Tragic tales of few men hounded by terror charges – By Imran Khan (Dec 3, 2011, Tehelka)

Main aaj zad pe hoon, tum khush gumaan mat hona, Chiraagh sab ke bujhenge, hawa kisi ki nahi (Although today I am the target, don’t be overjoyed by it, every flame will die one day, this wind will not keep anyone alive.) For Iqbal Jakathi, the Urdu couplet invokes the betrayal and sense of injustice that has been boiling within him for the three years he spent in Belgaum’s high-security prison as undertrial. The 40-year old father of three was arrested in 2008 on charges of terror and sedition and for being a member of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) only to be acquitted by court on 8 November. The Judge, while delivering the order, said that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges against Jakathi and 12 others who were being tried for terrorism and conspiring to detonate a bomb – all of them had been lodged in different jails in Karnataka for more than three years. The other accused might lack Jakathi’s poetic eloquence, but their tales are almost similar. The moderately educated young Muslim men from Belgaum, Bijapur and Raichur hail from lower middle-class background. Nineteen-year-old Nazir Patel, first-year BSc student and a university rank holder, was arrested first. A laptop seized from Patel was the link that led to Dr Munroz, who, according to the police, had given the hard disk, containing ‘incriminating material’, to the student. Anther hard disk was seized from Liyaquat Ali, a security analyst working in the UK, who had come to his home city Belgaum for vacation. Based on material found on the hard disk, the police arrested 15 people and charged them under various sections of the Indian Penal Code for sedition, terrorism, conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism and for inciting hatred between communities.

What was the incriminating material in the hard disks? Islamic literature; pictures of Godhra riots and Babri mosque demolition; attacks on Muslims in Kashmir and other parts of the world; speeches by BJP leader LK Advani, former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and slain al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Raids conducted at the houses of the alleged terrorist yielded other ‘incriminating material’ – battery cells, wires, glycerin and commercially purchasable nitric acid and a soldering gun – that the police contended were used to make a bomb by the alleged SIMI group. According to the charge-sheet, the accused caused enmity between Hindus and Muslims and “had the most barbaric scenes of the Godhra massacre, the demolition of Babri mosque, Bombay bomb blasts, etc”. Jakathi and his family’s ordeal started when the police raided his house in July 2008. Jakathi, who was employed with a private company in Saudi Arabia at that time, remembers how his frightened father called him up asking him if he was connected with terrorists. Jakathi got in touch with the Karnataka police and decided to fly down to clear himself of the charges. When he got down at the Bombay airport for his connecting flight, he was immediately arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad. Thrown into a dingy room at the airport, he was interrogated by a man in civil clothes who claimed to be with the Intelligence Bureau. Taken to a police station later, Jakathi says that he was subjected to the usual round of verbal abuse and threat of encounter killing.

“I thought they would never let me go… that they would kill me. They asked me about my ‘links’ to various terrorist groups and showed me several photographs of people they said I was working with. I had not seen those persons before,” he says. Finally, Jakathi was incarcerated in Belgaum jail for three year. But his family suffered more than him. While Jakathi’s job loss triggered severe financial strain for his parents and wife, the social ostracism that inevitably followed cut of all support from neighbours and even relatives. Already struggling to find money to keep up the legal fight to save Jakathi, his father, a retired school headmaster, lost the use of his legs to gangrene. The case of Imtiyaz Dallayat is stranger because he had a cordial relationship with the police. Dallayat, who owned a betel shop, was part of the local Muslim social welfare organisation and was often sought by the police to dispose of unclaimed dead bodies of Muslims. Therefore, when summoned by the police, Dallayat had no inkling of what was awaiting him. He was “detained in the police station illegally for several days, made to sign blank papers and slapped with charges of terrorism”. According to his family, the police arrested Dallayat after planting some material in his shop which they claimed was used by him to manufacture a bomb. When finally released, the world had changed for him. He still remains a “terrorist”.

“I should have spent the long time wasted in jail with my daughter. Now, she is three years old but refuses to come near me; she doesn’t recognise me” says Dallayat. When contacted, Raghavendra H Auradhkar, Home Secretary, Karnataka, who was the Police Commissioner of Belgaum during the investigations, told Tehelka, “I cannot comment on this issue as I haven’t seen the court order.” Advocate LM Patel was helpless when his son Nasir was arrested on 24 May, 2008. “Even though I am a lawyer, I could be of no use to my son,” he says expressing despair and anguish. “He [Nasir] had just finished his dawn prayers, when he was summoned to the police station and arrested. I didn’t apply for bail immediately because the police told me that he would be released soon. Three days later, charges were filed against him. If the police can do this to a lawyer’s son, what would they do to ordinary people?” he laments. Nasir may have been acquitted in the Belgaum case, but it could be a long time before his father sees him free. Nasir is currently imprisoned in Ahmedabad. After his arrest in Karnataka, the Gujarat police nabbed him for being allegedly involved in the Ahmedabad bomb blasts, which occurred on 2 July, 2008. Indeed, “the wind continues to blow” as aptly put by Jakathi.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ws031211SIMI.asp

SEE ALSO:

• Destruction, discrimination, denial of justice – By Subhashini Ali (Dec 11, 2011, Sabrang)
  http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2011/dec11/report.html
• The vote that counts – By Rana Ayyub (Dec 24, 2011, Tehelka)
  http://tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne241211Coverstory.asp
• When the impossible happens – Editorial (Dec 11, 2011, Sabrang)
  http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2011/dec11/edit.html
• Jail, Bail and the Poor – Editorial (Dec 17, 2011, Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16874.pdf

[Back to Top]

Picking up the Bill – By Chanakya (Dec 17, 2011, Hindustan Times)

Procrastination is the not-so-fine art of delaying things. Doing a rush job is the even less celebrated art of, well, rushing through things. While on paper these two methods of action seem disparate and opposite to each other, if you look closely, the pull-and-push mechanism of delay-and-hurry can form one strategic pattern: sit on something for a long time, and then when you’re being badgered from all sides for sitting too long, you can complain bitterly about being made to hurry and being forced to do a bad job. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the Lokpal Bill drama. As we approach the ‘final lap’ of a long distance run that has seen digressions, backtrackings, scurryings and slow-motion, it is evident that the government and its minders have been goaded on to table and pass the Lokpal Bill within the end of this winter session by Anna Hazare and his agit-prop artists and there’s no turning back now.

Last week, we saw politicians sit around a big table and thrash out points of difference in the Lokpal Bill. The Opposition, in particular, finally aired its views not inside TV studios but sitting across Congress and government faces. Coming to a consensus is no longer the tricky part. Frankly, it wasn’t the real issue all along. Parliamentarians, as a tribe, are still nervous about firming up an empowered lokpal. ‘Doing things in a rush’ was the last excuse from the government. This has been rejected by the opposition parties. Earlier, they had sulked, with reason, about not being consulted on the Bill. However, once they were brought into the picture – most visibly through the all-party parliamentary standing committee on the lokpal – strategists from the Opposition started insisting that Hazare’s deadline be kept. Why this sudden flowering of great intent, considering that till this last lap, the BJP and the Left were quiet on the issue of ‘We want the Lokpal now!’? Because things have boiled down to who takes the credit.

Till the recent stirrings in Parliament, the Lokpal Bill was being moulded and directed by ‘outsiders’. The Opposition’s latest enthusiasm over the Bill is less about re-establishing Parliament’s responsibility (read: authority) and more about reclaiming the role of the Opposition from the streets – especially at a time when the Anna’s campaign doesn’t seem to be running on a full tank any more. The only thing shorter than public memory is public enthusiasm. There are signs already that the wave of gleeful support that Hazare commanded in the earlier phases of his ‘movement’ has somewhat subsided. Perhaps swayed by his own wagging finger or baited by sound-bite-collecting journalists (and most likely both), Hazare himself has played a considerable role in this dip in public enthusiasm. But it’s more than just his dire pronouncements on drunkards, FDI in retail and crazies attacking ministers that have got people less gung-ho about rallying round the Anna totem pole. The sheer duration of the lokpal agitation has made many in the vocal middle-class tire. Very few will actually say, “Oh, now I’m bored by the issue”, but would rather couch it with utterances such as “I don’t like his strategy of launching a hunger strike on every issue”, or “Anna’s movement is more political in nature now. This will dilute the primary agenda.” But Anna may have just started boring his constituency.

Which is where the politicians – especially those in Opposition – see an opportunity to reclaim what is theirs: legitimacy as law-makers. It’s too late for them to argue a case against the lokpal (“a giant, overpowering, parallel burea-ucracy”). To be seen as a lokpal naysayer now will make them seem as being pro-corruption. The Opposition’s insistence on getting the Bill passed by the year-end is genuine. As a senior BJP politician told me, “Of course we don’t want any more delay. There isn’t any logic to the government wanting more time. This is a continuation of their confusion.” Ah, the luxury of opposing a delay while knowing that a delay will seriously endanger the government. Last week we saw non-UPA politicians share stage space with Hazare. Part of this exercise was to be seen as fellow participants in the lokpal demand; and part of it was to, paradoxically, undermine Anna’s essentially anti-politician campaign. (“If Anna wants to fight corruption why does he solicit support of politicians of the opposition party?” was one response from the ‘citizenry’.) On Team Anna’s part, this is a move away from its earlier ‘no politicians’ diktat and is a grudging acceptance that the campaign has already peaked and will be reined in by politicians. The UPA is fighting on two fronts: finger-wags and threats from the Anna gang and hollers and thumping fists from opposition parties. Which is why the UPA has switched from its old position of delaying things and now intends to bring in the Bill over the next few days so that the BJP – ready with its new ‘Chidambaram must quit!’ chant – doesn’t get too much credit for the Bill. In any case, ‘We got the people’s Lokpal through’ sounds so much more full of possibilities than ‘We were forced by the Opposition to push the Lokpal through’.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/783844.aspx

SEE ALSO:

• ‘There is a difference between the real and stated intent of most parties’ – Pinaki Misra with Revati Laul (Dec 24, 2011, Tehelka)
  http://tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne241211Pinaki_Misra.asp
• Catalysis In Stasis – By Anuradha Raman (Dec 26, 2011, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?279358
• Who Will Control the CBI? – By Abhishek Bhalla (Dec 24, 2011, Tehelka)
  http://tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne241211Control.asp

[Back to Top]

System failure – By Bhaskar Ghose (Dec 17, 2011, Frontline)

As I write this Parliament has been adjourned for the ninth day without any work being transacted. As on previous days, a hullabaloo was started in each House as soon as the presiding officer declared it to be in session; those shouting at the top of their voices were seen smirking and grinning until the House was adjourned. Objective achieved, the members trooped out in good spirits. What issue was before the Houses when they were adjourned is irrelevant at the moment. It was, as a matter of fact, the decision by the Central government to introduce up to 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail sector, but it could have been any one of a number of other issues; Telangana and the rise in prices were the reasons Parliament was stalled earlier in the year. But, as I say, the reason is, for the purposes of this essay, immaterial. The fact is that Members of Parliament have once again shown that they can stop the Houses from functioning when they wish to, and there does not seem to be anything that can be done to prevent them from doing so. For all we know, Parliament will not be allowed to function for the rest of the winter session.

Is it just the cussedness or short-sighted tactics of the opposition or is it equally the fault of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA)? Or is it a failing that has its causes in something else: the very nature of the institution? One can be predictable and say that the reasons can be found in all three, but that would be to evade the primary cause. It is, simply, the nature of the institution. In the United Kingdom from where India got its institution of Parliament, it evolved over the years, through argument and debate, as a means of obtaining more and more powers from the Crown. Sometime in the late 18th and early 19th century, the sovereign’s first minister ceased to be that and became the “Prime” Minister, answerable more to the Commons and less to the House of Lords. This had to do with the gradual reaching out of members of the Commons to the people at large directly, relying less on brilliant oratory to get ideas across and more on their sense of what their constituents wanted. Of course, this took a good many years to develop and become anything like the system it now is, but the point is that the ability to get ideas, policies and reforms across began primarily within the Houses of Parliament and only later reflected what the MPs’ constituents wanted.

In India, ideas and policies were formed during the freedom struggle – a variety of ideas, including the need for education, economic reform and equality for all, were enunciated in public gatherings, all of which were a part, initially, of the all-encompassing freedom movement. But once freedom was achieved, the templates did not change, and thus Parliament soon became a focal point for vociferously demanding policies and action that had earlier been declared in mass meetings and rallies. The first years of Parliament were relatively peaceful for two reasons: one, great personalities like Jawaharlal Nehru were there to give it direction and character, and two, there was a general awe of the institution itself, with which not many were familiar. The bible was, in those early years, Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice. Both have disappeared today – the great leaders and May’s definitive book. Parliament increasingly seems to reflect Indian ethos and culture, and that does not include procedures and norms of behaviour that belong to another, foreign, culture and its traditions. Recently one saw, on television, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer make a statement that, in these surcharged times when Britain’s economy is in dire straits and the government has imposed severe cuts on public spending, could have meant bedlam in the House. There was some commotion in the opposition benches, but it was amazing to see how everything went quiet when the Speaker rose to his feet and said that this was an important statement and deserved to be heard without interruption. Thereafter, the murmurs from the opposition died away, except for an odd comment or two.

Cut from that to Parliament on the morning of December 2. The din was so great that nothing could be heard, not even the Speaker’s pleas to listen to her, and continued until she adjourned the House and left. A totally different scenario, yet both supposed to be parliamentary democracy in action. But is the Indian reaction unwarranted; is it a nail being driven into the coffin of parliamentary democracy? If anything, the repeated stalling of Parliament makes one thing clear, to me at least. What do we expect of Parliament at the best of times? That it function peaceably and pass laws. Laws drafted by the ruling party, which are not changed by even a comma despite eloquent speeches by members of the opposition and then passed. In other words, once a party or group of parties has a majority in the Houses, the country becomes nothing less than a dictatorship. The opposition is as much a figurehead as the President. But it is not that; the opposition represents millions of people who voted for its members, perhaps more than the number that voted for the ruling party or group, and a system that reduces the voices of its people’s representatives to nothing is not going to be accepted. This translates into behaviour that may make the ruling party think twice before bulldozing a law through both Houses. The fault is in the system.

For better or for worse, India has a system of parliamentary democracy that in effect means that the group in power becomes the virtual dictator of India, which is as it is over-governed, with every action by every industry or agricultural producer made subject to a mass of laws, clearances, licences and approvals. Manmohan Singh’s 1991 reforms, as Finance Minister, were dramatic, true, but a huge number of rules, regulations, procedural clearances and other controls remain. And that is why the ruling party or group becomes a dictator if it has a large enough number of MPs. This is what needs to be looked at carefully by all concerned, the ruling UPA and the opposition leadership. Faulty though it is, this parliamentary democracy – with its legislature, fractious though it may be; its executive, slow and inefficient though it is; and its judiciary, which has, except for a brief inglorious period, kept a watchful eye on what has been going on – has pulled the country through crisis after crisis and kept its integrity intact. The institution of Parliament needs to be studied to see how far it truly reflects the country’s diverse, multifaceted culture and polity. Rather than keep an imported institution and repeatedly prevent it from working, it would be better to have an alternative model that will allow dissent and effective decision-making.

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2826/stories/20111230282608700.htm

SEE ALSO:

• Undermining Parliament – Editorial (Dec 17, 2011, Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16873.pdf

[Back to Top]

Heightened tensions – By R. Krishnakumar (Dec 17, 2011, Frontline)

Submerge the polemics, legal tangles and conflicting technical claims, and the participants in the inter-State dispute over the Mullaperiyar dam – one of the oldest and highest ‘solid masonry gravity dams’ in the world – will no longer be able to ignore the anxiety and panic that the 116-year-old structure has created among the people in Idukki, especially, and four other districts in Kerala. The spontaneous initial outpouring of the people was followed by unusual protests demanding the decommissioning of the dam in the wake of intense rain and repeated low-intensity tremors in Idukki district, at locations over 30 kilometres away from Mullaperiyar, on November 18 and 26. Following seasonal rains in the catchment areas of the dam, the reservoir was fast filling up when the first of the quakes occurred, and the spillway level of 136 feet (41.45 metres) was crossed within a few days. The dam filled to capacity and the series of “minor” earthquakes activated an unprecedented unity of purpose in Kerala. Ever since the detection of fresh leaks on the dam’s surface in 1979, people have demanded that the water level in the reservoir be lowered and a new dam be built.

The protests have taken the form of silent marches, hunger strikes, hartals and ‘human walls’ in the five districts through which the Periyar flows, and other State-wide campaigns, some involving violence. The State government, on its part, demanded immediate mediatory and legal remedies from the Centre and the Supreme Court. Mullaperiyar is the first in a series of hydroelectric and irrigation projects across Kerala’s longest river, the Periyar, which originates in the Western Ghats and drains into the Arabian Sea and the backwaters near Kochi. Tamil Nadu, across the Western Ghats, is the sole beneficiary of the British-built dam and it is against any further reduction in the water level in the reservoir. Instead, it wants the level to be raised to 142.40 ft (43.4 m), as an interim measure, and further to 152 ft (46.32 m), as per the recommendations of a committee of the Central Water Commission (CWC) that examined the dam nearly two decades ago and suggested several measures to strengthen it. By constructing the dam in the deep jungles of the Western Ghats, about 2,800 ft (853 m) above sea level, the British rulers of the then Madras Presidency had, from 1895, diverted the West-flowing Periyar river across the Ghats to the east, through a 5,704-feet (1,738.5 m) tunnel that opened into a tributary of the Vaigai river in the then Madurai district. This remarkable engineering feat achieved with the hard labour of mostly Indian workers today sustains irrigation and drinking water supply in five districts of southern Tamil Nadu. (The Periyar is also known as the Mullaperiyar, after a tributary, the Mullayar, joins it about 50 km from its origin in the Sivagiri Hill, east of Peerumedu.)

Though the dam is located in Kerala, it is controlled, managed and operated by Tamil Nadu, under a lease agreement of 1886 between the British and the erstwhile Travancore State, and validated subsequently by Kerala and Tamil Nadu in 1970. The original agreement gave the British the right over “all the waters” of the Mullaperiyar and its catchment for diversion to the British territory (now Tamil Nadu) for 999 years. The waters of a river with about 5,284 square kilometres (out of a total of 5,398 sq km) of its catchment area in Kerala, stored in a reservoir within Kerala territory, thus came to be used exclusively by the people of southern Tamil Nadu from 1895 onwards, when the diversion project was inaugurated. According to one estimate, over 70 lakh people in Tamil Nadu’s Theni, Dindigul, Madurai, Sivaganga and Ramanathapuram districts today depend on the waters of the Mullaperiyar reservoir (the scenic Thekkady lake) for the irrigation of about 2.5 lakh acres (1 acre = 0.4 hectare) and for drinking water needs. The (upper) Periyar has thus transformed a once-drought-prone region in the southern part of Tamil Nadu into breathtaking green valleys, vineyards and rich fields growing paddy, banana, coconut and a variety of vegetables and fruit. Since 1970, Tamil Nadu has been using the water to generate 140 megawatt (MW) of electricity as well. In 1979, Tamil Nadu was forced to reduce the water level in the reservoir after detection of leaks in the dam. However, its requirement of the Periyar waters for irrigation had only been increasing year after year. The total irrigated area in the Periyar-Vaigai basin has expanded substantially, leading to a quantum jump in the water required from the reservoir. Farmers’ groups in Tamil Nadu area have demanded that the Mullaperiyar water level be raised and “new channels” be opened from the Periyar system for irrigating new areas.

During most of the Periyar project’s early history, the section of Kerala falling on the downstream areas of the reservoir seemed to have remained generally a water-surplus region, with plenty of rain (and meagre population in the Ghat areas). But from the late 1970s, soon after Kerala constructed the Idukki hydroelectric project 50 km downstream of the Mullaperiyar dam and denudation and encroachment of the surrounding areas increased, the State too began to feel the pinch. But it could not use (particularly during summer) even a wee drop from the huge source of water within its own territory. For most part of the year, no water flowed from the Mullaperiyar reservoir to Kerala even as the population in the valleys between the Idukki and Mullaperiyar dams too began to increase. Almost all the water that reached the Idukki reservoir for most part of the year was only from the catchment areas downstream and from the Periyar’s tributaries. The detection of leaks in the Mullaperiyar dam in 1979 had led to concerns about the dam’s safety even though the reservoir level was brought down to 136 ft. Minor earthquakes were regularly reported in the region, and by the 1990s, Kerala government representatives, in private conversations, began expressing bitterness at the insensitivity of Tamil Nadu to the security concerns in Kerala. “Whether any State can rely permanently on the resources of another State” was a question that began to be raised, but at no time was there a demand that the Periyar waters be denied to Tamil Nadu. A senior adviser to the State government on Inter-State River Water Disputes put it succinctly to Frontline in October 1998, when the dispute had reached a new low: “The case of the Mullaperiyar dam is peculiar in that the beneficiary is comfortably situated elsewhere and the donor stands to face the peril if something happens. Some experts have said the dam is safe. But can any government afford to throw caution to the winds?”

Understandably, such arguments were brushed aside by Tamil Nadu as a ploy to deny it the full use of its legal entitlement of “all the waters” flowing “into, through, over or from” the Mullaperiyar dam and about 8,000 acres around it, as the Periyar Lease Deed of 1886 had ordained. On the other hand, in Kerala concerns about the safety of the dam were sounding increasingly genuine because of frequent reports about the condition of the aging dam and its increasing vulnerability in the context of earthquakes and changing weather patterns (see separate story). Until the question of the dam’s strength became an important issue, a significant facet of the dispute was the dramatically different approaches of the two States at the practical level. For the most part, in the first three decades after Independence, the people of Kerala were by and large aware of the Mullaperiyar reservoir (also known as the Thekkady lake) as a tourist spot and the dam as such, or its long history or its value as a key water source for the neighbouring State, evoked little interest. It was rarely that Mullaperiyar was discussed in Kerala, and successive governments, political leaders and officials who dealt with it did so in a “complacent”, “lethargic” and, according to later allegations, “insincere” fashion. In Tamil Nadu, the genuine needs of the farming communities and other beneficiaries of the Periyar project in the southern parts ensured that the State government and political leaders (a number of them representing regional interests) did their homework in all their discussions with Kerala about the agreement, the dam or quantum or use of the waters of the Periyar. … Mullaperiyar today is a vexatious legal and political tangle, but given the fear factor in Kerala over a real-world ‘Dam 999’, can any court, government or party take the huge risks involved in delaying the decommissioning of the old dam – unless they are so sure?

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2826/stories/20111230282612200.htm

SEE ALSO:

• ‘Kerala is fooling Malayalis on the dam issue’ – Cho Ramaswamy with Sai Manish (Dec 24, 2011, Tehelka)
  http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne241211INCOLDBLOOD.asp
• Rising resentment – By T.S. Subramanian (Dec 17, 2011, Frontline)
  http://www.flonnet.com/fl2826/stories/20111230282612900.htm

[Back to Top]

What is Manipur’s future? – By Sumit Bhattacharya (Dec 13, 2011, Rediff)

In Manipur, it is difficult to go into the interiors if you don’t have someone local with you. You are told stories of what happened when a media team went into some remote villages in the hills. Someone had set it up – for the media team to visit – with one of the state’s nearly 40 militant groups. Somewhere along the line the communication did not reach. So, the driver of one of the media team’s cars spent two hours cleaning his car window – just to not attract attention to himself – while the reporters had guns pointed at their heads. The communication was being sorted out.

For someone not used to living with insurgency, Manipur is a different world. Everything you take for granted – like electricity, Internet, ATMs, cell network – needs a recheck. In Imphal, the capital city of Manipur, an average household gets six to seven hours of electricity – unless you have a ‘VIP’ connection. Corruption is rampant, all pervasive. It is supposed to be a dry state, but you can choose what you want to drink. There is something called a hawa bill, which means the government is billed for a project that does not exist in reality.

In February 2009, Dr Thingnam Kishan, a sub divisional officer, objected to National Rural Employment Guarantee Act development funds being looted by fudging population figures in Ukhrul district. He was hacked to death along with two of his staff. Even now, top government officers are scared that if you quote them by name, militants will kill them. A lot of central funds are also being poured into Manipur. On December 3, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in Imphal that New Delhi is considering incorporating Rs 6,000 crore for the state in the 12th Five Year Plan.

http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-what-is-manipurs-future/20111213.htm

SEE ALSO:

• Living on the edge – By T.K. Rajalakshmi (Dec 17, 2011, Frontline)
  http://www.flonnet.com/fl2826/stories/20111230282604400.htm

[Back to Top]

Shockingly, Soni Sori has been sexually tortured with stones. Who will answer for this? – By Tusha Mittal (Dec 24, 2011, Tehelka)

There is a battle that is described in court papers as Soni Sori vs the State of Chhattisgarh. Sori, 35, is a schoolteacher from Jabeli, accused of supporting the banned CPI(Maoist). She denies all the charges. In September, she was fired upon in the jungles of Chhattisgarh. Fearing for her life, she fled to New Delhi. On 7 October, she was arrested and sent back to Chhattisgarh. When she pleaded with a Delhi magistrate to keep her in the capital, he had said, “Not all police are bad.”

Those following Sori’s story understand why this is not her battle alone. Last month, hearing a PIL filed by Sori’s lawyers, which alleges she was tortured in police custody, the Supreme Court (SC) ordered a Kolkata hospital to conduct an independent medical exam. The report by NRS Medical College has confirmed the allegations. It describes two stones recovered from her vagina and one from her rectum. The stones were subsequently sent to the SC. Medical sources showed this correspondent images of the stones. Despite all assurances, the sources, fearing for their safety, didn’t allow TEHELKA to publish them.

Their fear is not unwarranted. This report is a key weapon in the battle. That is why several high-profile teams visited the hospital last month. Sources say that teams from the CBI, the West Bengal CID and the Chhattisgarh Police visited Dr SK Santra, superintendent of NRS Medical College, to request unofficial copies of the report. “The West Bengal CM wants to see the report,” a CID officer told Dr Santra. That is why this battle is not Sori’s alone; it is not being waged in Chhattisgarh alone. What happens here will get in the way of how history books can describe India’s war against its ‘gravest internal security threat’. What happens here will get in way, perhaps, of how India can describe itself. It is now the description of stones.

Sources told TEHELKA that the gynaecological exam of Sori reveals: “Two objects seen in the fornices, one blackish and one brownish, 2.5 x 1.5 x 1 cm.” The rectum exam found: “An irregular hard object, brownish in colour, was manually removed.” This matches the images TEHELKA has seen. Further, an MRI scan of her lower spine reveals “annular tears”, corroborating allegations that Sori was brutally beaten in custody. The medical report was submitted before the SC on 2 December. Subsequently, in a perplexing order, the SC allowed the Chhattisgarh government 45 days to respond – the next hearing is on 23 January – and sent Sori back into their custody. After pleas from her lawyer that she be shifted to a prison outside the state, the SC itself asked for her transfer from Bastar to Raipur Jail. There are fears about what might happen during that 385 km journey in police custody.

Asked to explain the stones, Dantewada SP Ankit Garg insisted the allegations are fabricated. “She was in our custody for only 48 hours from 8-10 October. It is a medical miracle if someone with stones inserted in her private parts can survive so long,” he told TEHELKA. In a letter sent to her family from jail, a copy of which is with TEHELKA, Sori specifically accused Garg. “He has taken my all. I have been tortured in ways I can’t describe here,” she wrote. “I pray to God that nothing happens to me until I have given my testimony to the SC.” At present, Sori is in judicial custody for attacking a Congress leader, bombing a tehsil office, and couriering funds to the Maoist party. TEHELKA earlier detailed how the cases are fabricated, and how Sori is an innocent tribal caught in the crossfire. (Refer to The Inconvenient Truth of Soni Sori, 15 October). “I don’t know how this struggle will end. Sometimes the condition of my body becomes quite serious,” Sori added, “but my struggle is not mine alone.”

http://tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne241211Shockingly.asp

SEE ALSO:

• Call The Pathologist – By Neelabh Mishra (Dec 19, 2011, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?279262
• Few Common Links – Editorial (Dec 13, 2011, The Telegraph)
  http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111213/jsp/opinion/story_14813508.jsp
• The Kishenji Cover-up: The Media And The Indian State – By Trevor Selvam (Dec 1, 2011, Countercurrents)
  http://www.countercurrents.org/selvam011211.htm
• ‘Republic Killing Its Own Children’ – Editorial (Dec 10, 2011, Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16840.pdf

[Back to Top]