The whole life and death of Shahid Azmi illustrates a kind of
subterranean conflict of interest. There are those who frame innocent
Muslims. And there are those who strive to save such. Hatching
conspiracy of terror from across the border is obvious and the non
state and state actors so vaunted and so well known are banal. But it
is the homegrown terror that is the most trying phenomenon not for the
investigation agencies and for the police. But for the honest lawyers
fighting for justice through their métier. The current chief of ATS,
Rakesh Maria, knew that there were three men assigned to assassinate
the lawyer and yet he did not provide security to Shahid or prevent
his assassins from accomplishing the job. This could have been done
easily. Shahid had taken cases where risk factor to his own life was
the greatest. He had known how the accused in 1992, 1993 riots/blasts
were eliminated by the state/stateless actors in league with the
police.
The prisoners languishing in jails also knew the risk to their
life. Qateel Siddiquy was intensely conscious that his life was at
risk; he could count on the fingers of his two hands his remaining
days in the top security jail of Yarwada though he was not in the
death row by any means, nor had any judge decided his fate. Some
forces at work would do what the victims of unfortunate death feared
was the design of the reactionary. Qateels’s wife also knew it. The
jail authorities could not pretend ignorance of what lay in future for
him. His two killers he had correctly identified as the ones behind
the explosion at Dagdu seth halvai mandir in Pune. They were struck by
his knowing the truth. The jail authorities also got the wind of what
was the impending doom. Alas, they failed to prevent what was schemed
to happen.
The antagonized forces were well organized. They made an
intrigue and planned a strategy to finish whom they wanted. They could
mount any such attack because they have communally infected people
planted or nurtured everywhere. The concerted effort of the sangh
parivar is a multi pronged offensive powered by “cultural
nationalism”. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has more than a score of
organizations at its command to secretly carry out its mission.
Shahid and Qateel knew who were after them. They did not have
any grouse against any gang for they did not belong to any group. They
apprehended the forces that wanted them killed. The people in the
uniform and civil dress with a slant of mind for stealth and
conspiracy and known for violence were the ones they feared most.
Mob justice was and even now is the order of the day in many
places and Shahid knew it and so did Qateel, He knew where mobs could
not get in there were others to surrogate them and do the same heinous
crime of lynching. Both, the late Bal Thackeray and his nephew Raj as
well as the hoodlums of Bajrang Dal and VHP issued open threat to
lawyers not to defend Muslims accused in terror cases. They issued
their dictate even when the accused was clearly innocent in the eyes
of the ordinary man. Lawyer Mohammad Shoaib of Lucknow High Court had
got one acquitted when the police accepted that the accused was
arrested because of mistaken identity. He fought for another but the
mob forced him to withdraw from the case. The next month saw him
withdrawing from another. He was attacked in the court of Barabanki
and next month in the court of Faizadabad. The message was sent out to
let the others know that the lawyers are at the sufferance of
adherents of a right wing philosophy. Those with intense hatred for
the Muslims (even when the Muslim victims and their lawyers have a
just duty to defend) have clearly achieved their aim. This propaganda
based on violence is the characteristic of terrorism. Shoaib and
another lawyer Rizwan were dragged out of the Faizabad court. Twenty
five fellow lawyers belonging to Hindutva beat them badly in full view
of the police and the people. When the two went to register FIR at
the Wazirganj police station the police did not accept it. Terrorism
was this, qua terrorism. But what is more whether to treat it so is
the prerogative of the fanatics who not too infrequently subvert the
law of the land in dealing with this.
To acknowledge this as terror even belatedly India as a polity
has miserably failed. Hence the victims of gross discrimination in
such vital matters of justice and fair trial are at the receiving end.
Even the main opposition party is myopic on this matter. This obvious
subversion of the constitutionally established jurisprudence is the
work of those who do not subscribe to the law of the land when it
comes to Muslims or other minorities. It is not limited to Muslims
alone. There was Nirpriti Kaur who went to police station to file FIR
as her husband was killed by Hindu extremists in 1984. Instead of
registering the FIR the police arrested her and put her in the prison.
Her son of ten days also was with her. She along with her son did not
see the light of the day outside. She was released more than five
years later. She took her son to her parents’ house. The son shouted
with surprise at the door: “Mummy, look! There is a big cat with a big
tail.” How unfortunately for India that even children are denied
freedom and miss any opportunity of freedom to see the buffalo!
Innocent people continue to be framed with impunity because the
courts and their premises are targets of the extremist fringe of
Hindutva. As can be seen in this report from the scene: “When Shoaib
was unable to get his FIR registered, he sent his complaint by
registered post to Lucknow’s Senior Superintendent of Police, Akhil
Kumar, and also lodged a complaint with the district judge the next
day, August 13. Enraged, his assaulters returned once again to drag
him out of his chambers and beat him in the court premises during
lunch hour. “No one will come forward to save you if you don’t mend
your ways,” they told Shoaib as blow followed blow. His band was
snatched, clothes torn, spectacles broken and punches to his face and
eyes left him virtually paralysed for a few minutes. He was then
stripped to his undergarments, marched around the court premises and
forced to raise slogans like “Hindustan Zindabad, Pakistan Murdabad”.
A large police posse was present but did not intervene.” Shahid faced
the worst.
The worst of course cannot be just death. But the sensitive
cases which he was handling like Malegaon 2006, Mumbai train blasts of
2006 known as 7/11 and Aurangabad arms haul 2006. These three cases
have not been resolved because there is strong indication that they
are interrelated. They appear to be handiwork of the same Hindutva
groups in which innocent Muslims have been arrested. Swamy Aseemanand
has claimed that he along with Sunil Joshi and others was involved in
Malegaon 2006. The police have not been able to produce the Indica car
in which the arms were carried to Malegaon in the Aurangabad arms haul
case. The phone records of Zabiuddin and Dr Sharif do not corroborate
that Sharif acted with any prior knowledge of the arms in the Indica
or the other vehicle, a Sumo Tata. In the case of the 7/11 the Bombay
HC judged had scoffed at the police bringing discredited witness and
warned the cops during the period when Shahid was fighting the case
and since his death the matter is even more botched up. On Thursday
November 29, 2012 Judge Abhay Thipsay of Bombay HC was outraged by the
claim the police had not ever made prints out of the call record in
7/11 case and had also destroyed the CD. A truly shaken judge
thundered “I want to know whether the records of the phone calls are
not in existence or ATS is hiding it.” He even warned the police: “If
it was proved that the police tried to mislead the court he would not
forgive the police. And those found guilty according to the law would
be prosecuted.”
The strong exception of the judge was prompted by the demand of
the defense counsel that the call data record of the accused be
presented in the court to show where they were at the time of the
blasts and whether they knew each other. It was obvious that they were
framed by the ATS and the notorious agency could not prove either of
the points. This at best was the Shahid effect on the court. It was he
who had handled the case till he was liquidated and had collected
enough evidence to prove the innocence of the accused. Judge Thipsay
had seen the case diary where it was noted that twenty sets of the
call records were made five days before the charge sheet in 7/11 was
submitted. Volume no 4 and 6 had the records but these were
deliberately not submitted to the court. The judge even asked the
trial court judge YD Shinde to submit the missing volumes.
The foregoing is a legacy of Shahid. It was he who had got
Fahim Ansari freed when he proved how the ATS had tried to pass on a
hand drawn map it said Fahim had drawn for Kasab and Ismail Khan in
the 11/26 case. Google could have given better map, why did the
terrorist go for such poor drawing!, the trial judge in 11/26 laughed.
The two cases which gravitated Shahid’s attention were Malegaon
2006 and the local train serial blasts of 2006. It was the Malegaon
2006 case that proved tough son of a gun to crack. The most daunting
task was the Hindutva terrorists had used Muslim youths who were not
members of Students Islamic Movement of India but were made to appear
so. (Abrar planted bombs for money and the other Muslim doing the same
was dead.) Their confessions were outright bogus. They were forced to
sign plain blank papers and the script was supplied by the ATS and the
local police. Most surely by officers like Sanjay Khaire and Subodh
Kumar Jaiswal along with Rajwardhan.
In contrast stands the high court lawyer brother of Malegaon
accused Abrar Ahmad. Advocate Jalil did some good like submitting
habeas corpus which made the court force police to produce Abrar in
court. He complained against the police when his son was chased and
would have been attacked or his brother would have been slowly
poisoned. But he fell short remarkably when he kept the incriminating
documents for a long time. He had photos of ATS cop Arun hobnobbing
with his brother or Sachin Kadam holidaying with Abrar’s wife
Jannatunisa. But he did not make it public. Any court in the world
would have questioned the reason for this free junket that the ATS had
provided Abrar. Who was the ATS to do so and why? One. We arrested him
because we had evidence that he wasa part of terrorist cell. “KP
Raghuvanshi peremptorily denied laughingly “This is an absurd claim.
We have never given money to him or any one. We arrested him because
we had evidence that he was a part of terrorist cell.” Jalil and Abrar
have a remarkable legal acumen because both seem to begin Abrar’s
involvement with Abrar reporting the facts to his brother Farooq.
Dovetailing facts may make a bouquet look handsome but then what about
the leaves, thorns and stems which we leave out with a cutter. The
antecedents are very horrifying. There were meetings held by Hindutva
groups as well as reportedly by mostly Muslims in the house of Abrar’s
uncle. The Hindutva groups were bent on celebrating one hundred
anniversary of the song vande matrum. That too, on the eve of the
explosions!
That Abrar and Farooq and Janatunnisa’s role in the preceding
days require more legal scrutiny before the prosecution starts its
case in the trial court. Innocent or guilty is for the court to
decide. But there is so much bad blood created that the malady ailing
the personae of the drama casts long shadow. One of which would be
Abrar’s father forcing him to divoce his wife and Jalil toeing the
family line and Janatunnisa’s refusal to live in the family or
confronting them for having a separate establishment. No sooner did
they come out of the four walls of the prisons than Jalil accused
Farooq and Janatunissa behind the trapping of Abrar.
Abrar might have refused to take five lakh rupees from ATS of
Raghuvanshi but the moot question is who accepted the money for having
entangled Abrar in the case? Furthermore, why was then Abrar
subjected to third degree torture in the aftermath of his refusal to
take money?
Shahid might have got some misgivings of this. He cleverly
dealt with the case not touching upon the substance of terror but the
mode or manner of framing and the legality MOCOCA. He was insightful
enough to question application of the draconian act because the nine
accused were not involved in any crime, let alone at least two cases
in which they should be previously involved. The other sharp point was
that the accused could not as a result be traitors to their country.
If Abrar had overheard the names of the Hindu bombers behind
the blasts he could have approached the local police and told them.
Why was Farooq called from Bhiwandi to do so? If Farooq was a police
informer then Abrar was another. Were they both working for the police
even before the blasts of September 8, 2006? Why did the ATS and the
local police keep Abrar in a separate jail, Bychalla prison, when the
rest of the nine were in Arthur road jail? Were the police afraid of
Abrar spilling the beans?
Shahid would not have allowed anyone to pull wool over his
eyes. By his nature Abrar could not be a member of SIMI while the rest
were by nature religious and austere and dedicated and yet were not
members of SIMI. The police have grossly blundered. They have now to
answer not only these questions but come out clean that they did not
carry out any heinous crime themselves. If Abrar was their agent since
2001then 2006 attack would be insider’s job.
Shahid had defended the innocents accused of crimes they had
not committed. He got 17 out of jail. They were innocents. Why did he
not venture further in Malegaon case?
--------
Bhaskar (Hindi) December 2, 2012
http://kmsnews.org/archives/
Criminal Intimidation (A Muslim lawyer in India is attacked in High
Court for defending terror accused)
Inquilab November 30, 2012.
Sphotanchar cha Malegaon (Marathi) Nidu Damle.
http://www.indianexpress.com/
“In the months before the blasts, Abrar, the sources alleged, had
traveled to Indore and the Shabri Dham Ashram in Dangs district of
Gujarat, linked to Aseemanand, fully aware that he would be a part of
the blasts conspiracy.” “Three RSS pracharaks from Madhya Pradesh -
Sunil Joshi, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange - were apparently
at the heart of this conspiracy. Abrar got in touch with Joshi through
a senior RSS pracharak he knew,” a source said. This has been
apparently corroborated by Abrar’s wife, whose statement was recorded
by the CBI and has been handed over to the NIA, the source added.
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