Dousing fire with petrol : fake encounters

There is need for a holistic understanding of the kind of situation created by the disclosure of the magisterial inquiry report into the fake encounter of Irshad Jahan, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Jisan Johar. Our definition of terrorism is not inclusive enough to cover the violence which the police or the state perpetrates on the hapless. We often hear people saying that a terrorist propagates certain causes while committing act of terror. Therefore propaganda is an integral defining feature of terror. This description of terrorism does not touch upon the stealth with which the state agents commit terror or a right wing group does in dastardly anonymity for the fear of being named and prosecuted. What is terrorism of one is fake encounter of another.
Gujarat Health Minister and Spokesperson of the government, Jay Narayan Vyas spoke tongue in cheek when he remarked that Irshat Jahan fake encounter must not be connected or compared with Sohrabuddin case. In both the cases state agents were used to kill ordinary people with hardly any criminal background, except smuggling of arms in the case of Sohrabuddin. In both the cases the killer cops justified the ghoulish murder in the name of deshbhakti or patriotism. DG Vanzara used that vernacular word repeatedly in describing how he and his killer team had killed the “terrorists” out to kill Narendra Modi. This created the kind of biased atmosphere against the victims which also helped consolidate the Chief Minister’s party in state election. Inadvertently the guilty cops sent another set of signal propagating the kind of treatment meted out to the minority community in India. To the groups that receive the signal as excuse for their diabolic design mount their own terrorist revenge attack. What the cops are doing is the “dousing of fire with petrol.”
The political parties and in particular BJP and Shiv Sena never fight shy of their muscle and monetary power in their own support of persons involved in terrorism. Thus BJP leader from Mumbai Kriti Somayia’s asking the government to slam MOCOCA against Abu Azmi for his statement that Ishrat was innocent. But nobody in Gujarat asked Pota to be used against industry minister of the central government Shakarbhai Vaghela when he said that Hindutva groups were behind Modasa blast and the police were deliberately neglecting this aspect. Shiv Sena threatened lawyers if they chose to defend anyone from Muslim community accused in terrorism while at the same time the party hired lawyers to defend Lt Col Prasad Purohit and sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur. This is another dimension of “dousing fire with petrol.”
The most dangerous instance of dousing fire with petrol is when the IB or RAW or Special Task Force or CBI in league with the extremist right wing groups like Abhinav Bharat use mukhbirs or police informers and turn them into terrorists for their own consideration of pleasing their political bosses or for promotion. The finger of suspicion points in this direction even in the case of Ishrat Jahan and the accused in the Malegaon blasts of 2006 and 2008, and even in the Samjhauta express bombing. Fighting fire with fire can burn either side. Therefore look carefully in the burn marks and scars.
In July 2004 the Ghazwa Times of Lashkar acknowledged Ishrat as “a woman activist of LeT.” To understand how this is so should not be a Herculean task as our intelligence agencies have their own established practice of luring Muslim youths in going to Pakistan and taking training at camps. They work for the intelligence agencies which then use them to get official recognition and promotion to lucrative posts by bumping them off and passing this off as terrorists on the way to kill Modi. Then apply the veneer of deshbhukti. Ishrat was kidnapped by Vanzara’s DCB. Why should the police carry away someone by force and illegally and then kill her altogether? In her case, the other three were killed early in night or around midnight but she was put in the car and shot in the seat in the wee hours of the next day! Kauserbi was also done to death. She along with Sohrabuddin was kidnapped from a road in Maharashtra on her way from Hyderabad and then taken to Ahemdabad, her last ride. The modern day Neros were making political capital and collecting spoils of office as the Rome was burning.
The double crossing of the Muslim youth had become so well entrenched that people like Afzal Guru had to buy the lucrative post made available to them by the Special Task Force. Destitute Muslim youths saw in this a break for a better opportunity in life and fell a victim when the police and intelligence agencies double crossed them.
This also happened with Irshad Ali and his colleague Nawab Qamar who worked as police informers to the Special Cell (which has acquired notoriety of having Rajbir Singh and MC Sherma on its staff) of Delhi police and the IB. When they refused to play the authorities declared them terrorists and now they are in jail number 8 of Tihar prison. In his letter to the Prime Minister Irshad revealed how they have been trapped and describes the way IB and Delhi police Special Cell are fighting terror as “dousing fire with petrol.”
Irshad and Nawab’s case has been documented by CBI on the order of the Delhi High Court. These two were coerced by the IB to join Lashkar-e-Toiba camp in Pakistan. They refused. The Special Cell acting at the instance of IB trapped them with the help of Mohamamd Khalid alias Majid of IB in league with the Special Cell officials Lalit, Bhushan, Rajinder and Devdutt kidnapped them and booked and implicated them in false cases.
The collusion between the police and the Hindu right in such matters is undeniable fact. In the case of Sohrabuddin a marble merchant belonging to BJP in Rajasthan had allegedgly tipped (supari) the police against Sohrabuddin. It is also well known that Narendra Modi created the kind of atmosphere where fake encounter is accepted by the people at large. For example, on December 4, 2007 Modi justified the murder of Sohrabuddin at an elelction rally at Mangrol in South Gujarat “he got what he deserved.” He asked the people what would they do to a man who dealt in smuggling of guns. The people thundered “mari nakho, [kill him]” Pat he rejoined: “Then if I have done anything wrong, let the government of Sonia Gandhi hang me.” Another version is: Modi: “What should have been done to a man from whom a large number of AK 47 rifles were recovered, who was on the search list of police from four states, who attacked the police, who had relations with Pakistan and was eyeing to enter Gujarat?” The audience replied: mari nakho, mari nakho. The chief minister then bared his fangs: “Does my government need to take permission of Sonaben for this?” He is using the fake encounter to build up vote bank for the Hindu right party but justifying the cold blooded murder. And he, a chief minister!
Modi’s government did not take permission for renting the farm houses of Hindutva activists in Ahemdabad. In such two houses Sohrabuddin and Kauserbi were kept. In some other such farm houses Ishrat and others must have also passed their last days between their kidnapping on June 12 2004 and night of June 14. Ahemdabad, Delhi, Hyderabad and Nashik and Deolali have acquired world fame of having such farm houses kept by the police and the IB where fake encounter victims are kept until they are dispatched at suitable opportune time. That depends on how much benefit the Hindu right demagogue can derive and what promotional chances of office the concerned cops and intelligence officials have. One such farm house is the Jagtap malla in Nashik where Abrar Ahmed (accused, in the Malelgaon bomb blast 2006) was kept and another in Deolali where he shared rooms with Lt Col Prsad Purohit!


http://kafila.org/2007/09/28/ibs-bearded-jihadi-moulvis-trapping-muslims/
“IB’s bearded ‘jihadi’ moulvis trapping Muslims” The Kashmir Times September 21 2007.