he said such a crime could certainly

be prevented by the police themselves. He asked the police chiefs to

provide leadership to their forces for “zero tolerance” for custodial

violence. He also asked them to “devise ways and means” to reduce the

gap between people’s expectations from the police and the actual service

being delivered to them. “You have to reach out to those sections of

society who may not be in a position to raise their voice against

exploitation due to ignorance, backwardness, illiteracy and poor

that guaranteeing the basic human rights of the police and basic

amenities of the service were the best way to motivate the policemen to

discharge their duties, he said transparency and impartiality of

mechanisms of accountability create strength and credibility for the

police. “In other words, a democratic country like India needs

democratic policing. Democratic policing is based on the idea of the

police as protectors of the rights of citizens and the rule of law which

persons charged for conspiring with Pakistan’s ISI and other terrorist

outfits in order to avenge the atrocities committed against the Muslims

during the 2002 riots. This case, famously known as the ISI or Jihadi

conspiracy’ case, was booked under suspended IPS officer DG Vanzara, now

jailed in Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case. The court found no

evidence to support any of the charges. After registering a case for

terror conspiracy in 2003, the city crime branch nabbed 56 persons for

allegedly conspiring at the behest of terror groups and under the

leadership of Mufti Sufiyan Patangia and Rasool Parti. The special

was an umbrella case that covered five riot reprisal cases, including

Haren Pandya murder. However, two persons were discharged on the ground

of double jeopardy. The Central Pota Review Committee (CPRC) in 2005

recommended dropping of terror charges against 10 persons, and a

separate trial came to be initiated against them after the Supreme

Court’s order in 2008 holding that CPRC recommendations are binding for

trial courts. In August last year, charges were framed against Mohammed

Abdul Bari, Iftekharul Hassan Hashmi, Mohammed Shafiuddin Yusufali,

Abdul Rahim Hanafi Muslim, Mufti Saeed Akbar (all from Hyderabad),

advocate Mohammed Ali, Javed Khan, Maulvi Abdul Hussain Mansuri, senior

advocate HN Jhala from Ahmedabad and Ashraf Nagori from Surat. Advocate

assessing 32 witnesses and perusing above 200 documentary evidences,

additional sessions judge AH Shah acquitted all nine with the

observation that police could not provide evidence of conspiracy

meetings, and no arms or explosives recovered from the accused show that

they were waging war against the nation. The court found no evidence of

their involvement to send Muslim youth to Pakistan for terror training.

During the trial, all 10 witnesses, whose statements were recorded

under section 164 of CrPC, turned hostile. The court observed that only

statement given on oath in the witness box is maintainable, said defence

these nine, Abdul Bari and Iftekharul Hassan Hashmi have been convicted

in the Haren Pandya case, Nagori is in jail for seven years in a firing

case, and Javed Khan is convicted in the Radhika Gymkhana massacre

case. Interestingly, this is the fifth case tried for terrorism charges,

wherein the courts have acquitted the accused. On the other hand, the

special Pota court convicted 22 persons and acquitted 22 others in the

intact on the crumbling graffiti. ‘Shishtachar’ or good conduct. What

could it mean for a village in the grip of conflict? On August 4, for

several hours, national television beamed news of a gunfight in the

forest near Kutrem, 50km from the town of Dantewada. Chhattisgarh police

claimed its men were engaged in a ‘fierce encounter’ with the Maoists.

By evening, the policemen – local adivasi special recruits called ‘Koya

Commandos’ – returned to base, unharmed, carrying a victory trophy. The

body of a young man. They said he was a Maoist. His name was Kunjami

Joga. But Joga was not one of us, and the encounter was fake, now claim

the Maoists. Exactly a fortnight later, they have left behind

hand-written pamphlets in Kutrem, not stealthily, but with loud impact,

school, an anganwadi and the panchayat office. “When we arrived next

morning, we found tables, chairs, books, and cupboards lying outside.

They first emptied out the building and then brought it down,” said M R

Tandiya, the school headmaster. Just a day before the blasts, TOI had

visited Kutrem, green with paddy and maize, nestling in an undulating

forest. Joga’s old fragile parents could barely speak. A small crowd

gathered. A young man narrated in broken Hindi: “Joga had gone to his

didi’s house in the next para (hamlet) for food, when the force (koya

commandos) arrived. They found him on the way and shot him dead. Two

days later, they came back and distributed biscuits and namkeen. They

also gave the family money.” At this point, Joga’s father became alert.

He looked up with moist eyes, nodded, and said, “Do Hazaar”. Two

said Joga’s cousin Urra was also beaten up by the police. “They beat

him so badly, he could not bear the pain, wo phaansi lagaa liya”. Urra’s

wife gestured agitatedly. She pointed out the homestead where her

husband was beaten, held her spine to indicate the nature of his

injuries, and finally led inside to show where he eventually hung

himself. Another young man said similar killings had taken place in the

next village Madkamiras. He offered to show the way. But on arrival

there, villagers said ‘force’ had arrived in Kutrem. Back in Kutrem,

within minutes, the village had transformed. Homes were locked up. Armed

men in green camouflage and black bandanas swarmed the place. This was a

party of Koya Commandos. “No, this is not the same party that engaged

in the encounter a few days ago, although some fighters were common,”

said one of them. When asked what had brought them back, another

their leader, police inspector Nagavanshi arrived. “The encounter took

place seven kilometres from here inside the forests,” he said, pointing

towards a distant hill. “That’s where we recovered the body of a

uniformed Maoist, a boy from this village, Kunjami Joga.” Later, in a

private conversation, one of the Koya fighters admitted the body was not

in uniform. “But he was a Maoist and we found a black uniform in his

kit”. So why did they distribute biscuits and money in the village? “We

wanted to convince people not to help the Naxals. And we gave Joga’s

family money because the dokra (old parents) were so poor, we felt pity.

morning, in the debris of the school building in Kutrem, sribbled in

red and green sketch pen ink, signed by the CPI Maoist Darbha Divisional

Committee, a pamphlet said: “Like Kunjami Joga, 18 other innocent

villagers have been killed by the security forces and Koya commandos,

all in the name of eliminating Maoists, as part of Operation Green Hunt.

We will give them a fitting response”. In worn out and faded blue

uniform, children filed out of the compound, carrying furniture and

books on their head, transferring the school’s belongings to a small

remark at a conference of State police chiefs, security and intelligence

officials a few days ago, that apart from the well known threat of the

infiltration of jehadi terrorists, there is also now the phenomenon of

“saffron terrorism” has set off a storm of protest in Parliament.

The main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and its ally, the

Shiv Sena, have repeatedly disrupted proceedings in the Lok Sabha and

the Rajya Sabha, demanding that the Home Minister apologise for use of

the Home Minister has chosen to bring this disturbing point to national

attention should not be made an issue of partisan politics. Bomb blasts

in 2007 targeting the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad and the Ajmer Sharif

Dargah, the September 29, 2008 bomb blast at Malegaon in Maharashtra,

and last year’s bomb blasts in Goa highlighted a trend of directed

investigations conducted over the last three years, led by the

Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra, have pointed to a larger

network of Hindutva groups such as Abhinav Bharat, Rashtriya Jagran

Manch, and Sanatan Sanstha as being implicated in these bomb blasts.

Those involved in these indefensible crimes are members of fringe groups

claiming allegiance to Hindutva, their intention clearly to ignite

is evident that the heavy stakes invested in the Sangh Parivar’s

political campaign that terrorism in India is linked mainly to Islamist

fundamentalists prevent the BJP and its allies from reacting responsibly

to what is an emerging threat. Militancy and terrorism thrive on cycles

of hate and retaliatory violence. The Home Minister’s carefully chosen

words were intended to warn the security establishment to sharpen its

counter terrorism capabilities in the face of the new forms of terror

emerging on the national landscape. Saffron terror, along with

infiltration of jehadi terrorists and the simmering Maoist insurgency,

BJP, which prides itself on being a party with a strong commitment to

national and internal security, must acknowledge the seriousness of this

new dimension to terror and take this issue out of the realm of

partisan politics. The government for its part must resist the

temptation of drawing political conclusions from what is essentially an

internal security challenge and formulate a serious and credible

connivance of cops, politicians and gangsters, fake IB inputs – the

story of the Gujarat encounters is now a Molotov cocktail. It was to

whitewash all this that Sohrabuddin’s activities were given a communal

colour, which gave the double benefit of building Chief Minister

Narendra Modi as the Hindu Hridaya Samrat. As new leads emerge in the

encounters that took place in Gujarat since 2003, the truth spilling out

is damning for the ministers and cops of Gujarat. TEHELKA has managed

to cull out IB inputs and letters written by ‘encounter cops’ and

ministers to reveal the shocking truth of a state called Gujarat. These

give a preview into the larger conspiracy which will be revealed in

months to come as investigations into the encounters progress. Exhibit A

is a letter dated 12 October 2006 written by DG Vanzara, then DIG in

the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) to PC Pande (DGP). Written soon after

Vanzara was shifted to ATS from the Crime Branch, it offers proof he

overlooked not just the encounters but investigations into the

encounters which had been staged by his team of officers in connivance

with politicians. These encounters ended the lives not only of Ishrat

Jahan and Sohrabuddin and subsequently Tulsi Prajapati but of

19-year-old Sadiq Jamal, about whom the police projected as wanting to

writes in the missive: “I met with Shri KR Kaushik, Police

Commissioner, Ahmedabad City at his chamber on date 10/8/06 at 1700

hours, and had requested him again that there has been no cooperation by

the Crime Branch, and he had given very positive response in this

regard and had said to me that he will instruct Shri PP Pandey in this

regard. There have big terrorist incidents happenings in the country.

All of Gujarat State and VIPs over here are number one target of

terrorist organisations like HuJI and LeT. Intelligence inputs coming

from all over also show threat for Gujarat.” The letter, investigators

now believe, was written not to protect the state from imaginary

terrorist threats but to get hold of files with the Crime Branch in

order to authenticate and justify further fake encounters. This is

corroborated by an IB input exclusively with TEHELKA dubbed ‘SECRET

MESSAGE’ and dated 29 November 2002 which was passed on by then IB joint

director Rajender Kumar marked to DGP K Chakraborty (No:6/CR

/snw-Peak/2002/703, Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau, Ahmedabad-4). It

says that riot victim Sadiq alias Ayub Islam alias Jamal could be found

at his maternal uncle Ajju Bhaiyya’s place near an STD booth at

the petition filed in the Sadiq case before the High Court is to be

believed, then the Dy SP of Bhavnagar started harassing the family a

month later from 23 December. The police had told Sadiq’s family that

they were looking for the boy in a gambling case – an FIR had been

lodged on 9 November under the Gambling Act. The frightened family had

not revealed his whereabouts, so this input from IB helped the tainted

cops in their mission. The report filed by the team of cops led by

Vanzara later suggested that Sadiq was killed as he was on his way to

eliminate Narendra Modi and Praveen Togadia. But this encounter took

place on 13 January 2003, much after the dignitaries had already visited

Bhavnagar, going by a list of VIP visitors touring the riot-hit area

accessed by TEHELKA. The truth probably lies in an affidavit filed by

journalist and MCOCA detainee Ketan Tirodkar in which he says that he,

along with encounter cop Daya Nayak, handed over Sadiq Jamal to DG

Vanzara at Borivali National Park in Mumbai where Vanzara had come in

posing as a human rights official. If the Gujarat HC hears the petition

in the case this month is to take this into consideration, then very

uncomfortable truths about the IB inputs would be raised. And as the

petitioner in the Sadiq Jamal case Mukul Sinha points out, this will

blow the lid off perhaps the first ever political killings in the state.

it would be logical to question the activities of the same set of IB

officers from the 2002 Godhra carnage until 2005, when the Ishrat and

Sohrabuddin encounter took place. The Supreme Court is all set to

appoint a new Special Investigation Team or ask the CBI to look into the

larger political conspiracies in the state. The various strands are all

coming together as the Supreme Court gets set to give its verdict on

handing the Tulsi Prajapati case to the CBI on 25 August and the Gujarat

High Court simultaneously starts hearing the petition filed in the

Sadiq Jamal encounter. The investigations into the larger conspiracy

will now revolve around the liaison between the politicians and cops

involved in the Sohrabuddin encounter not just in 2005 and 2006 but also

through the events that led to the encounter from 2004 on the basis of

evidence and call records which are in TEHELKA’s possession. For

starters, the foundation of the Sohrabuddin case as has now been

understood from the chargesheet filed by the CBI is the Popular Builders

firing case in which owners of the property Raman and Dashrath Patel

are now CBI witnesses. While the BJP is going into overdrive denying the

fact that Amit Shah did not make any phone calls during the Sohrabuddin

encounter, call records culled by TEHELKA show that the MoS was in

constant touch with all the players in the Popular House firing case

including chargesheeted Yashpal Chudasama and Ajay Patel – the men who

were at top positions in the Ahmedabad Cooperative Bank and who were

seen threatening the brothers in the sting. Also implicated is the

Valsad SP Abhay Chudasama who is now behind bars for his role in the

this, TEHELKA has accessed an application written by the Patel brothers

to the Chief Minister and the response to this from the Home Department,

which is the usual bureaucratese that the CM has communicated the

complaint to the concerned people and will have his department

investigate the matter. Raman Patel tells TEHELKA that the CM’s office

and the Home Department ignored their requests into a fair investigation

into the firing done with the connivance of cops including Chudasama

and investigated by DG Vanzara, who was then with the Crime Branch.

Interestingly, this was also the time when Abhay Chudasama carried out

nine encounters in Valsad where he was posted as SP, including that of

an arms smuggler called Haji who had links with the underworld. The CBI

is now investigating Chudasama’s underworld links as Haji who is

believed to have been bumped off as per a supari (contract to kill)

given by the Chhota Shakeel gang. Interestingly, not just these events

that took place in late 2004 which later led to the Sohrabuddin

encounter in 2005 and Tulsi Prajapati encounter in 2006, what also

preceded the Popular Builders firing in 2004 was the Ishrat Jahan and

Javed alias Pranesh Pillai encounter which took place in June 2004. An

encounter in which the IB gave inputs to the Maharashtra police which

the lawyers claim were never received by the Mumbai Police. As Vrinda

Grover, counsel for Ishrat Jahan’s family says, “The IB input into the

encounter was itself fake. We have checked with the Mumbai Police and

have been told that no IB input was sent to them. There are cops and IB

officials who should be questioned,” she says, pointing to the veracity

of the IB information in the encounters. This rings true as the Tamang

report whose findings were upheld by the Gujarat HC a week before do

point at the role of then Ahmedabad Police Commissioner KR Kaushik. In

fact, if the findings of the CBI which has also got leads into the case

are to be believed, a top state police official went to question Ishrat

while she was kept at Arham Farms. Investigators says Ishrat was coerced

into making calls on Pakistan numbers to prove her links to LeT and

time and forum to discuss not just the nuclear liability bill and the

enormity of the situation in the Kashmir valley in view of Prakash

Karat’s view that the protest is spontaneous and solution within the

constitution should not stand in the way of negotiation but also

government’s pro quid quo deal with the BJP over the bill and also how

far the government would go to let CBI arrest Gordhan Zadaphia in the

end of September when enough proof exits with the agency and the private

domain 0 The private domain is replete with information on what

Narendra Modi said about the 2002 pogroms which the Supreme Court still

calls “riots”. Why did CBI selectively deal with Malegaon vis-à-vis

Gujarat? CBI’s most glaring fault is not that the officers are any less

diligent than people like Hemant Karkare. It is how we put to use the

top intelligence agency to work and what we do not do in the words of

Vice President Hamid Ansari : have an oversight committee to monitor

intelligence gathering. The oversight committee of parliamentarians

comprising of the ruling and other party members would have surely told

Malegaon blasts of 2006 the CBI told the Supreme Court that it did not

find any significant new facts and thereby it accepted and submitted

what the Malegaon police and ATS under KP Raghuvanshi had included in

their chargesheets. It did not investigate the matter as Karkare had

done for the 2008 blast. New facts have emerged that the 2006 was also

the handiwork of those behind the 2008 blast. Why did the CBI sleep for

such a long time and not notice the relevance? 2) A convincing proof:

the ATS under Raghuvanshi had made accused Abrar Ahmed as an approver.

The CBI did not bother to look into the matter. It attached the consumer

application form of his mobile phone and presented as proof. The form

has not been signed by Abrar at three stipulated spaces for the

applicant. How could this happen? The agency was already groaning and

complaining that it was overburdened and clearly showed its

unwillingness to take up the matter! Was the lack of will power on the

part of the government or the agency? A committed government would have

taken the agency to task over the matter. It is the government that

On September 1st 2006 itself the Nasik control room received actionable

intelligence that terrorist attack would take place within a short

period. The ASP of Malegaon Mr. Kumbhare had informed the SP (Rural) Mr.

Rajwardhan that there was imminent threat. The ASP had gone to the

trustees of Hamidiya mosque at the grave yard a day before the bomb

blasts and apprised them of the danger. He mentioned that police would

be deployed within and outside the graveyard and beggars would not be

allowed within the vicinity of the mosque and the graveyard. Even then

there were no police men in sight when the blasts occurred and many

beggars were injured and killed within the premises of the mosque. Why

were there no police men at the mosque? The CBI did not bother to into

this matter despite the fact that many representations by Individuals

and groups were made to it during its officers visited the town,

Malegaon. Why did the Congress government at the centre and in the state

Coming in the year of the Nanded blast, the Malegaon Hamidiya mosque

blasts of 2006 fall into a pattern. The bomb blasts at Purna mosque,

Parbhani mosque, Jalna mosque, Mecca mosque Hyderabad, Jama Masjid Delhi

and Malegaon have all occurred between 1.35 PM and 1.45 PM on Friday

midday prayer when the crowd of Muslims is fullest. Even the Nanded bomb

was scheduled to explode at the railway station mosque in Aurangabad on

April 4 2006 at 1.35 PM but because of the mistake in setting instead

of 1.35 PM it exploded at 1.35 AM in the house of the Bajrang Dal

activist Naresh before he and his accomplice could travel to Aurangabad.

In most cases Hindutva extremists were involved. But without rhyme and

reason the police booked Muslims in Malegaon blasts! This is very

bizarre because none of the accused in Malegaon 2006 blasts resemble the

police sketches of the suspects even remotely. Most of the accused are

bearded wearing tunic and pyjama and have round skull caps while the

sketches are of country youths of rather Hindu origin as they are clean

shaved. The police in fact believed one to be a Bajrang Dal activist,

the most poignantly left out aspects is the abandoning of police search

for the prototypes of the sketches. One of them had tried to keep a

black bag with a tea vendor who recognized him when the sketches were

telecast. He volunteered to go to the police and help them. Nothing came

out of this. The CBI did not even feel necessary to look into all

these? In contrast to this Hemant Karkare had spoken out that he had not

found any SIMI involvement in the 2006 (ab tak SIMI ke role ka pata

nahin chal saka). This is what Karkare told to Urdu Times on August 16,

2008. Full two years after this the CBI draws a blank over this when it

submitted its periodic report to the SC. Why is the agency treating

Malegaon 2006 case carelessly? Has not the government put any pressure

on it? 5) In the case of Amit Shah the agency collected mountains of

documents and was zeroing in on Narendra Modi but then came the nuclear

liability bill. For the sake of getting it through the parliament the

government made a quid pro quo deal with BJP. We are in for another Rip

Chemkuri Azad Rajkumar, the manner of death can speak volumes. The

Maoist leader’s post-mortem report, which Outlook has now accessed,

categorically establishes that he died in a fake encounter. Read along

with the FIR and inquest reports, it exposes the elaborate set of lies

drawn by the Andhra Pradesh police to explain his death. The claimed

encounter, a much-touted “gain” in the UPA government’s war against

India’s “gravest internal security threat”, was in fact a cold-blooded

execution by the state. Azad, a key player in the planned negotiations

with the government, was picked up and shot with a handgun from a

distance barely more than the size of an outstretched palm. The official

version, that the Maoists were atop a hill and fired at the police

party and Azad died when the cops retaliated from down below, just

doesn’t add up. The post-mortem on Azad’s body, conducted by doctors at

the Adilabad district hospital on July 3, two days after the killing,

records a 1-cm oval-shaped wound just a few inches above the left nipple

where the bullet entered, tore through his heart and exited from the

back just between the ninth and the tenth vertebrae. The wound’s entry

point, the doctor conducting the post-mortem records, had “darkening

(and) burned edge” at the “left second intercostal space (the space

forensic medicine, which also deals with decoding fatal bullet wounds,

the words “darkening, blackening and burning” are revealing. Experts

with hundreds of autopsies behind them all say that when there is

“burning” associated with a “darkening or blackening” of an entry wound,

it can only mean that the victim has been shot from a distance less

than 7.5 cm or less—practically point-blank range. To get a better

interpretation and assessment of the observations in the post-mortem

report, Outlook gave a copy of it to three of the country’s top forensic

medicine and wound ballistic experts in three different cities. To

ensure an unbiased and objective assessment, only the contents of the

report were made available to them, the victim’s name was not revealed.

All three agreed that the probability of a close-range shot, perhaps

even less than 7.5 cm, was very, very high. Dr Sudhir Gupta, a gold

medallist in medicine and currently an associate professor of forensic

medicine and toxicology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences

in New Delhi, is considered an authority in his field. He is also an

expert on encounter deaths, having handled 30 such cases. After going

through the Azad post-mortem, Gupta summarised that a very “near shot”

explains: “When there is darkening, blackening and burning around a

firearm bullet entry wound, then it is caused by the flame and smoke of

gunpowder emerging from the gun. These residual marks strongly suggest a

near (close-range) shot. The burning is caused by a flame that has no

mass. So, it travels a very short distance from the gun and therefore

can only cause a burn if the shot is fired from close range. The

gunpowder residue which hits the body at near range penetrates the skin

and causes the darkening. Please note that the flame and the gunpowder,

due to low mass, cannot travel very large distances.” However,

exercising the customary caution of a professional, Gupta advocates

“test-firing of the gun with the type of ammunition that was used in the

original shooting for an accurate assessment of the range of fire”. The

second expert Outlook approached is a name students of forensic

medicine are all too familiar with. Dr B. Umadethan is the former head

of the department of forensic medicine and a police surgeon at the

Medical College of Thiruvananthapuram. His book, Principles and Practice

of Forensic Medicine, is a standard text for forensic students. A

cautious man, Umadethan makes it very clear that it is difficult and

even dangerous to form an opinion from the available data. But he finds

the “darkening and burned edges” intriguing. “Usually, a very

close-range shot, less than 7.5 cm, leaves behind three telltale marks:

the entry wound is burnt; it has a halo tattoo from the unburned

gunpowder and blackening created by the smoke. If the deceased is

wearing a cotton shirt, then the gunpowder tattoo can be left behind on

the cloth. But a burn along with these other indications definitely

qualifications requested anonymity. A former director of the Central

Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Chandigarh, he is an expert on wound

ballistics and has authored several books on the subject. “The darkening

of the wound’s edge could be due to dirt and deposit of power residues

and contusion, but when accompanied by burnt edges, it’s almost certain

that the bullet was fired at extremely close range and the weapon used

was a handgun, not a rifle like the AK-47. It causes a wound of almost

similar dimension but inflicts much more damage to the tissue. My guess

is that the bullet was fired from a .38″ (9 mm) pistol,” he says. If the

post-mortem report exposes the police claims, then the FIR, lodged on a

complaint filed by Circle Inspector Raghunandan Rao on July 2, is an

even greater exercise in self-contradiction. It states that the police

received a tip-off from the state intelligence police about a

20-25-strong Maoist squad infiltrating into the Wankedi forests from the

Maharashtra side. Rao’s team, equipped with night vision devices, found

the squad in the midst of hundreds of acres of forests in the dead of

the night on July 1. The police claim they challenged the squad, but

came under intense fire. The cops too retaliated; the exchange of fire

lasted 30 minutes. When the firing stopped, Rao led his team towards the

hilltop to halt and rest for the night. Early next day, he resumed his

search and stumbled upon two unidentified bodies, each with their

individual kit bags, an AK-47 and a 9-mm pistol. One body was Azad’s;

minister P. Chidambaram to initiate talks with the Maoists in search for

peace, is a perplexed man. “If they kill the very man who was carrying

my message to the Maoist leadership in Dandakaranya to begin talks and

offer a substantive gesture to show their sincerity, then who do we talk

with? Are we keen to end this conflict or are we getting ready for a

perpetual war in the heartland of India? When such disturbing facts

emerge from the death of such a man, doesn’t it merit a decent inquiry?”

For a nation at war with itself, the truth is the least it owes itself.

Else, Azad will become the Congress’s Sohrabuddin. Like their

counterparts in Gujarat (who did not budge till the Supreme Court

stepped in), the Centre and the state are in denial about Azad and

attempting to bury uncomfortable facts. Like in the Sohrabuddin

encounter, there is trickery involved in Azad’s death too. The Maoist

ideologue, from all credible accounts, had been drawn out for peace

talks. Only, instead of allowing him to speak, the government silenced

chairman of Satyam Computers, who is the main accused in the huge fraud

case that rocked corporate India last year, raises serious doubts about

the effectiveness of the justice system in dealing with crimes committed

by rich and well-connected people. The Andhra Pradesh high court has

imposed some minor conditions while granting the fraudster the bail that

he has been trying to get for months. These conditions are trivial in

view of the scale and seriousness of the fraud that involved, by latest

estimates, about Rs 25,000 crore. The court unfortunately did not accept

the CBI’s contention that Raju might try to influence witnesses in the

supreme court had in March this year rejected Raju’s bail petition on

the ground that “he is the main accused and is likely to influence the

witnesses.” There is no convincing ground for a change of view now. The

VVIP treatment that Raju has received all these months is more

scandalous. He was in jail for just a few months and there he was

provided the best amenities and comforts, including a badminton court

specially made for him. In September last year he moved to the Nizam

Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) where the same treatment has

continued. No independent doctor has examined him to check the veracity

of his claims of illness. The person who could not move from the

hospital to the jail or the court because of illness is now healthy

are many shareholders who are yet to recover from the losses they

suffered on account of Raju’s fraud. Bringing him and his accomplices to

book at the earliest is vital for re-establishing faith in the best

corporate practices and in regaining investor confidence at an important

stage in the country’s growth. Raju has not co-operated in the

investigation and in the judicial proceedings. He did not reply to the

questions sent to him in his NIMS address. He has never attended court

and the proceedings are stalled because of his claimed illness. All the

accused in the case are now out on bail. The rule of law seems to be

different for different people, judging by the kid glove treatment Raju

chosen (albeit highly unequal) few. This contradiction in terms is the

considered wisdom of a Group of Ministers (GoM), recently constituted to

study the potentially seminal anti-discrimination measure. Only in

India, where we excel in bursting forth with good ideas only to rapidly

lose the plot, would someone propose an idea as critical as an Equal

Opportunity Commission and proceed to kill it at birth with blatant

inequality. The GoM has decided that an EOC should exist only for the

minorities ( generally seen as a euphemism for Muslims who officially

constitute over 70 per cent of the minority population). This decision

is bad for Muslims, bad for a secular polity and bad for all other

deprived and discriminated groups. The Sachar Committee, set up to study

the social, economic and educational status of Muslims proposed in 2006

an Equal Opportunity Commission to provide a remedy against

discrimination. President Pratibha Patil’s speech of June 4, 2009

subsequently committed UPA-II to setting it up. In the meantime, in

impressively rapid action, a framework for an EOC had already been

prepared in February 2008 by an experts group constituted by the

Ministry of Minority Affairs. While the framework and the draft bill

itself are extremely weak (more on that later), the point here is that

it was made clear that an EOC should cover all deprived and

GoM’s logic is worrisome. One, we are told that since the idea of an

EOC emerged from the Sachar report, which looked at Muslims, the EOC

must logically confine itself to the ‘minorities’. This is like saying

that if suggestions for vital legal reforms emanate from the experience

of violence against Christians in Kandhamal, the legal provisions must

be applied only to Christians or to Orissa, not to other groups who may

suffer mass targeted violence. It is both plain silly and blatantly

unfair. The other logic is that an EOC covering discrimination against

all groups would overlap with the roles of existing commissions – the

National Commission for Minorities (NCM), the National Commission for

Women, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, the National

Commission for Scheduled Tribes, etc. Well, by that logic ‘minorities’

are covered by the NCM and so an EOC should be a non-starter. But if it

is a good idea for the minorities because the existing NCM simply does

not fulfil the mandate of providing legal redress for widespread,

systemic discrimination, then surely it is a good idea for all. Media

reports tell us that the Ministry of Minority Affairs is reluctantly

re-drafting the framework (creating a minorities-only EOC?) for the next

session of Parliament. Reluctantly – because from all accounts,

Minister for Minority Affairs Salman Khurshid did argue, and rightly so,

for an inclusive EOC. But he was clearly in a minority. The damaging

political implications of the GoM’s decision are too obvious to ignore.

If such an EOC comes to life, it will only add arsenal to the spent

Hindutva armoury on the “appeasement of minorities” discourse. And

UPA-II will rapidly undo all the good UPA-I did on the Muslim front. The

targeted empowerment of Muslims through special purpose vehicles,

programmes and policies (on which we are doing rather badly at the

moment) is absolutely critical, and must be supported. But an EOC

EOC, along with appropriate anti-discrimination legislation, is

desperately needed across the board to strengthen the social justice

agenda. Discrimination at every step, in all walks of life actively

thwarts the UPA’s stated goal of ‘inclusion’. It prevents Dalits,

Muslims, the other minorities, the physically challenged, women and the

sexual minorities, among others, from partaking equally of development.

It is alarming that in a country where ascriptive identity is the basis

for routine discrimination, we have no anti-discrimination legislation

or an EOC. Anti-discrimination legislation and policies must protect

against all kinds of discrimination. And must cover multiple spheres of

discrimination – in employment (including MNREGS job cards), in

education, in giving loans, in allotment of homes, in provision of

public services. Other countries, with far fewer endemic, deep-rooted,

discriminatory societal norms, often have more than a single

anti-discrimination law and multiple mechanisms to protect against a

range of discriminations based on gender, race, ethnicity and so on.

India, barring the SC/ST Act, which is limited to certain defined

“atrocities,” has none. (Even the SC/ST Act, for instance, provides no

legal redress to a Dalit who suddenly confronts a ‘houseful’ sign at the

time of school admission only to have the non-Dalit child next in line

skip through the front door, or who performs so well in the interview

brings us to the next problem with the proposed EOC. The experts group,

headed by Professor Madhava Menon, has covered many important bases. It

speaks of including all groups, and covering both the public and

private sectors. But it has essentially proposed yet another toothless

institution. “The EOC should focus on advisory, advocacy, and auditing

functions rather than grievance redress,” says the report. Yawn. So,

what’s the point? This is just another way of saying the EOC will stomp

around a whole lot essentially to stand very still. Because it can

provide little effective remedy to a victim of discrimination. That is

the core problem. The experts group’s framework has focussed more on

equal opportunity in broad strokes – suggesting research, codes of good

practice, institutional audits, advocacy and advisory functions, and

less on actually prohibiting discrimination through strong

implementation mechanisms. The draft bill has even failed to state the

obvious – that ‘discrimination is illegal.’ Why? Because, according to

the proposed bill “discrimination against any citizen on grounds only of

religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth is expressly forbidden by

the Constitution itself. Arbitrariness is against the spirit of equal

opportunity. There is therefore no need for a separate

the Constitution is a wonderful document, and its multiple guarantees

give endless hope. But if the mere existence of all the Right to

Equality mantras enshrined in the Constitution were enough to determine

an equal nation, India would be a paradise. It’s not. Since prohibition

of discrimination should be at the core of the proposed EOC, it must say

so in plain words. Even the Constitution – Article 15 – expressly on

the prohibition of discrimination only says, ‘The state shall not

discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race,

caste, sex, place of birth or any of them …’ It does not refer to

private enterprises, or to a range of other ascriptive identities on the

basis of which discrimination may take place. Prohibiting

discrimination and creating equal opportunity conditions – both are

needed. One without the other will not work. This is India.

Discrimination runs deep. So let the nation re-examine the proposed EOC.

Revise the draft bill, create strong legal deterrence against

discrimination and then do what’s right for all our citizens. Give them

an anti-discrimination law and an institution that can implement it. We

cannot legislate against bias and prejudice in the hearts and minds of

people, but we can and we must legislate against discrimination in how