One India : Two Peoples
Holy cows & scapegoats
by Subhash Gatade
[....It is difficult to say what will happen next !
Whether
the police and security forces would understand their folly and would
release Tariq Ahmad Batloo unconditionally or whether Delhi police who
have branded two of their earlier contacts Irshad Ali and Mohammad
Marouf Qamar as 'Al Badr Terrorists' would make amends to their
steps ? Whether media would engage in a deep soul-searching about its
complicity to join the powers that be in making 'terrorists' out of
innocent people ? Neither it is possible to predict when would the
process of 'terrorisation' and 'stigmatisation' of particular
communities would end nor it is possible to predict when would
the division of peoples in Holy Cowsand Scapegoats would end.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the future of India as a republic is at stake here.]
1. Kafka in Goa : How Tariq Ahmad Batloo was 'Declared' a 'Terrorist'
Does
anyone have heard about Tariq Ahmad Batloo, the tragic and rather
unbelievable story of the Kashmiri trader, who is at present
languishing in one of those 'high security prisons' in Kashmir meant
for 'dreaded terrorists'.
In fact Batloo's arrest in Goa last
year had made headlines where it was claimed that he was arrested while
he was getting of the Mangala express carrying a 'kilo of RDX, grenades
and detonators in his suitcase' and planned to 'set off bomb blasts in
Goa'. When the case came up for hearing in the court the cops neither
had any ticket to show that he travelled by the train nor did it
produce the RDX or Grenades which he was allegedly carrying on the day.
There were many other loopholes in the case and when it became evident
that it was a frame-up and Batloo was picked up a full week before his
'official' arrest, he was acquitted by the judge.
But that was
not the end of his tragic story. The 'Herald' a respected daily in Goa
in its editorial 'Making of a Terrorist' had given details
aftermath of his acquittal (Panjim, 15 July 2008) :
Battlo,
accompanied by his brother and cousin, was having a shave at a barber’s
when police picked them up and took them to Vasco police station. They
were instructed to take the very next flight out of the state. Police
were at the airport, questioning them, as well as photographing and
filming them, and making calls on their mobile phones. As soon as they
reached Delhi and collected their bags, they were surrounded by men in
plain clothes who took Battlo away. Two days later, J&K police said
they caught him in his ‘hideout’ in Jammu, on the same day that he left
Goa. He has been booked in an old 2005 case against someone else, and
now faces the prospect of spending a few more years in jail, until
another court realises that it wasn’t possible for him to reach Jammu
on the same day he left Goa at 5.45 pm and reached Delhi at 8.30 pm,
and acquits him from those charges as well.
Perhaps Tariq Ahmad
Batloo's saga reminds one of the classic novel 'The Trial' by Kafka
where an ordinary citizen is ranged against forces much beyond his
control. 'Herald' had rightly concluded :
'The strange case of
Tariq Ahmed Battlo – the man who was released by a Goa Fast Track Court
only to be seized by plain clothes policemen outside the New Delhi
airport and whisked away in a car, after which Jammu & Kashmir
policemen claimed he was arrested from a ‘hideout’ in Jammu – will
probably come back to haunt us all.'
For anyone who is a close
watcher of the 'terrorism' scene in the country it would be a mere
cliche to say that the case of Tariq Ahmad Batloo is not an exception.
There is a growing list of innocent people from minority community who
have been apprehended under any pretext, branded as 'terrorists',
tortured for months together to extract some confession from them and
ultimately booked in some case to spend prime time of their lives
behind bars. 'Tehelka' the english weekly recently did a series of
articles in its July-August (2008) issues which delineated plight of
innocent Muslims who had to bear the brunt of police highhandedness
under similar false pretext that they belonged to some 'terrorist'
organisation.
One can cite n number of cases where long arms of
the Indian state reach out to pick up innocents to cover up their
incompetence in providing security to its citizens. After each bomb
blast or surprise violent act, arrests are made, organisations named
but the police and investigative agencies are not able to prove their
claims in most such cases.And it has in its kitty enough 'strong laws'
which enable it put anyone behind bars for months together without a
semblance of legal hearing taking place.
2. "Coimbatore Blasts : A Police Fabrication : SIT"
It
was the end of March that the Special Investigation Team from Tamilnadu
discovered that the cases registered against five Muslim youths in
Coimbatore were fabricated by the police.(The Milli Gazette, 1-15 April
2008) July 2007 had witnessed arrest of five youths Haroon Basha, Malik
Basha, Ravi alias Tipu Sultan, Bolo Shankar alias Theequrrahman and
Shamsudheen on the basis of "secret information". The police version of
the story talked of a conspiracy by this group to plant bombs in
various hospitals in Coimbatore supposedly to increase the influence of
'Manitha Neethi Pasarai' (MNP) a human rights organisation. It was also
announced that the police have seized pipe bombs from the accused. As
is always the case a section of the media carried stories based on the
police version.
When MNP's claim that the whole episode were a
fabrication by the police, gathered broader support then the government
was also forced a start a fresh enquiry in the case by the SIT. The SIT
officials even recommended action agains the cops - namely Intelligence
assistant Commissioner Rathina Sabhapati and his associates - who had
arrested the five youth belonging to a 'Manitha Neethi Pasarai' (MNP) a
human rights organisation to malign the group.
It was worth emphasising that as a result of the CID report, Rathina Sabhapati was demoted and transferred to other place.
In
fact for the SIT it had been a rather shocking revealation that the
whole exercise of arrest of these innocent youths and the "seizure" of
explosive materials planted earlier by the cops themselves were part of
a joint effort of Rathina Sabhapati and Inspector Elankovan with due
support of senior officers. Basically it was an exercise to malign the
MNP.
Of course it would not be improper to say that the act by
the Coimbatore police pales in significance if one were to look at a
case involving the Delhi police itself. The case pertains to two
persons namely Mohammad Marouf Qamar and Irshad Ali, residents of
namely Bhajanpura (Delhi) and Sultanpuri (Delhi), who were working as
informers for the Special Cell of the Delhi police. It has been more
than two and half years that they are languishing in Tihar Jail on
false charges of "Al Badr terrorists". Thanks to their refusal to
continue working for Special Cell who wanted to send them to as moles
in a militant camp in Kashmir, they were first kidnapped by the police
themselves and later showed that they were nabbed from Mubarak Chowk
bus stop on G.T. Karnal road in North Delhi on February 9, 2006 with
two kgs of RDX and pistols. Later it was revealed that Qamar was
abducted from his Bhajanpura residence on 22 December 2005 whereas
Irshad Ali went missing from his Sultanpuri home on December 12.
Oblivious of the fact that the Special Cell people had themselves
kidnapped the duo, the family members of both of them lodged a
complaint with the police about their sudden disappearance.
Later
Qamar and Ali both moved Delhi high court and in protest against police
harassment asked their lawyer Sufiyan Siddiqui not to file any bail
application. When the matter came for hearing the 'holes' in the case
were evident where their counsel produced records of calls
between them and Special Cell officials before their "arrest" to prove
that they were informers. Interestingly statements of Special Cell
officials contradicted each other. While the police had claimed that
they were nabbed from a J & K bus in the capital with RDX, neither
it could produce tickets of the journey nor the driver or conductor of
the said bus knew anything about the matter. Neither the special cell
carried out any search at these "dreaded terrorists" nor they disclosed
in the chargesheet from where did they receive the arms and
explosives.
The CBI enquiry made it clear that the Special
Cell's version "did not inspire confidence" ( Hindustan Times, 'Some
Respite for Police Officers who 'framed' Informers, 6 th August 2008).
It also aggreed to the fact that the 'duo were victims of a conspiracy
hatched by the Special Cell in colloboration with the IB officials".
Justice Suresh has asked the CBI to proceed against the guilty
officials.
One can just imagine that if it is possible to implicate
innocents in the national capital itself, under the full glare of the
media, then if one moves further away from the capital, there would be
further deterioration in the situation. Of course, looking at the
tremendous importance of the media, which is considered a 'watchdog of
democracy' it becomes easy if the stakeholders in the media itself are
ready to sidestep institutions of democracy and take upon themselves
the job to 'investigate' such 'terror related crime' and pronounce
'judgement'
3. Media : Don't Swallow It !
Gauri
Lankesh,a senior journalist from Karnatak, and editor of a Kannada
weekly 'Lankesh Patrike' had in an article (The Milli Gazette, 16-31
March 2008) demonstrated how the media itself joins the bandwagon of
demonising particular communities and sections of society and
metamorphose into a 'legitimate tool' in their 'terrorisation' and
'stigmatisation'.
In her detailed writeup she discussed details
of a case where three young men were arrested in Hubli and Honnali
towns on charges of vehicle theft. (Riazuddin Ghose, Mohammad Abubakar
and Mohammad Asif )Looking at the fact that all of them belonged to the
minority community, 'within a day of their arrests, police
sources leaked to the media that they suspected that the trio might be
involved in planning terrorist attacks all over the country'.
The
police leak was enough for all sorts of speculative stories in the
print as well as electronic media where the reporters provided juicy
and spicy details about the 'terrorist trio's plan' to blow most of
Karnataka's key buildings All these reports which were sourced to
'police officials who did not want to be named' contended that these
three young men 'had links upto Osama Bin Laden and down to the local
'sleeper cells' of LeT or SIMI. The men were also suspected of
conducting arms training in forests, flying Pakistani flag, possessing
RDX, distributing arms and weapons to 'sleeper cells', recruiting
hundreds of youth to terrorist organisations, possessing AK-47s. etc.
'One report which appeared in the The Hindu, can be summed up thus :
The
fact that one of the arrested youth claimed before the magistrate that
his human rights have been violated by the police made the magistrate
suspect that he was no ordinary youth....On the basis of this
assumption, the magistrate instructed the police to subject him to a
thorough interrogation. And that was when the "terrorist links" were
revealed."
The hyper activity in media - which even published
news of 'arrest' of a number of students when the police had not done
so and which also reported that "religious books and material" were
seized from the trio ( as if carrying religious literature itself is a
crime ? )- led to a situation where the three 'accused in bicycle
theft' were depicted as most dreaded terrorists which the world has
seen in recent times.
The caution expressed by a senior police
officer Mr Shankar Bidri, while talking to a TV channel just fell on
deaf ears. He had said : "So far no proof has been unearthed to label
these youths as terrorists. The media is indulging in blatant
fabrication of news. What if their case too turns out to be another Dr
Mohammad Haneef case ? Let us not turn into terrorists those who are
innocent."
Of course there is another sinister way in which
media goes the extra mile in 'stigmatising',' criminalising'
individuals under some false pretext. The highly mischievous manner in
which Times of India carried a defamatory report on Bangalore Technies
is a case in point.
Under the caption 'New Network of Terror
Technies Come To Light" (28 Feb 2008) it tried to put every Muslim
individual who is working in the I.T sector under suspicion. The report
by some N.D. Shiv Kumar claimed that ' Bangalore appears to have turned
into a hub of radical technies. Under the banner of Muslim Information
Technology Professionals Association, these technies in the city are
said to be networking and aiding radical groups.' Apart from spreading
such baseless canard against a paritcular community, it also singled
out few persons whose contribution to the whole IT industry is
recognised by their adversaries also. And this included Mr K.M.Sherif.
The mischievous report even mentioned that the police is looking for
K.M.Sherif imputing that he is absconding.
K.M. Sherif a I.T.
professional for 25 years who has worked with Wipro, Sun Microsystems
and who is at present Chief Executive Officer of a reputed IT firm,
would not have imagined in his wildest dreams that such a slanderous
piece would be carried by TOI. He has promptly filed a criminal
proceedings against Times of India for defamation and has even sent a
legal notice to the owners and publishers, editor of the paper. In a
moving letter he explained the prevalent situation :
..An
environment has been created where the press can imply any random
person to be a terror suspect, and the so-called terror suspects are
immediately judged by the press and fascist sections of society to be
terrorists with no due process available to them. In most cases, the
people who are thus implicated have no backing or support and are
isolated by the society and thus are doomed even when they are innocent.
It
is not difficult to imagine how such reports do irreparable damage to
the careers of minority students who are aspiring to get into IT
industry and also to those who are already working in IT firms by
planting suspicion and mistrust in the minds of people.
Interestingly,
the media which is ready to go the extra mile when it comes to the
issue of 'Jihadi terrorism' ( or 'Fassadi terrorism' - to quote M.J.
Akbar) seems to develop cold feet when they clearly see the involvement
and participation of Hindu terrorist groups in such violent act(s). The
blasts in Kanpur (24 th August 2008) which occured in a private hostel
run by a retired employee M. S.S. Mishra which clearly saw the
involvement of Bajrang Dal activists is a case in point. It took more
than three days for 'Indian Expres', Hindustan Times, IThe Hindu
or for that matter The Times of India, to report the incident which
exposed a big conspiracy hatched by the Hindutva brigade to foment
communal riots.In the words of a senior police officer, the explosives
gathered by the duo 'were enough to blow half of Kanpur'.Interestingly
the hindi newspapers were more forthright in reporting the incident.
Even a newspaper like Jagran which is considered close to the Hindutva
brigade covered the explosion immediately.
4. Bajrang Dal Bombers
It
is official. The Sangh Parivar members have now joined in plotting
terrorist attacks. On Sunday afternoon, a bomb accidentally went off in
Kanpur killing a former Kanpur city convener of the Bajrang Dal and his
associate while they were assembling a bomb in a private hostel room.
( The Mail Today, 26 th August 2008)
Sharadanagar,
rather a non-descript locality in Kalyanpur, Kanpur has suddenly
reached national-international headlines, thanks to a bomb-explosion in
one of the private hostels run by a retired employee of KESKO Mr Shiv
Sharan Mishra. Mr Mishra had built this private hostel, which had nine
rooms and 14 students stayed in the hostel and Rajiv had kept one room
with him.
The explosion witnessed deaths of Rajiv alias Piyush
S/O Mr S.S. Mishra and Bhupinder Singh Arora, a friend of Rajiv, and
ex-convenor the city Bajrang Dal, in explosion and serious injuries to
two others. The bomb explosion was so massive that there cracks in all
the walls of the hostel and bomb splinters reached 50 metres from
the spot of the explosion.
It is reported that Piyush, who use
to work as a complaint officer in a mobile company in Lucknow, came
home with Bhupinder and asked the residents of the hostel to vacate the
rooms on the pretext of checking the electric wiring. As soon as the
occupants left the hostel, a massive blast took place. Recovery of a
timer device and prohibited explosive raw material shows that a major
terror plot was being hatched there. Ths photo studio run by Bhupinder
was in Sarvodaya Nagar locality and his shop was very close to the
popular J.K. temple
Bhupinder used to run a photo studio in the
Sarvoday Nagar locality of Kanpur and his shop was close to the city's
popular J.K. temple, police said. According to the police the
explosives were meant to spread during Sunday's celebrations.On monday
police recovered some crude hand grenades, lead oxide, red lead,
potassium nitrate, bomb pins, timers and batterires from the spot. The
police felt that the quantity of explosives stored there was enough to
destroy half of Kanpur.
The most notable fact about the
perpetrators of this conspiracy, who died during this explosion, is
that both of them belonged to Bajrang Dal, the 'storm tropper' wing of
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The leaders of the Bajrang Dal have
conceded that they 'worked with the organisation' some time back and
one of them happened to be the convenor of the city wing.
Looking
at the grievous nature of the crime, and the fact that a major tragedy
could be averted, it is expected that the state government with
necessary help from the central government would try to unearth the
real conspirators who were behind the plan. It is a positive sign that
the police have recovered mobiles of both of them and now if they wish
they can take the case to its logical end.
And looking at the
fact that while leaders of the city Bajrang Dal were conceding the fact
that the perpetrators happened to be members of their
organisation and 'who have stopped working for it since sometime' , the
police in the city was 'still investigating their details'. There is a
strong possibility that the police may turn the focus of the
investigation to Babbar Khalsa to save the real perpetrators of this
act. In a report of the incident which appeared in 'Jagran' a hindi
daily ( 25 th August 2008) one gets to know how the wind is blowing in
this case. It tells us that 'The name of Babbar Khalsa Force has
cropped up in the conspiracy to wreak havoc in the city. The ATS
members dropped hints to this effect." It further adds 'according to
ATS sources, Bhupender was related to Babbar Khalsa Force and police
has seized two of his mobiles'.Perhaps it is conveniently forgotten
that Bhupender Singh was once a City Chief of Bajrang Dal.
Of
course there is a strong possibility that the powers that be would
'individualise' the crime and would rather never try to move beyond the
obvious.Apprehensions about behaviour of the polity and the state
apparatus is not uncalled for. We have been witness to cavalier
attitude of the police as well as intelligence agencies whenever any
terrorist act committed by Hindu fanatic has come to the fore.
In
a press conference held in Delhi ( 'Setalvad raps CBI on Nanded terror,
29 th August 2008, Mail Today) leading social activist Teesta Setalvad
and filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt reported the "massive cover-up operation"
launched by the CBI of the Nanded terror incident which similarly saw
deaths of two youths of Bajrang Dal activists in 2006. According to
them the CBI did not apply 'sections of criminal conspiracy or booking
the Bajrang Dal accused under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act'
while 'submitting a chargesheet this March in court.
They further add :
"The
CBI chargesheet filed in March 2008 in the Nanded case is an eyewash.
The CBI has watered down the entire terror trail and links to terror
training grounds of Bajrang Dal youth in Maharashtra - the Bhonsla
school in Nashik and Nagpur - have not been explored. The Mumbai
anti-terrorism squad (ATS) chargesheeted 11 persons for criminal
conspiracy but the CBI did not even consider the possibility of a
conspiracy - it has, in fact even diluted the ATS case."
5. Victims as Perpetrators !
Friday
the 22 nd day happened to be an important day as far as
focussing/underlining the manner in which minorities are viewed and
dealt with by the state and the civil society in today's India.
A
three day 'People's Tribunal on the Atrocities Committed Against
Minorities in the Name of Fighting Terrorism' saw its inauguration on
this day at Hyderabad. Organised jointly by different civil society
organisations the tribunal intended to see victims from 10 states
depose before a eminent jury of judges and lawyers and journalists.
The
People's Tribunal sought to question the manner in which terrorist
incidents/acts are treated in the country where 'Only people from
one community are arrested, only organisations of one sort are blamed
and motives too similar are rattled most of the times. Facts like
members of all communities dieing, including of the one being blamed
for the act, or the particular community targeting its own place of
worship simply go unquestioned.'
The day also saw a protest
demonstration in Churchgate, Bombay under the auspices of 'Awami Bharat
and and the Dalit-OBC Intellectual Forum' against the manner in which
Ken Heywood, a key suspect in the Ahmedabad terror attack, who had sent
the terror mail just five minutes before the attack happened, was
allowed to escape the country.
Demanding that 'Ken Haywood
should be immediately be recalled to India and a thorough investigation
be carried out, as he seems to be a key person in the planning and
execution of the Ahmedabad and other terror attacks' the invite for the
demonstration expresses the possibility that 'Haywood being an
undercover CIA operative with the task of formenting terror so as to
destabilise India and spread fear and insecurity and thus pushing India
further into the US-Israeli camp.'
The concerned citizens
demonstration at Churchgate Railway Station sought to question the
manner in which 'A person who was under the constant glare of the media
and who even had police security posted outside his residence' was
allowed to leave the country. It rightly says 'The very fact that even
his passport was not confiscated speaks volumes of our "intelligence"
agencies.'
The deponents in the tribunal comprised of two types
of people. People who were arrested by police of flimsy charges and
then let off due to lack of evidence, relatives of people who are in
jail under similar charges.ll those who deposed, belonged to Muslim
community. A few of the deponents also submitted copies of documents
pertaining to their cases. The jury which comprised of eminent judges,
social activists and journalists issued its interim report which
emphasised that a large number of innocent young Muslims have been or
are being victimized by the police on charges of terrorism in gross
violation of law. The People’s Tribunal showed that police,
intelligence agencies and even judiciary are constantly compromising
civil liberties and constitutional rights all over India. It seems that
the Indian state has become an apparatus that willfully ignores the
basic human rights of minorities in the country. It rightly emphasised
that it is the collective responsibility of society 'to ensure that the
merchants of terror are punished but at the same time society has to
take care that deep rooted prejudices do not develop against certain
sections - so much so that these sections start wondering whether they
are part of this society at all or not.'
A tendency on part of
the police also came in for lot of criticism wherein police seem to
rush to the press immediately after nabbing some person and dole out
the stories of their success and relate the progress of the
investigations. The media inadvertently or because of malice towards
particular communities also reproduced this police version ad verbatim.
Interim
recommendations of the People's Tribunal are worth consideration :
Human Rights Commissions at the state as well as central level taking
up such matters sincerely, courts becoming more cautious in granting
police or judicial custody looking at the fact that alleged confessions
of the accused can also be doctored, Courts awarding compensation for
the destruction of life and reputation of persons acqutted by the
courts, trial courts being provided with medical officer who can
immediately examine any accused complaining of torture in Police or
judicial custody, police should not be allowed to get blank papers
signed by the acccused, members of Bar Associations seeking to prevent
lawyers from representing accused persons must be hauled up for
Contempt of Court for interfering with the administration of Justice.
And the most important recommendation was addressed to the Indian
government which talked of its signing the International Criminal Court
Treaty known as the Rome Statute which has been signed by most
countries.
6. All Beaten Bears ?
The
saffrons have a good ability of peddling their 'achievements' and
denouncing their 'opponents'. And when Narendra Modi's anti-terrorist
squad with due help from other state governments officially 'cracked
the case' about Ahmedabad blasts and arrested its 'masterminds' there
was no stopping them. Senior leaders of the saffron dispensation
described the 'success' of the Modi regime in solving the case within a
fortnight as the culmination of the no nonsense approach of the Party'
towards terrorism.
But despite all the brouaha over this
'spectacular achievement' and despite receiving congratulatory messages
from many quarters, one notices public scepticism over the claims
by the government. Sheela Bhatt, (rediff.com, 26 th August 2008) who
recently did a story 'highlighting how the Gujarat police force cracked
the Ahmedabad blasts conspiracy and how the they were going about
building an airtight case against the terrorists,' gave vent to this
feeling. According to her 'the biggest stumbling block before the
Gujarat police' is the general disbelief or public scepticism 'over its
claim of having cracked the case.'
But before coming to the
grand disjunction between claims by the Gujarat government and the
people's perception about it, it would be opportune to underline an
important conclusion which has largely gone unnoticed. As per the
Gujarat government's claims it has not only got evidence against the
planners and executioners of the bomb blasts in Ahmedabad and Surat,
but it has definite insights into the conspiracy aspect of the blasts
in Samjhauta Express and in Jaipur. The import of this is that (to
quote Ms Sheela Bhatt) :
In other words, what the Gujarat police
is claiming is that the blasts in Hyderabad, Bengaluru ,Jaipur,
Ahmedabad and probably Samjhauta Express were conceived, planned and
executed by the militant faction of the Students Islamic Movement of
India formed after 2005.
That also means the usual suspects --
like Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence, Lashkar-e-Tayiba or HUJI
of Bangladesh -- can't be blamed for some of the recent blasts that
have killed more than 200 innocent Indians........
A senior
Bharatiya Janata Party leader in Gujarat, whose party is in power in
the state, says, "We have not found any external links to SIMI in the
execution of the blasts in Ahmedabad and Surat."
It remains to
be seen how palatable this would be to the ideologues of RSS-BJP whose
weltanshauung rests on the twin pillars of Pak bashing and stigmatising
Islam.
The general public scepticism could be discerned at two levels.
The
police force in the country is laced with tremendous power and little
accountability which has made it too lousy. It is normally the case
that as they can pick up any bear and parade it as a self-confessed
tiger, they have little drive or motivation to go after the real
tiger(s). This situation results in appalling intelligence failures by
breeding incompetence and corruption within the force. It was not for
nothing that in one famous judegement in the fifties Justice A.N. Mulla
castigated it as 'the biggest organised goonda force in the country'.
In
case of terrorism related investigations the police force which
exercises power without any accountability acquires further immunity
thanks to the special laws drafted for special conditions.If under
normal law confession before a police officer is not admissible as
evidence, under such laws such confessions are admissible. It follows
that terrorism related investigations which are considered special
always face credibility problems in this part of the world.
Coming
to Gujarat the memories of Sohrabuddin and Kausarbi encounter killings
are still fresh when police force from two states - Gujarat and
Rajasthan - coordinated their killing and presented it as killing of
Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives who were planning to eliminate Narendra Modi
and other senior leaders. Later it was revealed that controversial
Gujarat IPS officer and “encounter specialist” D.G. Vanzara, now under
arrest for the death of Sohrabuddin in November 2005, and his team of
trigger happy police personnel had killed at least 15 people in the
past few years in nine encounters on the alleged grounds that they were
plotting to kill Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and other senior
BJP leaders. He had also arrested scores of “terrorists” on similar
charges.
The public scepticism has another important dimension.
People
have not forgotten that blasts in Ahmedabad evoked altogether different
reactions from the mainstream parties. A senior leader of the BJP Ms
Sushma Swaraj, had blamed Congress for the blasts who according to her
wanted to divert people's attention from the controversial means
adopted by it to win vote of confidence. As opposed to Ms Sushma
Swaraj, a senior Congress leader and ex Chief Minister of M.P Mr
Digvijay Singh had raised some pertinent questions about the blasts in
the country. He had asked why blasts occur whenever BJP is in trouble.
He had also said that he had enough proof to show the RSS and its front
organisations had been involved in bombmaking in earlier events. People
noticed that it was for the first time that the mainstream political
parties had moved away from usual 'SIMI' or 'Pakistan bashing' over
these blasts. As rightly noted by historian Amaresh Mishra in one of
his writeups in 'The Milli Gazette' for the first time the political
nature of bomb blasts and the politics underneath it was coming to the
fore.
It is now history how the scenario dramatically changed
once the central government lost its case against SIMI in the special
tribunal appointed by it to verify the ban and the government had to
rush to Supreme Court to get a stay order. Suddenly one fine morning we
were told that Narendra Modi's police people ( which had definitely
covered itself with glory in the 2002 carnage) have ultimately cracked
the case and it is after a long time that police people in different
states showed exemplary co-ordination to nab the accused. Just a day
before when we were waiting with bated breath about the results of
interrogation of Ken Haywood - the key link in the whole case - by the
ATS in Bombay (with a 'lookout notice' issued against him) we
discovered that he has already fled the country.
The powers that
be told us that in fact Indian Mujahideen and SIMI are same
organisations which had perpetrated the dastardly act. Even if one were
to believe that the 'confession' by Safdar Nagori, head of SIMI was
true, who was arrested in March in M.P., then the said confession had
not made any such claims.
7. Where Do We Go From Here ?
....It is difficult to say what will happen next !
Whether
the police and security forces would understand their folly and would
release Tariq Ahmad Batloo unconditionally or whether Delhi police
which has branded two of their earlier contacts Irshad Ali and Mohammad
Marouf Qamar as 'Al Badr Terrorists' would make amends to their steps ?
Whether media would engage in a deep soul-searching about its
complicity to join the powers that be in making 'terrorists' out of
innocent people ? Neither it is possible to predict when would the
process of 'terrorisation' and 'stigmatisation' of particular
communities would end nor it is possible to predict when would
the division of peoples in Holy Cows and Scapegoats would end.
As
of now there seems to be no end to the phenomenon of scapegoating -
wherein the long arms of injustice pick up scapegoats from Indian
population to cover up its own incompetence nor does one see an end to
the phenomenon of 'holy cows' wherein it protects people/organisations
irrespective of their crimes against the people of the country.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the future of India as a republic is at stake here.
Contact : subhash.gatade@gmail.com