IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – July 5th, 2010

by Publisher on July 5, 2010

In this issue

News Headlines

Opinions & Editorials

News Headlines

Kandhamal riots: BJP MLA sentenced to 7 years in

jail (Jun 29, 2010, Times of India)

A sitting BJP MLA Manoj Pradhan was on Tuesday sentenced to seven

years in jail by a fast track court in a case of murder during the 2008

communal riots in Kandhamal in Orissa. Fast track court-I judge S K Das

awarded the seven year rigorous imprisonment to Pradhan after convicting

him for his role in the murder of Parikhita Digal, a Christian from

Budedi village under Raikia police station limit on August 27, 2008.

Pradhan,

who represents the communally sensitive G Udayagiri assembly

constituency in Kandhamal, was also accused of setting on fire houses of

people belonging to the minority community and inciting communal

violence. Pradhan, currently on bail, said he will appeal against the

verdict which is likely to come as an embarrassment to the BJP.

A

case was registered against Pradhan under sections 147 (rioting), 148

(rioting with deadly weapon), 149 (unlawful assembly), 201 (causing

disappearance of evidence of offence), 302 (murder), 341 (wrongfully

restraining someone), 342 (wrongful confinement) and 436 (mischief by

fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy houses etc) of IPC.

“I have the highest regard for the judiciary. We will appeal against the

verdict in the higher court,” Pradhan said.

The court convicted

another person Prafulla Mallick in the murder case and also sentenced

him to seven-year rigorous imprisonment. Both Pradhan and Mallick were

also ordered to pay a fine of Rs 6,000 each. Pradhan, earlier acquitted

in seven cases relating to the Kandhamal riots, is still being tried in

seven other cases including three relating to murder. He was the lone

BJP candidate to make it in the 2009 assembly polls from Kandhamal

district. He contested from inside the jail, where he was lodged after

being arrested from Berhampur in December 2008. He was granted bail in

December 2009 and has since been attending assembly proceedings.

Pradhan

was one of the close disciples of VHP leader Swami Laxamananda

Saraswati, whose killing on August 23, 2008, had sparked off large scale

violence in Kandhamal and other parts of Orissa. About 38 people were

killed and hundreds of houses burnt down in the violence that raged for

about two months.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6106173.cms

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Court orders relief for Gujarat riot victims (Jun

30, 2010, Thaindian.com)

The Gujarat High Court Wednesday directed the central and the state

governments to take a decision to release compensation for a group of

2002 riot victims which has not received any relief yet. The court also

directed the state government to sympathetically consider pleas for jobs

made by the next of kin of government employees killed in the riots.

The court was acting on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by

activist Gagan Sethi, seeking compensation for the 2002 riot victims.

The

petitioner’s advocate, Amit Panchal, said that 752 riot victims, who

were identified after the central government released the money for

compensation, have not been paid anything. The petition said that the

government did not pay any compensation to owners of industrial and

commercial property damaged in the riots. The high court came down

heavily on the central government’s advocate when he could not answer to

a court’s query on payment of compensation to victims.

The

central government under its compensation scheme released the money to

the state and directed the state to pay 10 times more than the

state-declared ex-gratia payment. It also told the state government to

deduct from the central package, the relief already paid by it. The

central government claimed that it initially had released Rs.50 crore

and later it released Rs.212.44 crore for ex-gratia payment to the riot

victim.

After this, the state government identified 752 fresh

cases of victims who had not received any compensation. The state

government said that it could not disburse money to the 752 victims as

the central government had not released the money for disbursement. A

division bench of Chief Justice S.J. Mukhopadhaya and Justice K.M.

Thaker said that the central government and the state government seem to

have kept the court in the dark. “Please don’t keep the court in the

dark. You and the state, both seem to keep the court in the dark,” the

chief justice said.

The court asked the central government to

prove whether it actually released the money to the state. “The state

claims that they’ve not received the money. They don’t have to prove

that they’ve not received the money. Now you need to prove it that

you’ve paid,” the chief justice said. The case has been posted for

further hearing on Sep 27.

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/court-orders-relief-for-gujarat-riot-victims_100388628.html

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Sohrab encounter haunts Amit Shah (Jun 30, 2010,

Hindustan Times)

Gujarat’s Minister of State for Home and Law and Chief Minister

Narendra Modi’s trusted lieutenant Amit Shah might soon be arrested by

the CBI in connection with the November 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake

encounter case, a senior official said here on condition of anonymity on

Tuesday. Possibly fearing arrest, Shah has been incommunicado for the

past two months.

Shah’s disappearance coincided with the arrest

of senior police officer Abhay Chudasama by the CBI on April 28 for his

involvement in Sohrabuddin’s killing. The official pointed out that a

Delhi-based weekly had recently published details of Shah’s calls to

four police officers during the December 2006 killing of Prajapati

Tulsi, the sole witness to the alleged murder of Sohrabuddin and his

wife Kauserbi by Gujarat Police officers.

Shah hasn’t been seen in

his office for the past two months, has stopped using his official

mobile phone and has even quit traveling in his official car. Shah

attends the weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesdays but hardly goes to his

office, sources in the state secretariat said. “He calls police

officials and others to his residence for meetings,” a home department

official said. Even the state government spokesperson and Health

Minister Jaynarayan Vyas refused to comment on the matter.

When

Hindustan Times called at Shah’s office, officials said they didn’t know

when the minister comes and goes. At his residence, the telephone

operator said the minister was not at home. When his personal mobile

number was sought from his office and residence, the response was, “We

don’t have his mobile number”. Official sources said the minister has

been under tremendous stress since the Supreme Court handed over the

Sohrabuddin case to the CBI, and more particularly after the arrest of

Chudasama, who was Shah’s key confidant. Sources said the minister has

lost more than 10 kg due to stress after the CBI began its investigation

into the sensational Sohrabuddin case.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/565093.aspx

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15 policemen booked for faked encounter (Ju 1,

2010, Times of India)

Fifteen policemen, including the then station officer of Gomtinagar

police station, a sub-inspector and 13 constables, have been booked in a

fake encounter case on charges of murder, tampering of evidence and

Arms Act. The case was lodged by the CB-CID at Gomtinagar police station

after the investigation into the alleged encounter, which took place on

June 8, 2006 in front of house number 5/929, Vishal Khand, committed by

them was found fake. The police at that time had claimed to have killed

a ‘notorious criminal’ wanted in several cases of ‘heinous crime’.

The

cops who have been booked are Ramanand Yadav, the then station officer

of Gomtinagar police station, sub-inspector Anjani Rai and constables

Banshidhar, Maanvendra, Vinod Shukla, Ranveer Singh, Vijay Pal,

Shailendra Singh, Sushil Pachauri, Shiv Sagar Tiwari, Shivakant Pandey,

Sudhir Singh, Ramzaan Ali, Alok Singh and Veerendra.

The criminal

they ‘encountered’ was identified as Suresh Gangapari, a native of

Unnao and a resident of Kanpur. It was after this encounter that

sub-inspector Anjani Rai got out-of-turn promotion and is currently

posted as inspector at Haidergarh police station in Barabanki, while

Ramanand Yadav is posted as inspector, finger printing department of the

UP police.

The case against the cops was lodged by Dinesh Kumar

Singh of the CB-CID. The CB-CID in its investigation has found the

encounter was fake and also detected fraud in the shells and cartridges

shown to have been used in the encounter. The probe agency has found

that the bullet shell shown to have been used by the criminal had

actually been shot from the weapons used by the cops. Similarly, the

CB-CID has found many other anomalies in the sequence of events.

The

CB-CID team, according to sources, had come to Gomtinagar police

station about a week ago to lodge the FIR against 15 cops, however, they

were directed to come through a proper channel. It was on Wednesday

that the Gomtinagar police station received the orders from DIG Rajeev

Krishna for lodging an FIR on the complaint of the CB-CID.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6112367.cms

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Custodial death: SO suspended, murder case lodged

against him (Jun 30, 2010, Indian Express)

The station officer (SO) of Sonwa police station in Shravasti

district was suspended and a case of murder registered against him

following the death of an accused in custody on Tuesday. In the FIR, the

SO has been accused of assaulting Pheru Lal (55) of Morania village in

police custody that later led to his death.

Shravasti SP Vir

Bahadur Singh said Lal was arrested along with five others on Monday

night following a clash between two groups in the area. Three persons

were arrested from each group under Section 151 (breach of peace) of the

CrPC. On Tuesday morning, Lal died on way to court. He was accompanied

by two constables.

As news spread, locals gathered at the spot

and blocked the Shravasti-Bahraich Road, demanding action against the SO

and the constables. The blockade was removed after the SO was suspended

and senior officers assured the locals that a case of murder would be

lodged. ASP Mahatma Prasad said Lal had probably sustained injuries in

his abdomen in the group clash, but did not complain of any pain when he

was brought to the police station. There were no visible injury marks

on his body, he added.

“The doctors who attended to Lal said that

severe injuries in the vital organs led to his death. But only the

postmortem report will tell us the exact reason behind the death,” said

Prasad. Ashok from Lal’s group and Arun Kumar from the rival group, who

had sustained injuries in the clash, have been admitted to hospital.

http://www.expressindia.com/story_print.php?storyId=640284

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Witnesses identify accused in Mecca Masjid blast

case (Jun 27, 2010, Times of India)

Two of the witnesses brought from two different states to the city on

Saturday reportedly identified Lokesh Sharma, an accused in the Mecca

Masjid blast case, as the person who bought a bunch of SIM cards from a

shop in Jharkhand. According to CBI sources, two of these SIM cards were

later used in the two bombs that were planted at Mecca Masjid on May

18, 2007.

One of the bombs exploded in which and killed nine

persons while the other bomb did not go off due to some snag. A petition

filed by the CBI before a local court for identification parade of one

of the two accused in its custody said that cross-checking had to be

done by the witnesses for some material Sharma had bought. The other

accused in CBI custody is Devender Gupta.

Now, the CBI is on the

lookout for two other accused Ramchandra Kalsangra alias Ramji and

Sandeep Dange. The bombs were reportedly assembled at the residence of

Kalsangra in Indore and brought to city. Sources said the CBI was trying

to find out the source of the material used in the bombs. With Sharma’s

identification as the SIM card buyer in a fictitious name in the

presence of a magistrate at Chanchalguda prison, the CBI has covered one

more step in its probe.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6096823.cms

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Hindu extremists behind Samjhauta express blast?

(Jun 27, 2010, Express Buzz)

Security agencies probing the Samjhauta Express blast case of 2007

have gathered evidence that points a strong finger of suspicion at

Abhinav Bharat, a Hindu right wing extremist organisation said to be

having strong connections with the RSS.

Sixty-eight passengers,

mostly Pakistani citizens on their way back home, were killed in the

Samjhauta Express blasts around midnight on February 18, 2007, near

Panipat in Haryana.

“The modus operandi and the nature of the

explosive used in Samjhauta Express blast have striking similarity with

the Mecca Masjid blasts, of 2007 in Hyderabad and Malegaon blasts, which

are also suspected t be orchestrated by Abhinav Bharat Sansthan,” top

home ministry sources said. Though investigations into the Samjhauta

blasts had run into a blind alley after the agencies traced the cover of

the suitcase (used to carry out the blasts), to Indore, the

investigators later found that the circuit, explosives, detonation

device and battery make used in the three different blasts had uncanny

similarities.

Moreover, with CBI making quick progress in the

Mecca Masjid blast case (the agency announced cash reward of Rs. 10 lakh

for providing information on Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra),

the home ministry has become hopeful of solving the Samjhauta case.

Sources also indicated that with a common string of Hindu extremist

organisations running across various terror blasts – Malegaon, Mecca

Masjid, Goa, Modasa and Dargah Ajmer Sharif – the home ministry is

planning to hand over all the cases to a single agency. “The Goa and

Modasa blast cases are being investigated by the NIA and Mecca Masjid by

the CBI,” sources said.

http://expressbuzz.com/edition/print.aspx?artid=184840

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ABVP members manhandle Gujarat University vice

chancellor in his own home (Jul 1, 2010, DNA India)

In yet another incident of unruly student behaviour, leaders of the

Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) assaulted the vice chancellor

of the Gujarat University (GU), Parimal Trivedi, late on Wednesday

evening. The assault, according to the ABVP members, was in retaliation

to the GU’s decision to hike fees of self-financed seats in the

university’s post graduate (PG) courses. They said that no reason had

been given for this hike, and the V-C was not agreeing to meet them on

the issue, despite repeated attempts.

According to eye-witnesses,

the ABVP members gatecrashed into the vice chancellor’s residence and

clung to his feet. They are reported to have said that until a solution

is arrived at on the issue of the fee hike, they will not budge. Some

student members are also alleged to have sat down on heaps of files and

other material lying in the room, in a show of inappropriate behaviour.

Even as the arguments between the V-C and the student leaders heated up,

the security present at the V-C’s bungalow called for the police. The

police intervention worsened the situation, and the livid students hit

the V-C a couple of times in the abdomen, before being dragged away by

the police. In the ensuing scuffle, the shirt of the V-C tore off.

The

vice chancellor is learned to have filed a police complaint later on,

and the students involved were arrested for the act. This has probably

been the first time in the history of the Gujarat University, that an

official of the stature of a vice chancellor has been physically

manhandled. Condemning the incident, former deputy CM and member of the

university’s executive council, Narhari Amin, said that such behaviour

was uncalled for. “This is an insult for a person of his rank. Whatever

be the political affiliation, the dignity of the chair has to be

respected,” said Amin. In a somewhat similar incident earlier, Prof KS

Shastri’s face was blackened by ABVP students, when he refused to meet

their demands.

http://www.dnaindia.com/dnaprint910.php?newsid=1403735

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Muslims targeted using terror as excuse (Jul 2,

2010, Times of India)

The Indian government is using counter-terrorism measures to

arbitrarily detain large numbers of Muslims, says a new report slamming

India’s record of protecting minority rights. No action is being taken

against officials who sanction such detentions, even when they are

proved illegal, say the authors of the report. The South Asia chapter of

the 2010 State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous People, brought

out by the London-based Minority Rights Group (MRG) International, was

released in the capital on Thursday.

Farah Mihlar, author of the

South Asia chapter, said that the perpetrators of acts of violence

against religious minorities in India are allowed to act with impunity

and noted the poor rate of arrest and conviction, especially of

political leaders orchestrating violence. Minorities across the world,

who were earlier targeted for racial discrimination, are now being

targeted for their religious beliefs, the report says. Ultra right-wing

parties, aiming to establish themselves in mainstream political arenas

in Europe, justify their anti-immigration, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic

rhetoric by stoking fears that religious minorities and immigrants are a

threat to modern societies, the report adds.

In South Asia,

militant and extremist groups from the Taliban in Pakistan and the

Vishva Hindu Parishad in India, to less known fringe groups such as

Nepal’s National Defence Army have been accused of a series of

religiously motivated killings and attacks through 2009, the report

says. In some South Asian states, national or regional governments are

actively supporting extremist groups, while in other cases states are

turning a blind eye to their increasing influence, said Shobha Das, MRGs

head of programmes.

The report criticizes the Indian

government’s continued opposition to the recognition of caste-based

discrimination as a human rights violation. Tribal communities remain

India’s most marginalized and are now at the centre of land disputes and

armed struggle, the report notes, citing the examples of tribal

opposition to the Vedanta bauxite mining project in Orissa. The report

also criticizes the Indian army for committing human rights violations

against civilians, including extra-judicial killings, abductions,

arbitrary arrests and detentions in the guise of counter-terrorism.

Irfan

Engineer, director of the Mumbai-based Centre for the Study of Society

and Secularism, noted the rise in racial profiling of Muslims in India,

citing the recent de-planing and detention of a Muslim man based on a

co-passengers imagined fears. The proposed Communal Violence Bill only

strengthens the hands of the police, who have been proved to be biased

against minorities times and again, rather than making them more

accountable, Engineer said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6117335.cms

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Bhopal: Hindus piled on pyres, Muslims in

three-tier graves (Jun 28, 2010, Rediff)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, in the case of Bhopal,

pictures are, perhaps, the only way to tell the entire story. Many

photographers descended on Bhopal after December 3, 1984, but the work

of Raghu Rai and Pablo Bartholomew define, for most people in India and

the world, the unspeakable horrors of the ‘worst industrial disaster

ever’. Their photograph of a lifeless infant, nothing but his face

visible against the backdrop of a mass grave, has become the definitive

image of Bhopal, used on posters and protest banners even today.

Interestingly, both Rai and Bartholomew shot similar images, but it was

the latter’s, in colour, that won the World Press Photo Award in 1984.

Rai’s photographs of the time and later, showing the effects of the gas

on those who lived, were compiled into a book, Exposure: Portrait of a

Corporate Crime. An exhibition of these marked the 20th anniversary of

the tragedy in 2004, and travelled over India, the US and Europe.

In

1984, Rai, then 42, was already well-known – he’d been awarded the

Padmashree for his Bangladesh photos in 1971 and in 1977 Henri

Cartier-Bresson had nominated him to Magnum Photos, the premier photo

agency. As the star photographer of news magazine India Today, Rai got

the news within hours. “It was a strange night. We couldn’t sleep with

the incessant phone calls and coordinating to catch the morning flight.”

Bartholomew, then 29, was working as a freelancer and in Sultanpur, on

his way to Amethi to cover the election campaign, when he saw TV

footage of bodies in handcarts. Both were on the same early morning

Delhi-Bhopal flight that was ferrying several journalists to the

disaster city. Battle-hardened as they were – Rai had covered cyclones

besides the war and Bartholomew had a particularly eventful 1983-84

photographing the Nellie Massacre, the Khalsa movement in Punjab and the

anti-Sikh riots in Delhi – Bhopal was akin to an assault. What struck

Rai was “the silence of death everywhere”, while for Bartholomew the

abiding memory is of the “smell of death”, the acrid odour of hair

burning.

The Hamidia hospital was their first port of call.

There were dead bodies everywhere, and Rai recalls “we were going mad

photographing… I felt very bad, we were like vultures looking for dead

bodies”. Rai decided to visit the children’s ward. “[I thought] the

condition of children would be more photogenic, more touching… When you

have so much in front of you, any sensitive person will try to decide

what is most important. Especially as a photographer and a journalist

you choose.” For Bartholomew , sentiment or aesthetics didn’t come in -

“you have to keep some distance, like a surgeon doing a heart

operation”.

The mass cremations and burials yielded many powerful

images. The Hindus piled on large pyres,” recalls Rai, “several bodies

on one ” and Muslims in “three-tier graves – a body, then some mud,

another body, more mud and then another body – there was no time”. Rai

stayed three days that first time, and Bartholomew a fortnight,

photographing the scale of the devastation – the dead animals bloated on

the roadside, the man carrying his dead wife, the lawyers talking to

victims…They went back again, every year for a while, Bartholomew unable

to attend his brother’s wedding because it coincided with the first

anniversary of Bhopal. “It’s as if,” he says, “I was locked into the

situation.”

Both tried to find the identity of the dead child in

the image, visiting the mass grave where they’d photographed him. They

didn’t succeed, but Rai came back with another searing image, of a man

pointing to a shallow grave, where the mud had eroded, exposing a few

bones – the remains of his child. Given their long and intense

association with Bhopal, both are bitter not just about the recent

judgement, but far more at the government’s neglect of the victims.

“They were treated badly in government hospitals… private doctors would

exploit them, drugging them with all sorts of crap. Given the sordid

situation, you question the country and what it stands for,” says

Bartholomew. “We are a nation of dead, dying, fatigued minds,” concludes

Rai.

http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/jun/28/hindus-piled-on-pyres-muslims-in-three-tier-graves.htm

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Opinions and Editorials

Jail for BJP MLA: Rioting should invite more severe

punishment – Editorial (Jul 1, 2010, The Tribune)

The award of seven years’ rigorous imprisonment to Orissa’s BJP MLA

Manoj Pradhan by a fast track court for his role in the 2008 Kandhamal

communal riots is timely, though opinions may differ on the quantum of

punishment for the kind of crime he had committed. He, perhaps, deserved

exemplary punishment like life imprisonment. The communal riots had

broken out following the murder of Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Swami

Laxmananda Saraswati and four of his associates on August 23, 2008 in

Kandhamal.

Pradhan, who got elected from jail where he was an

undertrial, was Saraswati’s disciple. The Kandhamal district had

witnessed unprecedented violence that left many people (mostly

Christians) dead, while houses and places of worship were damaged in the

carnage. Over 25,000 riot victims had fled from their homes out of fear

and stayed in relief camps. The violence had caused international

concern. Mr Naveen Patnaik’s BJD-led government came under attack from

many sections for its poor handling of the violence because of its

alliance with the BJP.

Tuesday’s verdict notwithstanding, the last

word is yet to be said on Pradhan. He has already said that he will

challenge his conviction in the Orissa High Court. Of the 14 cases filed

against him, he has been acquitted in seven. Of the remaining, three

relate to murder and four to torching of churches and houses. His

conviction for seven years’ imprisonment can lead to his

disqualification from the State Assembly, but not before the three-month

period of appeal. Of course, politicians contend that disqualification

should not apply till all legal options, including an appeal before the

Supreme Court, are exhausted.

Pradhan’s conviction once again

brings to the fore the increasing menace of criminalisation of politics

and its consequent threat to the democratic institutions and the quality

of governance. The BJP, which claims to be a “party with a difference”,

should not have given ticket to him in the last Assembly elections.

Playing on the people’s emotions and the communal lines clearly drawn at

the hustings, the BJP may have succeeded in getting Pradhan elected to

the legislature, but it inflicted incalculable damage on the system.

Subsequently, it lost power in the state after the Biju Janata Dal

dumped it and went alone in the elections. This menace can be checked

only if political parties deny tickets to criminals like Pradhan.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100701/edit.htm#1

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Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah called cops

arrested for killing Tulsi Prajapati – By Rana Ayyub (Jul 3, 2010,

Tehelka)

Tehelka now has the most damning piece of evidence against the man at

the centre of all the controversy in Gujarat: Minister of State (MoS)

for Home Amit Shah. The evidence implicates him and police officers who

worked at his behest to cover up the fake encounter that killed Tulsiram

Prajapati on December 28, 2006. The latter was the solve surviving

witness to the December 2005 police encounter that killed Sohrabuddin

Sheikh and his wife Kauserbi. The call records for the week in which the

planning and execution of the Prajapati encounter took place are in

TEHELKA’S possession. Calls exchanged by Shah, DIG DG Vanzara,

Superintendent of Police (SP) Vipul Kumar, IPS officer Dinesh MN of

Rajasthan Police and SP Rajkumar Pandyan of the Gujarat Police suggest a

sinister plan to eliminate the sole witness in the state-executed

Sohrabuddin encounter.

While the revelation that the officers

constantly talked with each other the night of the encounter comes as a

big shock, what is even more damning is the fact that they were talking

to the MoS. As per protocol, an MoS normally talks to the Home Secretary

and the Chief Secretary. If he needs to be briefed, he talk to the

chief of the Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) or the crime branch. He would not

normally talk to SP-level officers. Tulsiram Prajapati and Sohrabuddin

Sheikh, it has been established, were extortionists working at the

behest of elements in the Gujarat and Rajasthan police, as proved by the

arrest of high profile officers like Abhay Chudasama in May this year.

TEHELKA in its revealing report on the findings of the CBI inquiry (Not

All’s Well with Your Home, Minister, June 5, 2010) had exposed the role

of these officers in the Sohrabuddin as well as the Prajapati case. It

had also first reported the evidence against Shah and his involvement in

the state-led encounters.

Following on that, it now presents

evidence that vindicates its stand that the minister was indeed party to

the Tulsi Prajapati encounter, a case which is still with the CID

(Crime) of the state. This department, which had slept over the files

for the past four years, suddenly sprang into action after the case was

handed over to the CBI by the Supreme Court. What is equally shocking is

that this evidence was with the state CID for the past four years.

Officers like Vanzara, Dinesh MN and Rajkumar Pandyan – who are now

proved to have been a part of the Prajapati encounter – were already in

its custody in the Sohrabuddin case. It also needs to be noted that the

man who first arrested the three officers was later summarily

transferred and the case was handed to IGP Geeta Johri, who was later

pulled up by the Supreme Court for not making headway in the two

encounter cases. The apex court, while transferring the case to the CBI

in response to a petition filed by Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabuddin,

observed, “Geeta Johri was not conducting the investigation in a fair

manner.”

What also went against Johri were attempts by the CID not

to take into consideration the call records that were in her

possession, going by the claims of advocates representing the case for

Prajapati’s family. Advocate Mukul Sinha, whose organisation Jan

Sangharsh Manch has been fighting to expose the various encounters and

is also representing the case filed by Prajapati’s mother Narmada, sent

in a notice to CID to stop investigating the case on her behalf as he

felt that the CID’s sudden interest in the case was suspicious. But what

is the real story of Tulsi Prajapati? It is important to know the chain

of events that preceded the encounter to establish the connivance of

the state and the police officers in the conspiracy.… However, the

statements of the officers and the forensic reports contradict this. FSL

reports say there was a possibility that the injury inflicted upon

Ashish Pandya, the senior Inspector who shot at Pandya, could have been

self-inflicted. There was no trace of chilli powder in the compartment

and one of the bullets, which was fired at the police officer, was from a

0.38 bore revolver, used by the police force.

Moreover, the chain

of events that night also laid bare the contradictions that the

officers gave in their statement. According to an ex-investigating

official in the case, the decision to kill Prajapati was taken on

December 25 itself between DIG Vanzara, highranking officials and the

Home Minister. Vanzara asked Vipul Agarwal to get his trusted officer

Ashish Pandya who was posted with the Banaskantha unit to cut short his

leave and report to work. Vipul Agarwal takes a night shift on December

27, is in constant touch with Vanzara and Pandyan. On December 28 at

4.30 am, the officials proceed from Ambaji with three counterparts from

the Rajasthan Police and the fatal encounter takes place at 5 am. Shah

makes the last call on December 27 to Rajkumar Pandyan, who is planning

the entire controversy. Vipul, Rajkumar and Vanzara are in touch with

each other through thatnight and early the next morning till the

encounter takes place. Even if one were to go by protocol in this case,

what also goes against Dinesh MN, the Rajasthan cop, is that he had been

in touch with Vanzara and Pandyan from as early as December 20, 2006.

This, when there was no news that Prajapati would be even brought in by

Rajasthan Police to Ahmedabad. It is on the basis of these call records

that a former CID officer was later shunted out as he was on the verge

of questioning Shah in 2007 itself. … No action was taken against Shah

on the report filed by the CID asking CM Narendra Modi to conduct an

inquiry in this case. The officer involved in preparing the report was

later chargesheeted and now languishes in an inconsequential posting.

The bigger question now is: in the face of all this evidence, will the

BJP still be able to shield Narendra Modi?

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main45.asp?filename=Ne030710gujrat.asp

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RSS Stance Against The Floodgate Of Startling

Revelations: Prevarication – By Mustafa Khan (Jun 27, 2010,

Countercurrents)

Prevarication is dodging facing the truth. Prevaricating in matters

of national interest where the unity and integrity of the country is

involved is even worse treachery. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has

hallmark of this prevarication. The RSS has spawned numerous

organizations as a tactic in their strategy to have India as a Hindu

Rashtra with minorities existing, if at all, at their sufferance. This

latter fact is the governing thought of the pre-partition ethos of the

communal politics vis-a-vis Muslim League’s determination to have a

separate country, Pakistan. Muslims raping Hindu women and girls or

parading them naked in Lahore was as much terror as Hindus and Sikhs

raping or parading of Muslim women and girls naked in Amritsar.

Terrorism was not born on 9/11 2001. History is replete with uncountable

such events showing how men have behaved with fellow human beings. But

politics of terrorism-the co called ‘war on terrorism’ and its hideous

adjunct that ‘either you are with us or against us’-was born at the

onset of 21st century in the US and India. This is true, though not all

the people of India know it or support it.

K K Mysorewala was in

charge of Naroda Patiya 2002 where horrendous murder, rape and burning

human beings alive took place. When Muslim women pleaded with him to

shelter them from the rampaging mob he had famously said that he had

orders from above that that day they had to let the Hindu mobs wreak

havoc on the Muslims. Come September 29, 2008 a bomb exploded near a

mosque in Modasa killing a fifteen year old and injuring many others in

the Ramadan crowd of Muslims, just like what happened exactly at the

same time in Malegaon. Now that National Investigation Agency is taking

over the investigation there is need for a more comprehensive inquiry

into the kind of prevarication that Mysorewala was engaged in at both

the occasions as both are instances of terror. As RSS keeps no record of

its members and the central government has no appetite to ban any Hindu

organizations there is no need to find out whether the duo, Mysorewala

and Narendra Modi, belong to the same organization. Modi had blessed the

chhara community women for having given birth to men who had performed

the pogroms. Why should he or anyone prevaricate on the conduct of a

pogrom? Transparency is the best way to assure justice and, what is

more: guarantee that this nation survives with honour despite bouts of

murder and mayhem. There is no sophistry of ‘cultural nationalism’ here.

The virus of prevarication, telling half truth or lie, is spread

all through and up to the top. The retired deputy director of

Intelligence Bureau Ashok Karnik who should know the kind of society we

have ‘created’ says “On a few occasions when extremists are traced and

arrested, there is clamour from civil libertarians to ensure that they

get fair trial. This is a just demand in a society which takes pride in

its adherence to the rule of law. However it runs counter to the

outraged feelings in the society which is not prepared to listen to any

defence of terrorism.” Why is it lost on this IB official that defence

of terrorism is one thing and defence of an accused is another? How in

the heavens can he equate defence of accused as defence of terrorism?

Unless the court has proved a person guilty beyond doubt he is an

honourable citizen of this country. That is how the so called “society

which takes pride in its adherence to the rule of law” should look at

what has happened in all incidents of terrorism including Gujarat 2002

and Modasa 2008. Unfortunately the government set-up and the society are

not up to the ideals of any sort or else Vinita Kamte would not have

the misgivings she had. She says: “There was a time when I was so

desperate for the truth that I felt that I should go and meet Kasab and

ask him what happened? Can you imagine my situation-should I feel the

need to ask a terrorist what happened that night-do you feel the

situation has changed! I felt it was important to speak one’s mind. I

just thought we would expose the system and people would take it

forward. I still feel that people must ask questions and hold those in

power responsible.” Why shouldn’t people ask Mysorewala and Modi

questions that disturb us, the ordinary citizens of this great country?

Do the questions of the widow of slain deputy commissioner of police

Ashok Kamte disturb Rakesh Maria, a colleague and of the same batch of

IPS and now a successor of the angelic Hemant Karkare?

The kind of

sophistry that RSS and its ‘cultural nationalism’ have woven around

makes it difficult if not impossible to know the truth. However, the

times have changed. The floodgate of information opening up on the

involvement of RSS is staggering. Devendra Gupta was what Ram Madhav

calls vibagh pramukh of three districts. He had procured sim cards used

in Ajmer, Mecca mosque and Samjhauta express attacks and it does not

stop with him. Ramji Kalsangrah, Himanshu Panse, Sandeep Dange, Sunil

Joshi, etc are all from RSS. They are the progeny of Nathuram Godse and

Madanlal Pawa. Despite the overwhelming nature of evidence does “a

society which takes pride in its adherence to the rule of law”

unequivocally say that they, above mentioned RSS functionaries, are

terrorists? Ram Madhav is the epitome of prevarication: “We don’t know

the charges yet. When we know about it, then we will certainly think

about it. But beyond that there is nothing. … This is what Madhav told

Sheilla Bhatt. But Modi had been asserting the third law of Newton ad

absurdum. Suresh Joshi has also chipped in “Its counter-Islamic

terrorism, not Hindu terror”. So, Islamic terrorism or jihadist

terrorism is all right but not Hindu terrorism (the kind of terror that

Ramji Kalsangrah unleashed at Bhiku chowk in Malegaon! How could

countering terror through terror be justified? Rajiv Gandhi had sent

Indian peace keeping force to Sri Lanka where Indian soldiers suffered

heavy casualties. LTTE also countered by terror that took the life of

the former prime minister of India and many others. Could India accept

that counter terrorism is no terror?

Or, the current crucible test

of Samjhauta express (and contrast it with Maoists blowing trains!)

where Abhinav Bharat has claimed responsibility, its founding member Lt

Col Purohit supplied RDX and the Haryana police have already identified

the shops from where the bags were bought and even some of the

explosives in Indore. Now comes the news that Kalsangra, Devenda Gupte

were also connected with the event. Interestingly some new statements of

Purohit were added to distance himself and his Abhinav Bharat from RSS.

He plotted to kill Mohan Bhagwat and Indrashkumar. The mystery of the

white powder that could wipe out the trail of the murder! These brain

children of RSS also include Ashok Singhal who sees in the arrest of

Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur the myth of Mary Magdalane and the attempt of

the Roman Catholic Church to destroy her line of descent. The mystery

surrounding RSS is much thicker because it involves highly educated and

well placed executives of all levels. We will require many volumes

thicker than Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code to unravel everything.

Suffice to say for the present that we have reached the capital of

terrorism, Indore. Lokesh Sharma had bought a cell phone from this town

of his birth. The phone was hanging in a bag with the bomb outside on

the grill of Mecca mosque. However, the sim card was bought by Devendra

Gupta! But then these are individuals who do not make up the RSS, says

Ram Madhav. He knows the truth for he is an honourable man!

http://www.countercurrents.org/mkhan270610.htm

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Fighting corruption – Editorial (Jun 28, 2010, The

Tribune)

Karnataka Lok Ayukta Justice Santosh Hegde’s resignation from his

post on the ground that the state government is not cooperating with him

in curbing corruption suggests that this institution has failed to

deliver the goods because of the government’s reluctance to arm it with

adequate powers. Justice Hegde, a former Supreme Court Judge, had been

carrying on a relentless campaign against illegal mining of iron ore and

corruption in the state. He revealed how nearly five lakh tonnes of

iron ore worth Rs 200 crore, which was seized by the forest staff at

Belikeri port in February following a Lok Ayukta report, mysteriously

vanished. He has also taken exception to the reinstatement of a

Bangalore City Corporation official within days of his suspension after

his team caught him while taking bribe.

His complaints that over

8,000 cases are pending due to the government’s refusal to appoint an

Upa-Lok Ayukta and harassment of his officers fighting corruption are

very serious. Unfortunately, the plight of the Lok Ayuktas in 16 other

states is no better. No government has armed them with teeth to bring

culprits to justice. In Punjab, the Lok Pal is a toothless tiger. In

Haryana, he works more like a forum for the redressal of grievances

against junior employees rather than fighting corruption and catching

the big fish. In Himachal Pradesh, as in most states, the Lok Ayukta has

only recommendatory powers. He neither has adequate infrastructure nor

powers to deal with complaints against higher-ups, including

politicians.

Even at the Centre, the fact that the government’s

actions would come under public scrutiny has invariably discouraged

successive governments from enacting a Lok Pal Bill. Each government is

fearful that the Bill would boomerang on it. However, the mere creation

of this office – or that of the Lok Ayukta in states – can hardly

guarantee an effective solution to public grievances unless the

incumbent is allowed to act independently with adequate powers, staff

and infrastructure. It is a moot point whether Justice Hegde would heed

Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Karnataka Governor Hans Raj

Bhardwaj’s appeals and continue in office. However, in view of the

increasing cases of corruption and nepotism in the government, we need

Lok Ayuktas like Justice Hegde to stem the rot in the system.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100628/edit.htm#3

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Friendly Fire – By Sumanta Sen (Jul 1, 2010, The

Telegraph)

On the eve of the assembly elections, the chief minister of Bihar,

Nitish Kumar, is jittery. He will certainly deny this, but nothing else

can explain his unseemly reaction to a newspaper advertisement showing

him along with his Gujarat counterpart, Narendra Modi. So nervous was

Kumar about how Muslims would react to the advertisement that he even

cancelled a dinner he was to host for delegates to the national

executive meeting of his coalition partner. This was a new Nitish Kumar

who is otherwise known to be a suave person. The developments in Bihar

will not wreck the alliance but they will expose its tottering nature,

much to the glee of Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan. Kumar could have

avoided such a situation but his nerves got the better of him.

Is

the much talked of administration then not enough to make the electorate

stand by Kumar? He himself is not communal, Muslims should know this,

so why worry about an advertisement? The obvious answer is that he is

not too sure of the extent to which the fruits of his government’s

performance have reached the people. That being the case, he cannot

afford to have a fair portion of the Muslims sticking to his rival, Lalu

Prasad. He knew it would need a lot of coaxing to convince the

minorities that his partnership with the Bharatiya Janata Party was just

to keep Prasad out, that he had not compromised with secularism. For

the last five years, he had kept the BJP under control, and it goes to

the credit of that party that it appreciated his compulsions and went

along with him. Then came the advertisement which he should have ignored

by pointing out that neither he nor his party had ever approved of

Modi.

A question may be raised as to how could Nitish Kumar have

spent so many years with the BJP, one of the leading lights of which is

Narendra Modi? If communalism is anathema to Kumar, then he should have

severed links with the saffron brigade immediately after Godhra. If he

had wanted to make a distinction between the BJP and Modi, he should

have seen how leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani

had hailed Modi on his electoral success in Gujarat after Godhra. Did he

and his party colleagues keep their eyes shut because the National

Democratic Alliance was then in power in New Delhi? Life with the BJP

means life with it as a whole and not just a part of it. Does Kumar not

know that if development is a component of the BJP’s agenda, so is

Hindutva, and Modi is its poster boy on both counts?

In the midst

of this, Kumar has emerged as a nervous and arrogant man. He threw

common courtesy to the winds and asked the BJP to keep Modi out of Patna

or at least out of the public meeting. The BJP did not oblige; no

self-respecting party could have. Boorish also was the return of the

money his government had received from Gujarat for flood-affected

people. What extreme steps to take to keep the Muslims happy! Can the

BJP be blamed if it points out that this also amounts to communalism?

The

entire episode smacked of hypocrisy. Kumar knew he was playing to the

minority gallery, he needed the BJP and its upper-caste voters to keep

the Lalu-Paswan group at bay. Unfortunately, he has never acknowledged

this. Neither has he admitted that if his ministry has delivered the

goods, then the coalition partner also has a role to play in it. The

partner did not always like this, but the quiet nature of the deputy

chief minister, Sushil Kumar Modi, saw to it that the alliance was not

disrupted. But now Kumar may have created conditions under which the

sailing may become that much rougher, particularly if he insists that

Modi should not campaign in the state. In the national context, the BJP

is a much larger force. How long will it agree to being lorded over?

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100701/jsp/opinion/story_12631076.jsp

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Guilt, An Associative Leap – By Neelabh Mishra

(Jul 5, 2010, Outlook)

They say poetry, memory and fantasy follow a logic of association.

The Indian criminal justice system follows a more cold-blooded logic of

association in which some associations are weightier than others. The

association with big money can be so weighty that although your miserly

cost-cutting may kill 5,000 people instantly and poison several

thousands to slow death and hundreds of thousands to permanent disease

or disability, the police superintendent will chauffeur you to the

airport, the chief minister will arrange you a free air ride, the Union

home minister will snack with you and you can, like Warren Anderson of

Union Carbide, comfortably wave this rotten country goodbye, saying,

“There is a law in the US.” The implication: there’s no law in India. In

fact, Anderson’s pronouncement proved prophetic when the Supreme Court

diluted the charges against the accused in the Bhopal gas tragedy and

when it oversaw an out-of-court settlement for a ridiculously low

compensation amount. Local moneybags also know well that for the police,

their association with money can outweigh their close association with

the scene of crime.

At businessman Anil Nanda’s house, his driver

Janeshwar Sharma is burnt to death. Enough for an ordinary person to

land in police remand immediately. But despite a dying Sharma’s

allegation, recorded and telecast by a news channel, holding his

employer responsible for the brutality, the police haven’t taken Nanda

into custody till the time of writing. Their handouts keep arguing for a

suicide theory. In stark contrast, there are other kinds of

associations that our criminal justice system and the powers that

control it keep looking to punish, often unjustly. An association with

the causes of the poor and the marginalised, for instance. Avinash

Kulkarni, of the Dangi Mazdoor Union, Dangi Lok Adhikar Samiti and

Adivasi Mahasabha, is a respected activist working for tribals in

Gujarat. He actively campaigned for forest rights for the tribals and

has been involved in monitoring the implementation of the Forest Rights

Act.

The Gujarat police arrested him on March 22 under an omnibus

and general FIR against the underground leaders and members of the CPI

(Maoist), the banned Naxalite organisation, lodged nearly a month before

his arrest. And when it was lodged, the FIR did not name anyone.

Kulkarni himself hasn’t been accused of violence, even by the Gujarat

police in their remand application. He has been accused of being a

member of the CPI(ML) Janshakti, a legitimate political party that has

been fighting elections for 15 years. Since the police want to play on

the ‘ML’ association to mislead a gullible middle class-’ML’ being the

old epithet carried by two of the three groups which merged to form

CPI(Maoist)-it’s alleged that Kulkarni played “behind the scenes” to be

in touch with the CPI (Maoist) through CPI(ML) Janshakti. Kulkarni’s

associate Bharat Pawar, an adivasi, was also later arrested under the

same omnibus FIR.

To date, 14 persons have been arrested under

this FIR, one of whom, Kishore, who rose from being a labourer, is a

typist with Darshan, an NGO run by Hiren Gandhi, a respected cultural

personality. This NGO ran theatre campaigns for communal harmony with

like-minded organisations after the 2002 riots. An Andhraite, Kishore’s

regional association is enough to paint him as a dreaded Maoist. The

ruthless logic of association can then lead to Hiren Gandhi himself. The

latest to be arrested under the same FIR is Abdul Shakeel Basha, on

June 17. Basha has worked with the homeless and with some NGOs,

including Harsh Mander’s Aman Biradari, in Gujarat. The Gujarat police

has given out stories in the media accusing Basha of being the Maoist

area commander (or the area committee secretary) for Surat. An armed

Maoist action from Surat is unheard of and those familiar with

underground communist structures know that an area commander’s (or a

secretary’s) is a full-time job that doesn’t leave room for other nearly

full-time activities far away from the base.

The police later

said Basha was with the Maoists till 2004-as if a person has no right to

change his politics later and will be punished even if there is no

allegation of violence against him. Then what about the Union home

minister’s exhortation to the Maoists to abjure violence and join the

mainstream? The cold-blooded logic of association can also lead the

Gujarat government to tar the NGOs that employed Basha. No wonder the

omnibus FIR of Gujarat accuses unnamed Maoists of “carrying out false

propaganda among tribal/forest people as well as Christians and Muslims

to separate them from the mainstream of the nation, to create civil

war”. The message is clear: “Don’t associate with the victims of the

system.”

http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265990

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Related posts:

  1. IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – July 12th, 2010
  2. IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – July 19th, 2010
  3. IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – July 26th, 2010
  4. IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – July 6th, 2009
  5. IMC-USA Weekly News Digest – July 13th, 2009

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