Blinkered and botched up investigation: Haren Pandya case

It all began with the chief secretary PK Mishra asking intelligence chief RB Sreekumar on June 7, 2002 to find out which minister had revealed the secrets of the meeting in the house of chief minister Narendra Modi. The secretary insidiously suggested the name of Haren Pandya the revenue minister. He also supplied the phone number of Pandya. Of course, the intelligence chief found it out that it was indeed Pandya. But Sreekumar refused to give in writing as it was not morally correct to tell on the minister and official decorum was against it. Pandya had won three consecutive elections from the Ellis Bridge constituency. Modi denied him ticket for the fourth time in the December 2002 elections. No sooner did Modi become the CM than he dropped Pandya from his cabinet. More important than this was the discomforting fact that Pandya was emerging as the most potent rival to Modi. It was he who had revealed the crux of the matter that Modi had instructed his police to let Hindus wreak revenge on the Muslims for three days to teach them a lesson and turn the tide of history once for all in favour of Hindus. Therefore Modi’s vendetta against Pandya had begun in full steam until he was killed on March 26, 2003 during morning walk in Law Garden locality of Ahmadabad. The finger of suspicion naturally points in the direction of no other than Modi. Thereafter commenced the crafty cover up ala the post Godhra violence.
Modi had ushered in a regime of venality which he successfully tried for some years to use to silence his rivals. To carry out his personal vendetta under the glamour of anti Muslim fight against terrorism there was no dearth of pliant and tainted administrative officials. For example, OP Mathur, IGP (Administration and Security) had already supplied the phone number of Pandya (9824030629) to the chief secretary. Sreekumar did not comply with the request of the chief secretary for he knew quite well what motivated the request. It came from the highest echelon in the government.
As the Supreme Court has already blamed Modi for the subversion of justice it is more than confirmed by the acquittal of the 12 convicts in the murder case of Pandya. Modi’s vendetta falls into a pattern. If Ahsan Jaffri opposed him in his canvassing in Rajkot election of 2001-2002 Jaffri must be finished. Pandya had opposed him so he must go. Nowhere in the world would a chief minister like Modi and a minister of state for home like Amit Shah behave the way they did. This was facilitated by the government of the same party, BJP, ruling at the centre also. PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee chose not to take any action as his home minister LK Advani flagrantly protected his protégé.
So brazen is the BJP and particularly Advani and Modi that they had no qualms that the bereaved father Vithalbhai Pandya contested election against no other than Advani on the issue that his son who had fallen a victim of Modi vendetta and that it was a political murder and nothing else. Pandya’s wife also questioned the investigation into the murder of her husband. She contended that her husband was shot from close range and did not lie in a pool of blood as the official version would have us believe. She said that there was no blood mark in the car. How could that be? Jagruti believes that her husband’s murderers are at large and Modi and BJP, nay, Advani must give her justice.
The brazenness of the rulers and the police are alike. The CBI took full three years to complete investigation into Malegaon, Maharahstra, blasts of 2006 but did not find any breakthrough in the case. The judge chided them for this immoral response to a task assigned to them. They took another year and came up with a charge sheet with a cosmetic addition and put its rubber stamp on the completion of the investigation. In a similar way the CBI did the investigation into the murder of Pandya. As the judges observed “What clearly stands out from the records of the present case is that investigation in the case of the murder of Shri Pandya has throughout been botched up and blinkered and it left a lot to be desired. The investigating officers ought to be held accountable for their ineptitude resulting in injustice, harassment of many persons and enormous waste of public resources and time of the courts.”
There is a generalized pattern whereby the investigation agencies and the ATS have framed Muslims as terrorists. In the case of Malegaon 2006 Zahid was framed as the one who planted the bomb at the graveyard mosque because his brother was caught in the arms haul case in Malegaon May 2006. Two others, Asif Khan and Mohammad Ali, are also accused in 7/11 local train blasts in Mumbai. Zahid was not in Malegaon but in Phoolsangvi, Yawatmal. The police have charged that he was present in Malegaon and attended the conspiracy meetings and assembled the bombs in Shabbir’s workshop and also planted them. As a matter of fact he led prayers five times on September 8, 2006 in the mosque of Phoolsangvi where he worked as an imam. The police used their informer Abrar to ask his friend Hamid Iqbal to speak to Abrar and now they say that it was the voice of Zahid. Then the police asked Abrar to use another friend to utter the sentence “hum musalmano ke saath gaddari mut karo warno achcha nahin ho ga.” (Don’t betray us Muslims otherwise it would be dangerous for you). Abrar asked a friend Mohammad Shafi Mohammad Sadiqu to utter the sentence but he refused and also gave this in an affidavit to the court. Could such shoddy way of framing Muslims stand trial in the court of law? There is also growing despair among the Muslims that their youths languish in jails across India and lose their prime time of life which they could have better used in earning their bread. Those arrested in Pandya case in 2003 have lost eight years and those who were imprisoned in Malegaon case in2006 have lost five years. When their innocence is proved could they get back their youth. Some of them had got married just days before arrest! Many of them were the only breadwinners of their family.
In Pandya case too those who were suspected and accused of attempting to kill Vishwa Hindu Parishad activist Jagdish Tiwari on March 11, 2003 in the Bapunager area of Ahmadabad were also automatically accused of murdering Pandya fifteen days later. How could they remain in the city and strike again in such quick succession is left for you to guess. Is it logical and probable that the same group would dare to kill the revenue minister within a fortnight of fatally attacking Tiwari is for the public to worry about. Was the Gujarat of 2002 so devoid of fear for the Muslims that they would take such risk and strike so soon, is a question that is also left for the fancy of those who are not part of the juggernaut of development. The Muslims were damn scarred even to raise their eyes at the Hindus or dare to look into their eyes let alone going for the VHP leader or the minister. So the motive of murder had nothing to do with revenge of a community.
What the CBI did in Pandya case was what the new Home Secretary of Modi, Manoj Antani, had done in 2002. Antani was the DSP of Bharuch. He had clubbed the two cases of Bahar ki Undai and Haji Khana Bazaar and presented the arrested Muslims youths as common accused for the two attacks which took place simultaneously. The two areas of Bharuch are far apart from each other. The judge of the high court chided Antani for this botched up case. In order to avoid embarrassment and focus of public attention as well as for the court strictures Modi transferred Antani. Later Antani joined central government job and earlier in August 2011 Modi appointed him as his Home Secretary. It is strange that Modi and his administration can fool all the people all the time!
The CBI has finalized its finding and prepared charge sheet in which it shows that the twelve accused in the attack on Tiwari are also accused in the case of Pandya without any substantiation of the crimes!
In all these cases the police and the investigation agencies have taken Muslims for a ride. Even the judges have taken a dig at the agency: "In fact, the investigation clearly appears to have been so botched up and misdirected that the confessional statements recorded during the police remand could not be safely relied on for convicting any of the appellants for commission of, abatement of or conspiracy to commit murder."
Even in other now famous cases of frame up the material evidence did not corroborate. "The material evidence on record could not support the conclusions drawn in the impugned (trial court) judgment as far as killing of Pandya by Ashgar Ali was concerned." Therefore the confessional statements extracted through the means of torture in detention could not lead to material evidence. There was one eye witness who also was full of ‘inherent contradictions and improbabilities”; independent evidence could not support what he had said. "Under such circumstances, one set of weak and doubtful evidence of the sole eye-witness and the ballistic expert could not find corroboration and support from other weaker pieces of evidence in the form of confessional statements," ruled the judges.
What Anil Patel, the only eye witness, said is as improbable as Sajid Shaikh witness statement. He is a native of Malegaon who overheard the Kashmiri accused in 7/11. He was sitting on one platform and they were in another at Secundrabad and he says that he overheard them saying in colloquial Kashmiri that they wanted to attack in Mumbai! The Kashmiri youths have been languishing in prison since then.
A pertinent point in question in framing the innocent is who is ultimately accountable for it. The MIM president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi has voiced concern over it. In the Pandya case five people- Asghar Ali, Abdul Bari, Abdul Raoof, Shafiuddin and Syed Iftikhar- are from Hyderbad. They were picked up by the Andhra Pardesh police. Why did the AP government not ascertain if they were guilty or not? Why did it facilely cooperate with Gujarat government of the day when it was clear that it was neck deep in the sponsoring of the pogroms of Muslims in 2002? After all it has a moral duty to its state citizens. Similarly why had the chief secretary PK Mishra asked Sreeekumar to give in writing? Had he his personal ax to grind in the case of who spoke to the Citizens for Justice and Peace Commission on the meeting of February 27, 2002? If he was doing at the behest of the CM he should be interrogated to establish the chain of command responsibility.
As in the case of Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi the five accused from Hyderabad were also held at a farm house in Hyderabad in what in international terminology would amount to extraordinary rendition. They were tortured and then handed over to the Gujarat police. Such humiliation and torture they suffered that one of them currently on bail, Abdul Raoof, says that "I don't know whether the scars of accusations and trial will ever heal."
It is now an open secret that Modi used his staff and friends like the joint director of IB Rajinder Kumar to influence the investigations into the pogroms as well as the fake encounters. Investigators must throw their nets wider to catch the bigger fish.

That, the order came from above in the words of KK Mysorwalla even in the case of the fake encounters is well known now. Pandya also fell a victim of fake encounter. It was not that he was killed by Muslim ‘terrorists’ to avenge the pogroms. For example, Asghar Ali was not convinced that he would strike Pandya on that ground. He would not have been unnerved by the hawkers and morning walkers and college going youths if he had taken a vow. This did not come to him naturally. If at all it was Sohrabuddin who used Kalimuddin to kill Pandya. Further if we have inkling in the affairs it would be that Tulsiram Prajapati did not act alone when he pulled the trigger on Pandya, but others were there too, most likely from the police department.

It was not Pandya who was a rabid hater of Muslims but Modi. The CM had instructed that DGP DG Vanzara should be transferred to the border district where it was planned to have Prajapati killed. The superscription on the files bears witness to this. Senior cop Geetha Johari was to interview him the next day in connection with Sohrabuddin murder and before Prajapati could spill the beans he was murdered. Johari also came under the heinous influence of the CM who had got her husband threatened with a legal suit to be filed against him if she went ahead. It was also she who hinted that it was Kalimuddin who was the third person on the bus from Hyderabad to Sangli. All this could not be going on in the CM’s Office without obtaining his nod. Moreover the anti Muslim atmosphere in the state was brewed up by Modi as Slobodan Milosevic had done in the former Yugoslavia.

The family of Pandya and even others have averred that he did not have any entrenched hatred for the Muslims. Had it been that why would he have disclosed the secret to the Commission headed by justice Krishna Iyer? It was Modi’s Achilles heel that the disclosure would give him out. The two persons Modi really feared are the slain Pandya and Sanjiv Bhatt.

It was this fear that made Modi tell a lie that Bhatt did not attend the meeting because he was not senior most in the intelligence department. This mouthing of the lie is threatening to become his Albatross around his neck. However, elaborate preparation Modi and his aides made they left pugmarks of the demagogue dragon.

It is in this regard that one has to see why the hawkers were removed from the Law Garden where Pandya was killed the very next day. Subsequently the hawkers were allowed to reoccupy the public space. This gives credence to the suspicion that Modi and the higher echelon of his administration and police were very much involved in the murder and so it was fake encounter.

How could the chief minister be unaware of the events taking place in his state, nay in the city where he dwells and from where he rules?

It shows how well planned and sanctioned from chief minister’s office the operation dealing with Sohrabuddin, Pandya, Tulsiram, etc was. For example, Bhatt had come to know that Sohrabuddin had first contacted Asghar Ali to kill Pandya. When Asghar could not, Tulsiram identified Sohrabuddin to the police who killed him. Then Tulsi was killed to remove the proof from the entire operation of killing Pandya. So one after another those who played pivotal role and knew the secret of the arrangement to kill were silenced so that it would not be known that it was done at the behest of the government. To do all this Modi’s most trusted officer DG Vanzara played an important role. He also pretended that he was doing it for patriotism (he dubbed it deshbhakti). It was a cover up right from the day Mishra called Sreekumar to give in writing what Pandya was talking on his phone to the gunning down of Tulsiram. Such was the atmosphere of fear for the Muslims that no one would have dared to attack even ordinary Hindus to avenge the murder of nearly 2000 Muslims.

Of course, above all was the minister of state for home and the most trusted lieutenant of Modi, Amit Shah. When Bhatt told him about Tulsiram killing Pandya, that Tulsi "carried out the job" Shah turned pale and nervous. "Shah sounded very disturbed over the telephone and asked me not to speak about it to anyone." Bhatt was in charge of the Sabamati prison where Asghar Ali was kept. Bhatt put the fact in a report and submitted it to home department. Shah was so scared of all that he must have told Modi about it and to hush up the matter Bhatt was transferred. Such a transfer could not be done without the knowledge of Modi.

Modi had already eyed Pandya with intense hatred and wanted him removed and when the matter got involuted he must have thought of the final solution of liquidating him by all means. Even the intelligence chief of the state DGP Sreekumar has asserted "According to the intelligence inputs we had at that time, Pandya was not on the hit list of terrorists (who wanted to avenge the Gujarat riots) at that time."

It doesn’t matter if he was not. He must be made to fit in the subversion of justice and the topsy-turvy system ushered in by the Motidva-Hindutva. In fact ATS in Maharashtra and Gujarat and the Special Cell of Delhi police under Rajbir Singh also did just that.

Therefore the trial court judges scoffed at the experts of forensic department as well as on ballistic experts who strove to prove their worth in objective assessment of the seven wounds including the glaring wound number 7 which showed an entry hole in the left of scrotum of Pandya and the bullet track went through the spinal cord. How precisely must have the assassin aimed at the left testicle! (Which leg went up in the driver seat?) Even so the judges would naturally use it to justify that there was no sex jealousy here or any revenge motive of any love affair or rivalry. The assailants acted in a tizzy all in few seconds and left no blood marks. The widow and the bereaved father must learn to know that the clothes act as bandages which prevent profuse bleeding which can naturally be understood only by the rustics like PW 55, Anil Patel.

Justice Akshay Mehta is the role model. Modi tried judges one after another to bail Babu Bajrangi out of the prison. The man had led the mob to kill more than a hundred Muslims in the most barbaric manner. And yet he was allowed to abscond in the Gujarat government guest house of Mount Abu by no other than the Chief Minister of Gujarat. One of the judges told Bajrangi that for the crimes he had committed at Naroda Patia he would have awarded him two life terms in jail. Ultimately Mehta came and granted him bail with impunity. Of course the award did not have to be kept in secret. He was made one of the judges who would sit on Nanavati-Shah commission of inquiry into the pogroms of Muslims in the aftermath of the Godhra incident. He is still enjoying the windfalls of his service to Moditva. Why would not the trial court judges emulate him!

Most startling of all development was that Modi had justified the killing of Sohrabuddin and dared the government in Delhi to arrest him. In the 2007 he collected votes in the name of killing a man whom he described as a terrorist caught with a cache of AK 47. Sonia Gandhi called Modi a merchant of death. The development grew into a crescendo of tension and climax. But what is shaping investigation and court hearing is proving to be anticlimax in which the heroes and saviours of the people are turning out to be the devils who have bedeviled the whole nation with their canards. There is every likelihood that the high drama will end in a whimper. First the killing of Pandya is linked to that of Sohrabuddin. When Azam Khan revealed it in 2010 he was kidnapped and made to retract. Who had brought about the retraction if not Amit Shah who was extremely nervous about what Asghar Ali had told Sanjiv Bhatt that Tulsiram Prajapati may have killed Pandya. There is also the statement of ACP Abhay Chaudasma, who disclosed that he had affinity for Sohrabuddin and had saved him from the murder case of Pandya.

These revelations may lead to the exposure of full-fledged racket that the minister of state (Home) was conducting with approval from his immediate boss and patron Modi who was also the Home Minister of his own government. Aristotle said the subject of tragedy is not impossible probability but probable impossibility. It would mean that the two ministers were running the racket for fabulous amount of money as they were administering the richest state of the country. So the marble lobby in Rajasthan and the builders lobby in Gujarat gave money for the killing of Sohrabuddin. In the meantime Amit Shah must also have realized that Sohrabuddin knew a great deal of the racket and was a danger in the future and so he was removed in the fake encounter. He knew that Amit Shah wanted Pandya killed for which purpose Sohrabuddin had gone to Hyderbad and had contacted Asghar Ali. The Hyderbadi could did not have courage for the task or did not feel doing it. Chaudasma had procured a gun for the purpose. The mission was aborted. So Prajapati was used to finish off Pandya.


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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Our-stand-vindicated-in-Pandya-case-Asad/articleshow/9792097.cms
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/tulsiram-prajapati-killed-haren-pandya-sanjiv-bhatt/1/149590.html

http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/mar/26guj.htm
The news coverage of rediff.com seems to be at odds with the ground reality. The prosecution would have us believe that Pandya was killed at 7.30 rather than at 10.30. That Pandya lay in a pool of blood according to rediff.com while the charge sheet says that he was killed in the driver seat and there was no blood on the seat. The supporters and sympathizers of the slain shouted angry slogans against Modi.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main11.asp?filename=ts031205Who_Killed.asp
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Tulsiram-killed-Haren-not-Asgar-Ali-Sanjiv-Bhatt/articleshow/9802258.cms
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/tulsiram-prajapati-killed-haren-pandya-sanjiv-bhatt/1/149590.html