IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – July 12th, 2010

by Publisher on July 12, 2010

In this issue

News Headlines

Opinions & Editorials

News Headlines

Charges framed against three more in Naroda Gam
case (Jul 10, 2010, Times of India)

A special court hearing the Naroda Gam massacre case on Friday framed
charges against three more accused after the Special Investigation Team
(SIT) filed a charge sheet against them and a metropolitan court
committed the charge sheet to the special trial court. Designated judge,
SH Vora, framed charges against Raman Godana, Ajay Prajapati and Raju
Dhobi after the three were nabbed earlier this year by the Supreme
Court-appointed SIT. With the addition of these three, total number of
undertrials in this case has reached to 86, the highest in number in all
nine 2002 riots cases being heard by special courts. This was the tenth
charge sheet filed in the special court by SIT.

Eleven persons
were killed during the violence on February 28, 2008, a day after 59
passengers including kar sevaks were killed in S-6 coach of the
Sabarmati Express near Godhra, when a violent mob torched the bogie.
Among those who are being tried in the Naroda Gam case are former state
minister Maya Kodnani, a senior VHP leader Jaideep Patel and Babu
Bajrangi.

The trial had come to a halt after the special judge
was transferred and later the special public prosecutor Nigam Shukla
quit the case. Recently, advocate Ajay Choksi has been appointed as a
special prosecutor and additional sessions judge Vora again took charge
of the case. Further hearing in this case is kept on Monday.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6149192.cms

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After Sohrab, Tulsiram, Ghetia haunt cops (Jul 5,
2010, Times of India)

Another police encounter could well return to haunt some city cops.
After fake encounters of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati, the
encounter of a historysheeter Subramanium Ghetia may now be put under
the scanner. The Ahmedabad city police has sought permission from the
metropolitan court to reinvestigate the case. This, after filing a
summary report and putting a stop to investigations. On June 21, the
application for reinvestigation was moved by city police. The matter is
now being heard in the court.

Early on May 16, 2009, Ghetia was
shot under the Vatva railway overbridge. Crime branch, which was then
being headed by deputy commissioner of police, Abhay Chudasama, had then
claimed that several offenses are pending against Ghetia and was wanted
in many complaints. When police got a tip-off that Ghetia was near the
overbridge, a team rushed down and killed him in the ensuing encounter.

However,
soon after the encounter no allegations were made then since Ghetia was
a historysheeter with offences like murder, rape and extortion
registered against him. Chudasama was arrested by CBI on April 28 in
connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.

After
the arrest, CBI got numerous complaints against Chudasama. One of the
complaints said that Ghetia too was killed in a fake encounter. The
letter alleged that it was on May 13 when Ghetia was picked up from
Amraiwadi by police and kept in illegal detention. Recently, Ghetia’s
relatives also met the CBI officials in this connection.

The
reason for the doubts over authenticity of the encounter is highlighted
by the medical report which states of injury marks all over his body.
"These injury marks were caused by beating which cannot have been
sustained in the encounter," said sources. Then there is another factor
of bullet injury on his temple. "One of the bullets fired by police hit
Ghetia in his right temple which is not possible in an encounter where
the accused and the cops are at a distance from each other. The shot
indicates that there is more to the story than what is being told by the
police," said sources.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6129391.cms

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Fake encounter: non-bailable warrants against 7
police officers (Jul 3, 2010, Indian Express)

A sessions court has issued non-bailable warrants against seven
police officers for their role in the alleged fake encounter case of
Ramnarayan Gupta. They have been identified as police inspectors Dilip
Palande and Arvind Sarvankar, sub inspectors Anand Patande and Ganesh
Harpude and constables Prakash Kadam, Prakash Kokam and Sandip Sarkar.

"They
were part of the police team that gunned down Gupta," said special
public prosecutor R N Mishra. Senior police inspector Pradeep
Suryavanshi and encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma had been earlier
arrested in the case.

Following a petition filed by Gupta’s
brother Ramprasad Gupta, the Bombay High Court in August directed the
police to lodge an FIR on the "encounter" that took place in November
2006.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/641639/

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Sangh bosses in UP fixed stay of Ajmer blast
suspect who was on the run (Jul 10, 2010, Indian Express)

The CBI claims that Ashok Varshney and Ashok Beri, senior RSS
functionaries in Uttar Pradesh who were questioned in connection with
the blasts at Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif, have admitted that they
were in touch with one of the Ajmer blast accused, Devendra Gupta, while
he was on the run. A former head of the Lucknow city unit of the RSS,
Varshney now heads the Kanpur prant of the organisation. Beri was head
of the UP unit of the RSS until March and was then elevated to the
national executive of the RSS. Shiv Narayan Tripathi, prant pracharak of
Kashi, replaced him as UP chief of the organisation in May.

The
CBI, after obtaining custody of Gupta and Lokesh Sharma from an Ajmer
court for questioning in the Mecca Masjid case, had taken them to
Hyderabad on June 15. The RSS men, who had earlier been served notice to
get their statements recorded before the CBI, had gone to Hyderabad
with their lawyer and were questioned between June 21 and 25. Sources in
the RSS, however, maintained that Varshney was questioned in Gorakhpur
where he was attending an RSS officers training camp while Beri was
spoken to in Delhi. A CBI officer in Delhi said Varshney and Beri were
questioned in the presence of Gupta who was arrested by the Rajasthan
police in April this year.

Varshney, the officer said, admitted
that he arranged for Gupta’s stay in Kanpur during October and November
2009. Gupta told CBI that Beri organised accommodation for him in
Lucknow and Sitapur during the same period but Beri, the officer said,
denied this. Gupta left for Muzaffarpur in Bihar and attended a RSS
function there on December 25. Beri and Varshney were in touch with
Gupta during his stay in Bihar and Jharkhand too, the officer said. The
RSS men, the officer claimed, admitted they were aware that Gupta was a
suspect in the Ajmer blast case but both denied knowledge of any plot
leading to the blasts at Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif.

The CBI
questioned them about Ramchandra Kalsangra alias Ramji and Sandeep Dange
alias Parmanand, also wanted for the Ajmer and Malegaon blasts, but
Varshney and Beri said they did not know the two men. According to the
officer, the two RSS men were also asked about the August 25, 2008
explosion in Kanpur which killed two Bajrang Dal activists. Beri said he
did not know them but Varshney admitted having met one of them,
Bhupinder Singh, at Bajrang Dal gatherings, the officer said.

Rajiv
Mishra was the other man who died with Bhupinder Singh while they were
allegedly assembling a bomb in a flat owned by Mishra in the Kalyanpur
area of Kanpur. Forensic tests found remains of potassium chlorate and
arsenic sulphide at the spot. Some country-made grenades and timer
devices too were found in the room.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/644668/

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After Afzal taunt, Cong demands Gadkaris boycott
(Jul 10, 2010, Indian Express)

Reacting sharply over BJP President Nitin Gadkari’s controversial
speech, asking the Congress if Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru was
the party’s "son-in-law", the ruling party on Friday demanded his
"social and political boycott". Criticising the UPA government for the
delay in hanging Guru, Gadkari had said at a BJP rally in Dehradun on
Thursday night, "I want to ask the Congress leaders if Afzal Guru is
their son-in-law? Have you given your daughter to him? Why is he being
given special treatment?" His remarks drew strong condemnation from the
Congress. AICC spokesman Manish Tewari said that the BJP president had
"lost his mind" and needed "psychiatric" help. "The remark smacks of
obscenity, obnoxiousness and obtuseness. It is very obvious that the
esteemed president of the BJP has lost it completely. The BJP should
take pity on him and put him into a psychiatric facility. The man needs
serious help," said Tewari.

Addressing a press conference,
another Congress spokesman Shakeel Ahmed said, "Gadkari has used
condemnable and disgraceful language against the Congress. There should
be social and political boycott of those who use such petty language. If
something untoward happens, the Congress will not be responsible. We
want apology from the party which appoints such people its president."
When asked by reporters in Dehradun on Friday whether Gadkari would
apologise for his remarks, he said, "I have said nothing wrong. I stick
to my stand and so there is no need (to apologize)." Defending its
president, the BJP said it was "constructive criticism" and demanded an
apology from the Congress for using "uncivilised" language against its
leader.

"The remarks of Congress spokesperson (Manish Tewari)
against Nitin Gadkari are utterly uncivilised, utterly irresponsible and
lack political courtesy," BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad
said. "We want to know from the Congress president whether it is the
view and language of the party. We demand an apology from the Congress
for such remarks against leader of an opposition party," said Prasad.
Asked if Manish Tewari had also not crossed the line in his reaction
against Gadkari, Congress spokesman Shakeel Ahmed said that Tewari’s
words might have been different but they were also meant to condemn BJP
president’s "petty and disgraceful language".

It was not the
first time that Gadkari courted a controversy with his remarks. Two
months ago, he had said Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad "were roaring like lions but
later bowed like dogs to lick the feet of Sonia and the Congress". He
later apologised for his remarks. Today, the Samajwadi Party did not let
go the opportunity to attack Gadkari. Party spokesperson Mohan Singh
requested "the BJP and the RSS to ask Gadkari not to make such remarks".
The SP criticises "such a statement coming from the president of a
party which claims to be an alternative force" he added.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/644656/

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Ajmer blast case: Joint investigation on, says CBI
Director (Jul 10, 2010, New Kerala)

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Ashwani Kumar on
Saturday said the CBI and the State police forces are jointly
investigating the 2007 Ajmer bomb blast case. "As far as these cases are
concerned they are under investigation and we are doing a joint
investigation with Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Haryana and other police
forces," said Kumar when asked about the involvement of Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders Ashok Varshney and Ashok Beri in the
blast. "As soon as we make a breakthrough we’ll tell you. For the time
being I have no comments to make because the investigation is on," he
added.

Kumar further said that the media would be informed about
the court trials and the charges that will be made against the accused.
"I have already set five stages of investigations. We have registered a
complaint on the Ajmer Sharif blast. When we conduct searches or carry
out arrest we are duty-bound to share it with the courts and with you,"
said Kumar. "When we complete our investigations, we will share it with
you. When the matter goes to trial we’ll let you know what charges we
are going to agitate before the court," he added.

The RSS ‘dark
face’ has come to light as the CBI has reportedly claimed that two
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders allegedly shielded the 2007
Ajmer blasts accused. The two RSS functionaries from Uttar Pradesh-
Ashok Varshney and Ashok Berry – have reportedly confessed that they had
organised accused Devender Gupta’s stay in Lucknow and Sitapur. The CBI
would be submitting its findings before the court soon.

The
Rajasthan Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) had arrested Devendra Gupta of
Ajmer, Chandrashekhar Borad and Lokesh Sharma in connection with the
Ajmer dargah bomb blast case. The Rajasthan Anti Terrorist Squad
detained Lokesh Sharma on May 14, after arresting two others,
Chandrashekhar Borad and Devendra Gupta, on April 29 in connection with
the blast. A small bomb had exploded just after evening prayers on
October 11, 2007, at the famed Sufi shrine, resulting in the deaths of
three and injuries to 17 others.

http://www.newkerala.com/news/fullnews-144240.html

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Bhatkal added to Samads name by cops, says lawyer
(Jul 7, 2010, Times of India)

Mubin Solkar, defence lawyer of Abdul Samad Zarar, who was earlier
termed as a Pune German Bakery blast suspect, said Samad was innocent
and was never questioned in the blast case. Solkar said that Samad had
nothing to do with the Arms Act case in which he was arrested and
released on bail.

Samad was arrested from Bajpe airport in
Karnataka by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad on May 24 for
suspected involvement in Pune’s February 13 blast in which 17 people
were killed. However, he was booked in a nine-month-old Arms Act case.
Samad (23) appeared before the media for the first time since his arrest
on Tuesday. Clad in jeans and shirt, he was smiling during the press
briefing by his defence lawyer, Mubin Solkar. "Unfortunately an alias
has been added to his name, Bhatkal. His name is not Bhatkal nor does he
have that surname," said Solkar.

Contradicting Union home
ministry’s statement about Samad’s role in the Pune blast case, Solkar
said: "Samad was never arrested for the Pune blast. He was booked in the
arms seizure case. Samad does not have anything to do with the Arms Act
case too. We will explore all legal options about filing a discharge
application." The ATS had arrested Samad based on a CCTV footage where a
young man was shown coming to German Bakery with two bags and leaving
the Bakery with one bag only.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6136693.cms

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Secular Indias communal stain (Jul 10, 2010, Times
of India)

When the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) first came to power in
2004, within two years of the Gujarat riots, it was but natural for this
avowedly secular formation to promise a law to combat communal
violence. But despite introducing the Bill in 2005 and despite coming up
with a fresh draft this year, the UPA is nowhere near fulfilling its
promise. This, even after Sonia Gandhi’s reconstituted National Advisory
Council is seeking to evolve a consensus on the provisions of the
latest draft.

The sticking point is who should exercise the
contemplated powers in the course of communal violence: state, centre or
an autonomous body? While the now-lapsed 2005 Bill envisaged that the
state government would declare an area "communally disturbed", the
changed version entrusted that crucial power to the centre. The idea of
shifting real time decisionmaking power from states to the centre in the
event of communal violence has already been spurned by civil society.
And, given the threat it poses to the existing federal arrangement, the
centre’s evidently selfserving proposal is likely to meet with stiff
resistance from states as well.

The alternative suggested by
campaigners of the Bill is the creation of a national commission, which
will be empowered to notify the application of the communal violence law
if the state concerned fails to do so. It is proposed that the
commission be headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and include
official and non-official members from diverse fields. This proposal has
not found favour with the political class as it would amount to ceding a
vital aspect of governance. But, if the government were earnest about
breaking the deadlock, it would have to find a way of balancing security
exigencies with human rights considerations.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6150906.cms

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Should create consensus on reservation for
Muslims: PM (Jul 8, 2010, Rediff)

Stating that the United Progressive Alliance government was committed
to the welfare of minorities, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a
letter to Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind, said there was a need to create
"broad-based national consensus on the issue of reservations to the
Muslim community."

Responding to a memorandum submitted by Jamiat
Ulama-I-Hind, the Prime Minister in a letter to the organisation’s
national president Moulana Qari Mohammed Osman said the government is
committed to the welfare of the minorities in the country, according to a
release sent by Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind, Andhra Pradesh unit said.

There
was a need for broad-based national consensus to move forward on the
issue of reservations to the Muslim community, the prime minister said.
Highlighting the measures taken up for the welfare of the Muslim
community, Singh said the budget of the Ministry of Minority Affairs has
gone up from Rs 500 crore in 2007 to Rs 2600 in 2010-11.

He said
that every year more than 20 lakh students belonging to minority
communities were given scholarships to study in schools, colleges and
universities. The prime minister has said more than Rs 2000 crore has
been sanctioned for special development plans in over 80 minority
concentrated districts in the country, the release said.

http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/jul/08/need-to-create-consensus-on-reservation-for-muslims-says-pm.htm

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Maoists arms supply gang busted in Jamshedpur (Jul
7, 2010, Hindustan Times)

On the eve of the ‘Bharat Bandh’ called by the Maoists, the police on
Tuesday busted an arms supply racket with the arrest of nine persons
from in and around the Steel City here and seized a large cache of arms
and ammunition. Thirteen piece of 7.65 mm pistols, 13 magazines, a
revolver of six round, 443 assprted cartridges including 36 of AK-47 and
31 of Insas were seized from the arrested men, Senior Superintendent of
Police, Navin Kumar Singh said.

Three motorcycles, nine
cellphones and Rs 2.30 lakh in cash was also recovered from them, Singh
told a press conference in presence of Superintendent of Police (city)
Jatin Narwal. Singh said the police arrested three of them during a
transaction of the arms on a highway. The three – Pradip Kumar Pandey
and Rohit Karmakar of Dalbhumgarh in East Singhbhum, and Baidhnath Mardi
of West Midnapore district of West Bengal – were stated to be the main
link between the Maoists and armed suppliers. After interrogating them,
the police arrested others.

Gandhar Ojha and Lal Babu Singh, both
residents of Bhojpur district of Bihar, used to get arms from Munger and
other places and Premlal and Kunal used to procure cartridges. The
other persons arrested were Manik Chandra Besra and Sidhu Mahto,
residents of Kamalpur and MGM police station areas respectively, he
said. The SSP said the Maoists used to collect the arms on national
highways and used the motor cycles for carrying them. Singh said the
firearms were procured at Rs 10,000 each and sold at Rs 20,000 to 25,000
to the ultras.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/568578.aspx

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Opinions and Editorials

The Mirror Explodes – By Smruti Koppikar, Debarshi
Dasgupta, Snigdha Hasan (Jul 19, 2010, Outlook)

Unfinished stories, goes an old idiom in Ajmer, find their denouement
in Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s shrine. Perhaps, unfinished
investigations do too. Two-and-a-half years after low-intensity blasts
ripped apart the courtyard of the centuries-old shrine, the Rajasthan
police arrested three men – Devendra Gupta, Vishnu Prasad and
Chandrashekhar Patidar. Gupta, an RSS worker, was suspected to have
bought the mobile phone and SIM card that triggered off the October 2007
blast in which three were killed. Till their arrest on April 30 this
year, the story narrated by the investigators, lapped up by the
establishment and reiterated in large sections of the media was that the
Ajmer blast was the handiwork of jehadi terrorists. The one troubling
question – would jehadis target Muslim devout at a dargah? – can have
complicated answers, as the body count at Lahore’s Data Ganj Baksh would
testify. But in India, the question wasn’t even deemed worthy of being
asked as a reasonable line of inquiry. The needle of suspicion remained
firmly and automatically fixed on Islamic terrorists – young men from
the community were detained at various stages of the investigation and
interrogated at length – until the trail finally led to Gupta and
pointed to radical Hindu nationalist groups instead. Says Rajasthan
Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Kapil Garg: "We have arrested some people of
that religion (Hinduism) and we’re dead sure we’re on the right track."

In
Hyderabad too, the CBI team believes it is on the right track, finally,
in the Mecca Masjid bomb blasts case. Four men belonging to radical
Hindu groups were arrested this May for triggering a high-intensity bomb
that went off in the masjid complex in May 2007, killing 14 and
injuring some 50. At that time, the Hyderabad police had said it was
most likely the work of the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami (HuJI), backed by
local logistical support; some 26 Muslim men were picked up,
interrogated, forced to confess and detained for up to six months. The
story followed this script till the CBI found evidence to the contrary:
the SIM card-and-mobile phone-detonated explosives packed in metal tubes
were strikingly similar to the Ajmer blasts contraption. Tellingly,
both bombs are believed to have contained a deadly mix of RDX and TNT,
in proportions often used by the Indian army. CBI director Ashwani Kumar
told the media that an activist named Sunil Joshi "played a key role in
orchestrating the Ajmer blast… and a set of mobile SIM cards that had
been used in activation of the bomb-triggers in the Mecca Masjid blast
was used again in the Ajmer blast".

Around the same time,
officers of the National Investigating Agency (NIA) filed a chargesheet
in a Panjim court accusing 11 people, all Hindus and members of the
ultra-right-wing Sanathan Sanstha, of masterminding and executing the
October 2009 Margao blasts that killed the two people ferrying the
explosives to a local festival. Investigation in Pune’s German Bakery
blast this February has run aground after the initial suspicion,
detaining and interrogation of suspected Muslim men, some believed to be
members of "sleeper cells of jehadi groups" or the Indian Mujahideen
(IM). When Abdul Samad was arrested last month, the Maharashtra ATS
actively encouraged the understanding that he was the man caught on CCTV
cameras in the bakery that night. However, Samad was never charged with
the blast and subsequently let off in other cases too. Terror trails in
India dramatically changed with the Malegaon blasts investigation in
September-October 2008. Led by then Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant
Karkare, who was subsequently killed on the night of 26/11, the
investigation pointed to Abhinav Bharat (AB), an ultra-right-wing
Pune-based organisation established in 2005-06, and its members or
affiliates. What Karkare’s teams managed to uncover is part of recent
history and should have become the basis of examining and monitoring the
new phenomenon of Hindutva terror but didn’t.

The Hindutva links
to Mecca Masjid, Ajmer and other low-intensity blasts have been in the
public domain for close to two years; the signs were visible since
2002-03 when an ied found at the Bhopal railway station was traced back
to local Hindutva activists Ramnarayan Kalsangra and Sunil Joshi. They
were questioned, but no evidence was found. Yet, it prompted Congress
leader Digvijay Singh to declare a Bajrang Dal hand. Later in 2006,
there were explosions in the houses of Hindutva activists in Nanded and
Kanpur, where ieds were being prepared. Through that year, mosques in
several towns in Maharashtra – Purna, Parbhani, Jalna – were rocked by
low-intensity blasts; the Nanded one was meant for a mosque in
Aurangabad. Recovered with a map of Aurangabad were false beards and
Muslim male outfits. That should have been warning enough. However, till
May-June this year, the establishment did not either see these warning
signals or chose to ignore them-except for a brief two-month period in
2008 when Karkare led the Malegaon probe. Now, it may be difficult to
sustain the denial. "For the last 10 years, stories about Hindu
right-wing violence have been trickling out. Instead of a systematic
investigation, there has been an event-to-event investigation. The
larger story has remained underinvestigated and under-reported," says
Mumbai advocate and human rights campaigner Mihir Desai. The CBI is only
now seeking directions from the Union home ministry to see the Ajmer,
Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and other blasts in conjunction after there has
been no conclusive evidence of the involvement of Islamic groups.

Malegaon 2008 provided the much-needed aperture to review the role of
Hindutva groups. In September that year, eight people were killed and
many injured in a low-intensity blast. The ATS investigation led to
Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, whose motorcycle was used to explode the
bomb, and then to 13 others, including self-styled guru Dayanand Pandey
and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, the first-ever serving officer to be
charged. During interrogation, he had disclosed to ATS investigators
that he had provided the RDX in the Mecca Masjid blasts too but the ATS
was reportedly asked not to make it public as the Hyderabad police had
detained HuJI suspects. The similarity with the Ajmer Sharif blasts was
evident too. The 4,528-page chargesheet filed in the Malegaon case
offers insight into the grand design of the Abhinav Bharat and its
affiliates. Purohit, the Sadhvi and others had spoken to one another "to
avenge bomb attacks on Hindu shrines" and had engineered a series of
blasts with the larger ambition to establish a "separate Hindu rashtra".
Abhinav Bharat – whose original avatar was started by Veer Savarkar,
later disbanded, and restarted by Himani Savarkar – was set up to
achieve this ambition. "This organised crime syndicate," states the
chargesheet, "wanted to adopt a national flag, that is, a solo-themed
saffron flag with a golden border…with an ancient golden torch." … Yet,
the story has several loose ends, most critical among them being
fugitives Ramnarayan Kalsangra, Swami Aseemanand and others. Kalsangra,
investigators in Maharashtra and Rajasthan say, was introduced to
Devendra Gupta by the Sadhvi and is believed to be an expert at
assembling bombs. Finding Kalsangra is crucial since all accused in
custody have named him as "the man". Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon,
Samjhauta Express and several other blasts are clearly part of a larger
story. Only when the CBI puts all the pieces together will the entire
Hindutva terror picture emerge, if at all.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?266145

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So Why Are These Men In Jail? – By Pragya Tiwari
(Jul 17, 2010, Tehelka)

All of June 17, Anju had no idea where her husband was. She couldn’t
have imagined even in a nightmare that 41-year-old Abdul Shakeel Basha
had been picked up from near his house in RK Puram by the Special Cell
of Delhi Police as he was leaving for work. Later that evening they
brought him back to his house. The plainclothes policemen told her
nothing except that they were from the Special Cell, taking her to a
separate room for interrogation. After a thorough search, they
confiscated Basha’s passport, credit cards, laptop and some books. No
search or arrest warrant or seizure memo was produced, and despite
Anju’s pleas she was not told why her husband was being taken away
again. Through the night, Basha’s wife and friends including some
lawyers tried to ascertain whether he was detained by the Special Cell
and why. No information whatsoever was forthcoming. Next morning, they
woke up to media reports that a ‘wanted’ Maoist by the name of Shakeel
Pasha had been arrested in Delhi. Clearly, police sources were less
reticent in telling the media about Shakeel’s arrest than they were in
letting his family in on it. But there was more than one discrepancy in
their account. To begin with, his last name is Basha, not Pasha. He is
known to Delhi’s civil society as anything but a ‘Maoist’.

In the
preceding months, similar stories have played out in several homes in
Gujarat. Basha is 13th in a line of people arrested under FIR number
1-37/2010 Police station Kamrej, Surat range, dated 26th of February,
u/s 120(B), 121(A), 124(A), 153 A&B of the IPC, and Sec 38, 39 and
40 of the UAPA, 2004. The police claim all the detainees are involved in
a conspiracy to start a Maoist revolution in Gujarat and parts of north
Maharashtra. But there is little evidence to support this claim. On the
contrary, most of these people are widely known for their social
activism in one of two areas – tribal welfare or rights of industrial
workers. In December 1992, as Mumbai burnt, Abdul Shakeel Basha, the son
of an army man from a middle- class family, decided to take a break
from postgraduate studies and volunteer to help rehabilitate riot
victims. Soon he would travel to Gujarat and take up the cause of mill
workers, moving on to campaign for legal justice for victims of the 2002
Godhra riots as part of Nyayagraha, (a campaign by Aman Biradari, an
NGO started by writer and member of the National Advisory Council Harsh
Mander.) In 2004, he got married and moved to Delhi to set up home.
Hereon he worked extensively to alleviate the plight of the homeless -
first as part of Aman Biradari’s Dil Se campaign for street kids and
later as the architect of an independent programme called Haq for
homeless adults.

As he moved from one cause to another, he
strengthened the faith of colleagues. Nyayagraha in Gujarat is still
fighting 200-odd cases for the victims of state terror – a fact that
underpins the myriad ironies of Basha’s story, as his family and friends
struggle to garner legal and civil support to get him out of Surat
jail, where he is serving time with the other 12. Even before his first
hearing, it is apparent that getting out of jail would be a difficult
proposition. To call the accused, the reader announced: ‘Maowadi ko lao’
(Bring the Maoist), sealing the smear campaign that was all over the
national media even before a chargesheet had been filed. So far,
chargesheets have been filed in 11 out of the 13 cases. Shrinivas
Kurapati, 34, arrested from Ahmedabad, awaits his chargesheet along with
Basha. On May 30, he was picked up from near his in-laws’ house in
Gomtipur. End-June, the Gujarat police called his wife Hansa’s uncle
Ambubhai Waghela for questioning. Ambubhai, a widely known cultural
activist, has taken on the VHP and RSS head-on to counter their attempt
to polarise Dalits against Muslims in the ghettoes they cohabit. He
assured the police of Shrinivas’ innocence and offered to bring him to
the police station to clarify. The police refused this offer, choosing
instead to pick him up themselves, creating a spectacle for the local
media to broadcast. Hours after his arrest, Hansa’s entire family
including her little sisters and old aunt, were summoned to the police
station. While the others were allowed to leave late that night, Hansa
and Ambubhai were illegally detained for two nights and three days for
further questioning. Soon the local newspapers started carrying reports
saying Hansa was forced into marrying Shrinivas by ‘Maoists’ and that
she would possibly be the prime witness against him. Huddled with her
family in a tiny ground floor flat, Hansa tells a very different story.
"I married Shrinivas because I fell in love with him after we met at a
protest march. He spent all his time outside of work with me and our son
Viplav, cooking dinner and helping me with chores. When would he have
time to plan Naxal activities?"

Hiren Gandhi who runs Darshan, the
NGO where Shrinivas worked, remembers the man came to him in 2006
tormented by poverty and asked for any work at all. "There is no way he
was involved in Maoist activities during the time he worked with me. He
borrowed money from everywhere to buy a simple house. Would he be so
hard-pressed if he were with a movement?" he asks. But where answers do
not exist, they can be manufactured. Hansa says she was beaten up in
detention and made to sign statements she did not read: "In Ahmedabad
they hit me with a danda (baton) when I got confused answering a
question. In all they must have struck me about four times but I didn’t
cry," she says, leaving one speechless. The case of Avinash Kulkarni
(57) is even more baffling. For over 20 years, Kulkarni, an MPhil in
Political Science, currently writing his PhD thesis, has been working in
the Adivasi district of Dangs. There is hardly anyone in the academic
and civil circuits of Gujarat who will not vouch for him personally.
From 1998, the saffron brigade led by Swami Aseemanad (now wanted in the
Malegaon blasts case) unleashed its two-pronged communal agenda in
Dangs – superimposing Hindutva on tribal culture on one hand and
attempting to instigate tribals against other minorities on the other.
Kulkarni fervently opposed this agenda with his colleagues, succeeding
in checking divisions and riots in the areas he was active in. As part
of organisations like Adivasi Mahasabha and Dangi Mazdoor Union,
Kulkarni campaigned for the land rights of tribals. Instrumental in the
passage of the Forest Rights Act 2006, he later helped tribals file
claims to land. Raju Solanki, author of Blood Under Saffron, a book on
the communal agenda of the state, says about Kulkarni, "One day he told
me: ‘I hope the PWG don’t land up in these forests. What will become of
the villagers then?’ How can he be accused of being a Naxalite?"
Kulkarni is spoken of as pacific and upright to a fault. Which must be
right, for two months ago when some prisoners broke out of the barrack
Kulkarni was imprisoned in, he stayed back. It was once said of Binayak
Sen (the public health activist arrested in Chhattisgarh in 2007 on
charges of being a Maoist) that even if his supporters stormed the jail
to free him, he would stay back. If that hypothesis was testimony for
Sen’s character, this incident certainly establishes Kulkarni’s. …

Each
one of these people has worked for years in specific regions of Gujarat
to look for solutions to problems of the poor within the framework of
law. All of them were overground and known to Gujarati civil society and
the administration. Why then have they suddenly been branded enemies of
the state and put behind bars? This question should be answered when
the chargesheet, remand applications and FIR are read in conjunction.
Instead, it becomes more pronounced in the process. None of these people
have any previous criminal record nor have they been charged with any
specific instance of violence. No weapons have been recovered from any
of them. Kirit Panwala, defence counsel in 10 of the 13 cases, says,
"All major allegations are innocuous and attached to non-violent social
acts like association with certain organisations. 10 out of the 13 were
alleged members of the CPI (Janashakti) party, which the police claim is
a front for the banned People’s War Group." But Janashakti is an
overground party that contests elections. Panwala explains, "The case
under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act does not hold because the Act
clearly states that for an offence to be committed the organisation
should be banned under the schedule, which Janashakti is not. As for PWG
associations, they are all alleged before 2004 when the Act which
outlaws the PWG had not come into place." The most serious charge is
that a few of the detainees attended training camps for warfare.
However, the chargesheet does not give any details or evidence of this
activity. Other charges are pegged on alleged ‘secret’ meetings and
recovery of incriminating literature. The police claim that Shrinivas
and Basha helped draft a document that lays out a conspiracy to start a
Maoist revolution in Gujarat, called the Surat Perspective Plan. Panwala
points to lack of evidence yet again, "Under Section 120 (b) of the IPC
very little evidence is required to establish conspiracy. Kehar Singh
was executed in the Indira Gandhi assassination trial with meagre
evidence. But even in that case, there was an actual event to link the
evidence with. Given that nothing has been executed here, the charges of
conspiracy will be difficult to prove." …

http://tehelka.com/story_main46.asp?filename=Ne170710so_why_are_these_men.asp

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Kangaroo Court – Editorial (Jul 4, 2010, Nav Hind
Times)

Till a decade back "khap panchayats", the caste-based village
councils with their kangaroo courts, mainly functioning in Haryana were
unknown and "honour killings" were unheard of but now they have emerged
as a major threat to the body politick and law of land. If the reports
are to be relied on an average more than five hundred young people are
being killed every year owing to ‘honour killings’ linked to forced
marriages.

A paper presented at the International Child
Abduction, Relocation and Forced Marriages Conference organised by the
London Metropolitan University, the Chandigarh-based legal experts Anil
Malhotra and Ranjit Malhotra underlined: "Forced marriages and honour
killings are often intertwined. Marriage can be forced to save honour,
and women can be murdered for rejecting a forced marriage and marrying a
partner of their own choice who is not acceptable for the family of the
girl."

The "khap panchayats" are not legal entities like the
three-tier panchayat but the element of caste assertion has made them
acquire strength. They are an informal gathering of village elders of
Jat community. It is an irony that the compulsions of caste politics
have forced the political institution and the governments of Harayana,
Delhi and Uttar Pradesh to accord it social sanctity.

Their
turning a blind eye to the regressive diktats has in fact emboldened
these panchayats even to issue orders for killing the defiant couples
for saving the honour of the caste. A closer look at the development
would make it clear that this is an act of assertion of supremacy of the
caste identity. The Union government must act before it acquires a
major dimension and emerges as social menace. It should ask the state
governments to initiate stringent actions against the khap leaders and
introduce legislation to deal firmly with the heinous crime.

http://www.navhindtimes.in/opinion/kangaroo-court

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Barbaric act – Editorial (Jul 7, 2010, Deccan
Herald)

The brutal attack on a professor of a college in Kerala last Sunday
when he was returning from a church service was shocking in its intent
and barbarity. His right palm was chopped off by a gang that waylaid and
attacked him. He sustained other injuries too; his mother and sister
were also attacked. He had made a controversial reference to Prophet
Mohammed in an internal question paper prepared for students of the
college in March this year. The reference is considered to have been
derogatory.

All sections of society had condemned the professor’s
action which hurt religious sentiments. He was suspended by the college
management when the controversy broke out and was arrested. The matter
is before the court and if the charges are proved he stands to earn
punishment. There is still some confusion about at what stage the
offending words found their way into the question paper. Whether he was
solely responsible for the offence or not is yet to be decided. In any
case a public apology was made and it was made clear that there was no
intention to hurt the feelings of any community.

But the
punishment meted out to him by the gang of attackers was terrible and
deserves the strongest condemnation. It is difficult to imagine that
such cruelty and bestiality is resorted to a democratic society.
Physical punishment of the kind the professor was subjected to has
rarely been heard of in the country. It flouts the rule of law and all
norms of civilised conduct. Nobody should be allowed to take the law
into their hands and punish offenders for their crimes, however serious
the offences are. Such violence becomes all the more dangerous when
religious sentiments are involved. It can lead to communal discord and
go out of control.

Some of the attackers have been arrested and
the police are on the lookout for others. They reportedly belong to an
organisation called the Popular Front of India and had planned the
attack for over a month. A number of Muslim organisations have rightly
condemned their misdeed, asserting that it was most un-Islamic, and
demanded the strongest punishment for them. Members of the
Jamaat-e-Islami donated blood for the professor in hospital. The culture
of intolerance and violence that has been growing in the country has
created the environment for the dastardly act. Only very few subscribe
to that culture but they poison the society.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/79746/barbaric-act.html

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Poverty Of Politics – Editorial (Jul 6, 2010,
Times of India)

The nationwide shutdown forced by opposition parties to protest
rising prices may have achieved its aim. Most parts of the country,
especially states where the NDA or the Left parties run the government
or have substantial presence, saw limited economic activity on Monday.
The hartal had marginal impact in the national capital, but life in the
country’s economic capital was crippled. Air, rail and road travel were
affected in Mumbai. States like Kerala and West Bengal faced a total
shutdown. The economic cost of the hartal has yet to be calculated, but
is bound to be substantial. And, the aam aadmi will have to bear the
brunt of the economic loss.

Hartals have outlived their purpose
as expressions of protest. The public’s attitude towards bandhs and
hartals is a combination of resignation and cynicism. If people seem to
stay at home during a hartal it’s only because of the threat of physical
violence. There is deep cynicism among people when political parties
force a shutdown in the name of the aam aadmi. They have come to be seen
as token gestures to oppose the party in power rather than as radical
acts of protest or meaningful ways of facilitating corrective measures,
as political parties delude themselves into believing.

Monday’s
hartal was called by a broad spectrum of political parties to protest
high prices. The recent hike in petrol and diesel rates was the
immediate provocation. But the NDA, which today opposes fuel price
deregulation, was the first to propose it when it held office at the
Centre. Political parties as stakeholders in the parliamentary system
have the responsibility to explain their turnarounds or suggest
alternatives to what they are opposed to, if they don’t want to lose
credibility in the eyes of the public. The Left parties must explain
what steps they have taken to curtail food inflation in states where
they run the government.

Rising food prices as well as general
inflation are certainly a matter of concern for the public. Political
parties have not only the right, but the responsibility to take it up
with the government. But they must introspect if people have a positive
view of forcible disruption of economic activities. Hartal may have
become a powerful instrument of protest during the freedom struggle.
Today, however, our politicians are an integral part of the system. If
the system is faulty the responsibility to rectify it is theirs as well,
instead of playing a puerile game of passing the buck. It’s time our
politicians think imaginatively and find new ways to highlight public
causes.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6131634.cms

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A Metropolis Is Shamed – By Smruti Koppikar (Jul
12, 2010, Outlook)

Snaking between the godowns of Mumbai’s Reay Road area are bylanes in
which human dwelling competes with garbage mounds and slush. In this
unacknowledged part of the city, on Mira Dargah Street near Darukhana,
holed up in one of the several slum huts, lives an equally
unacknowledged 22-year-old woman. She has refused to step out in her
basti for more than a fortnight now; one or two policemen have kept
vigil over her and her mother. The woman, a Dalit, was verbally abused,
beaten with sticks, stripped of her clothes and dragged through the
basti to the taunts, jeers and catcalls of whoever gathered to watch.

"I
can’t go out there," sobs Reema (name changed). "I kept shouting ‘No’,
yet they kept beating me and ripping off my clothes and dragging me
around, shouting ‘neech jaat, neech jaat (low caste)’. They kept telling
one another to take turns at abusing, beating and insulting her. Some
men even took photos on their mobiles, laughing all the time. I wanted
to die." She has been weeping and angry by turns since that fateful
Thursday, June 17. Her ordeal of about half an hour ended when her
neighbour, Saeeda Qazi, mustered courage to cover her up with a dupatta
just as a police team arrived. Her mother, who was also beaten as she
tried to protect her daughter, had gone to the nearest police station
for help. "We didn’t cook or eat for days," says the mother. "They did
this because we are the only Dalit Marathi family here. They don’t want
us around. Also, my son and I have fought many times, refusing to pay
for the community water tap. So, when he wasn’t around, they took
revenge."

The accused: 17 upper-caste women, seven of whom are
absconding. One obtained bail almost immediately in what is actually a
non-bailable offence while the others say they are confident of getting
bail this week. For the record, offences were registered under several
ipc sections – for unlawful assembly, rioting, outraging the modesty of a
woman. Offences were also registered under Sections 3 (1), 3(10) and 3
(11) of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act. "It’s a clear case of atrocity. The family has been
provided security since then," says ACP Dilip Waghmare, of the Wadala
division. The police say a group of about 30 women and a few men led by
one Sharada Yadav had planned the stripping and parading after the
victim’s brother, a security guard, was arrested in a rape case.

"Whether
he is a rapist or not will be decided by law," says Shakil Ahmed of
Nirbhay Bano Andolan, a voluntary group that is supporting the family
with legal and other assistance. "What they did to the sister is
unacceptable and unpardonable by any standards." Ahmed is pained by the
relative indifference of Mumbai civil society and activists to this
particular case.

Maharashtra’s record of atrocities on people from
the scheduled castes shows a nearly 100 per cent increase from 2004 to
2008, the number of registered cases having risen over the period from
689 to 1,173. Data tracked by the state government shows an average of
about 1,000 crimes each year for the last six years against the
scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The conviction rate was an
abysmal three per cent. "Forget the government," says the bitter mother,
"even the so-called Dalit netas have not come to share our grief.
Someday the policemen will stop coming here, and then what happens to
us?" The answers are not easy.

http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?266070

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Related posts:

  1. IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – April 12th, 2010
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  3. IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – July 19th, 2010
  4. IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – July 26th, 2010
  5. IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – January 12th, 2009

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