NEWS HEADLINES

POST-GODHRA CASES: 9 SESSIONS JUDGES APPOINTED TO CONDUCT TRIALS (MAY 9, 2009, TIMES OF INDIA)

Gujarat High Court on Thursday appointed nine sessions judges to conduct trial in nine different cases of 2002 communal violence that are being probed by Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team (SIT). Through a notification, HC authorities assigned Naroda Gam cases to judge S H Vora, who is additional sessions judge at city civil and sessions court. Trial in Naroda Patia case will be conducted by judge Dr Jyotsnaben Yagnik, who is at present special Pota judge in Ahmedabad. The third case of massacre in the city – Gulbarg Society – will be conducted by judge B U Joshi, who at present is discharging his duty as registrar of HC’s vigilance department.

Additional sessions judge P R Patel will look after Godhra carnage case, which is scheduled to take place in Sabarmati Central Jail. Judge H P Patel is appointed to conduct trial in British nationals’ murder case in a Himmatnagar court, while judge R M Sareen, who is a fast track court judge in Ahmedabad, is appointed as special judge in Ode massacre case. The HC has set up another court in Anand and judge S Y Trivedi will hear another case based on the FIR lodged with Khambholaj police station.

The Patan additional sessions judge S C Srivastava, who conducted the gangrape case last year, will be hearing Dipda Darwaja case in Mehsana. Along with Srivastava, an additional sessions judge B N Karia, who is presently with Ahmedabad sessions court, is scheduled to hear Sardarpura case. HC officials said these nine judicial officers may take charge of special courts within a week. The HC has set up these courts as per Supreme Court’s directions issued while deciding a petition by National Human Rights Commission in 2003. The apex court has vacated the stay on trial in all these nine cases and directed the state government to get the proceedings completed, preferably within a year, by appointing special prosecutors on SIT’s suggestions.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4501143.cms

BAJRANGI HAD CALLED PATEL THRICE ON FEB 28, 2002: SIT (MAY 9, 2009, INDIAN EXPRESS)

Former Bajrang Dal leader and a key accused in the Naroda Gam and Naroda Patiya massacre cases, Babu Bajrangi, had kept VHP leader Jaydeep Patel posted about the killings of Muslims in the city that day, according to the Special Investigation Team (SIT). The Supreme Court-appointed SIT said on Friday that Bajrangi had made three phone calls on Patel’s mobile phone, reportedly updating the latter on the saffron brigade’s "revenge operations" in the Muslim-dominated pockets of the Naroda Gam area on February 28, 2002. Investigating officer of the Naroda Gam case, Superintendent of Police P L Mal had in January this year recorded statements of Ashish Khetan, Tehelka magazine reporter, in connection with his sting operation on Bajrangi. "We have appended Khetan’s statements and three unedited CDs that he gave us to the case chargesheet filed on April 30, 2009. These documents, along with supporting evidence will be produced as evidence against Patel during the case trial," Mal said.

While getting candid with Khetan (who posed as a Hindutva researcher), Bajrangi had claimed that he had called up Patel 11 times, updating the latter after each murder that took place in Naroda Gam that day. "A thorough scrutiny of their mobile phone records of February 28, 2002, however, reveals that Bajrangi had called up Patel only three times," said an SIT officer, who did not wish to be identified. Patel’s mobile phone records, said the SIT, reveal that he was at the Sola Civil Hospital (where the bodies were brought from Godhra in trucks) till around 9 am that day. Patel then went to Naroda, where Bajrangi was leading the rioting mobs.

A total of 11 people were killed in the Naroda Gam rioting. The incident had occurred on a day when the VHP had called for a statewide shutdown as a fallout of the Sabarmati Express carnage a day earlier. Bajrangi was arrested in 2002 for his alleged involvement in the two riot cases and is currently out on bail. Patel, a murder and rioting accused in the Naroda Gam case, is at present in judicial custody. In a year-long further investigation in the Naroda Gam case, the SIT examined a total of 450 witnesses.

Of the 31 new accused, whose names opened up in the SIT investigation, 30, including Patel and former state minister Dr Maya Kodnani have been arrested. One Vishnu Popat Thakur, a resident of Naroda, continues to be at large. Patel, who was VHP’s state general secretary during the 2002 mayhem, had left for Godhra in the evening of February 27, 2002. He along with one Hasmukh Patel had come back to Ahmedabad with charred bodies of the victims of the ill-fated S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express in the early hours of February 28, 2002.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/456624/

CBI GRILLS LT COL PUROHIT (MAY 3, 2009, CENTRAL CHRONICLE)

After reopening the probe into the Nanded blast of 2006, CBI recently took over custody of Army’s tainted Lieutenant-Colonel, Srikant Purohit, and questioned him at length about his role in the incident. The CBI officially remained tight-lipped about this development but sources in the investigating agency said the remand of Purohit has been taken from a designated court and he has been questioned about the Nanded blast. The Malegaon blast chargesheet, which has named Purohit among 14 others as accused, had raised serious questions on the nature of the CBI probe into the Nanded explosions which may have ignored early signs of self-styled right wing groups getting armed. Purohit was examined by detectives of the Special Crime unit of CBI to ascertain whether he was instrumental in providing training to cadre of Abhinav Bharat, official sources said here on Sunday.

He is the second person after Rakesh Dattatraya Dhawade, one of the accused in the Malegaon case, who has been taken on remand by the CBI in connection with the Nanded blast that took place on the intervening night of April 4-5, 2006 at the residence of Laxman Rajkondwar, allegedly an RSS worker. Rajkondwar’s sons Naresh and Himanshu, a VHP activist, were killed while assembling the bomb. Dhawade is alleged to have made arrangements and facilitated training to the accused persons in the Nanded bomb blasts in 2006. Six people were killed in the Malegaon explosions while the Nanded blasts claimed the lives of two persons. The CBI reopened probe in the case in December last year. The decision to reopen the case was taken by the present CBI Director Ashwani Kumar after improper probe was detected during the investigation into the Malegaon case.

Sources in central security agencies said one of the accused, whose voice had to be restored after operating upon his vocal chord, which was damaged in the blast, had told the investigators that Naresh, a Bajrang Dal activist, had allegedly planned three blasts outside mosques in Jalna and Parbani in Maharashtra in 2003 and 2004 respectively. Recoveries made by the investigating agencies from Rajkondwar’s house included skull caps, fake beards and a plan that showed the target as a mosque at Aurangabad, nearly 200 km from Nanded.

The CBI was also asked by central security agencies as to why the call details of Naresh were not investigated properly, the sources said, claiming that one such call had been traced to an important functionary of a saffron outfit in Ayodhya. CBI investigated the Nanded blast and filed a charge sheet on March 15, last year against 10 people, including Sanjay Chowdhury, Yogesh Deshpande, Maruti Wagah, Gunniraj Thakur and Mahesh Pandey, allegedly associated with Bajrang Dal, besides the two who died in the explosion.

http://www.centralchronicle.com/viewnews.asp?articleID=6307

ON BABRI, IT WAS BJP WHICH MADE CBI CRAWL (MAY 5, 2009, INDIAN EXPRESS)

For all the moral high ground taken by the Bharatiya Janata Party that the CBI is the "Congress Bureau of Investigation" – especially after it brazenly took Bofors-accused Ottavio Quattrocchi off the wanted list – the fact is that the BJP-led NDA regime, in perhaps the most high-profile political case in its tenure, also over-ruled the agency reducing it to a rubber stamp. And, in the process, set the CBI up for another round of arm twisting by the UPA. The matter: the decision of the CBI not to challenge the 2003 discharge of then Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani in the case related to his alleged inflammatory speeches during the Babri Masjid demolition. Confidential files obtained by The Indian Express reveal how handling of the Advani discharge was as partisan as the CBI’s conduct in other politically sensitive probes reported by this newspaper in its ongoing investigative series. Top CBI officers, including at least two DIGs, one Joint Director and the Special Counsel proposed filing a revision petition after Advani was discharged by a Rae Bareli court. But it was once again the agency’s Director of Prosecution, S K Sharma, on whose opinion, the agency referred the matter to the Government’s top Law Officers. And, in a bizarre turn, these officers, Attorney General Soli Sorabjee and Solicitor General Kirit Raval referred the matter to an outsider, Chennai-based lawyer N Natarajan. Clearly, the issue of expressing an opinion in a case involving the Deputy Prime Minister was too hot to handle.

The CBI’s Advani headache got worse when the Congress came to power in 2004. Perhaps, for the first time in the agency’s history, the CBI received several strongly worded missives from the Congress-led UPA, asking for written explanations on how and on whose advice Advani’s discharge remained unchallenged. When the CBI defended its stand, via a letter dated August 12, 2005, CBI Director U S Misra was asked by the Department of Personnel to "send the opinions of Attorney General and N Natarajan with your comments." The saving grace for CBI was the fact that even as this correspondence was being exchanged, on July 6, 2005, the Allahabad High Court set aside the Rae Bareli Magistrate’s discharge and directed the trial against Advani and seven others to commence. The CBI was also made a respondent in this case where two private persons, Haji Mehboob and Hafiz Siddiq, had challenged Advani’s discharge. And during early arguments – announcing its volte face in a changed political scenario – CBI’s counsel, this time with UPA at the Centre, argued just the opposite: that the discharge be quashed! A scrutiny of the sequence of events in the NDA regime, as per official records, reveals the carefully calibrated manner in which the CBI was forced to abandon the appeal against Advani’s discharge: The tone was set by S K Sharma, a Joint Secretary in the Law Ministry who for several years has been holding the post of Director of Prosecution in the CBI. In a 15-page opinion dated December 4, 2003, he concluded: "I feel the impugned order is evenly balanced and, to a considerable extent, the prosecution is on a weak wicket. However, considering the important question of law and fact involved, we should seek the opinion of any of the law officers of the Government of India on the point of feasibility of filing against the impugned order."

In a one-page note, U S Misra (then Special Director) reveals how the agency’s officers pushed for challenging the discharge. "I have gone through the comments of DIG (M Narayanan), DLA (Deputy Legal Advisor), Special Counsel (S S Gandhi), DIG (Lok Nath Behra), Joint Director (Vivek Dubey) and the DoP," he wrote. "(These) Officers