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

Wily nature of fighting terrorism post-Malegaon denouement

There is a need to be cautious in taking words of politicians who speak on terror. Very few have statesmanship and insight. The majority play politics even with terrorism. Statesmanship demands rising above the self profit motive of party and jingoism.

On August 20, 2011 India’s agricultural minister Sharad Pawar remarked “all the accused in Malegaon 2006 case are innocent. This is what I had said a year and half ago.” He went further “after I had said that, the investigation started and the real (culprits) were caught in the second bomb blasts (of 2008). And what I had said after that one of the accused (Swami Aseemanand) accepted that they had done it. Therefore all the accused in (2006 case) are innocent and should be set free.” (Urdu Times August 21, 2011).


One year and half ago would imply February 2010. If that is what Pawar has in mind then ground reality does not justify this assertion of his. On April 2, 2009 he had said:

"Like United States in the world, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is responsible for Terrorism in India. The communal agenda of the BJP and its anti-National policies are providing fodder to the separatist activities and are responsible for the growing terrorism in the country."

"Terrorism finds its root in the communal agenda and injustice meted to others. If we really wish to eliminate terrorism from India, it is high time we refrain the parties like BJP from playing the divisive politics." ( Inquilab, Mumbai April, 3)
This unspoken truth that was always there is cogent and known to most in India who have a modicum of sanity in them and are not affected by the hideous ideology of cultural nationalism of the Hindu right. Still Pawar deserves credit for articulating it.


Going further back, on October 8, 2008 Sharad Pawar remarked that “BJP rath yatra was the root cause of (Islamic) terrorism in India.” He also accused the party of making “attempt to create friction on the basis of religion and language.” Furthermore he said that the attack on Afghanistan and Iraq was the cause of terrorism outside India.

Some of these observations contain grains of truth but it would be wrong to conclude that Pawar really said that the 9 accused in 2006 blasts case in Malegaon are innocent.

Even if he had three letters from the Central Bureau of Investigation to that effect it was not translated into any shift in the state policy and its execution. Three of his party men did nothing in this regard. Soon after the 2008 blast on September 29, ministers Chaggan Bhujbal and RR Patil were holding a meeting at the government guest house in Malegaon and blamed the new attack on Students Islamic Movement of India. Another bigwig Baba Siddiquy reached there and he also toed the same official line. This made the people angry and they raised an up roar.

However, the people of Malegaon are still good hearted as the brother of one of the accused Shabbir Masiullah. In the third week of August 2011 Jamil rushed and opened his brother’s workshop where the Anti Terrorists Squad had alleged that Shabbir had assembled the bombs. The National Investigation Agency sleuths entered it and took photos and sent Jamil out to fetch envelops in which they wanted to collect the soil for forensic analysis. They wrote out one page report and asked him to sign as witness. He refused because they had written that he had invited them to do investigation and collect the samples of earth. Till they called him he had no idea of them. There was no one called from the neighborhood to witness it. He was alone and they were a dozen and he was overwhelmed. So he signed. This condescending attitude on the part of the agency is similar to Pawar’s. The Muslims of India are not only equal to the rest of fellow countrymen but also respectable. Sending on errand like that smacks of patronizing, what else than deigning and looking down from above and prevailing upon him!

Pawar had given inaccurate number of explosions of bombs on March 13, 1993 in Bombay. He was camping in the metropolis as the Defence Minister of India. He did that to restrain further exacerbation of the situation against the Muslims. However, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra Madhukar Naik publicly accused Pawar as the one behind the anti Muslim riots in the city. The deputy Municipal Commissioner GR Khairnar also maintained that Pawar, Bal Thackeray and Dawood Ibrahim were old cronies.

To say all these is not to lessen the importance of what Pawar had said that the root cause of terror in India was the rath yatra of LK Advani. It had begun in September 1990 from Somnath, Gujarat, when there was terrible anti Muslim riots on the occasion of Ganesh immersion in Vadodra, and, it left a trail of violence, murder, rape, riots and arson in its wake. Advani’s progeny Narendra Modi was the chief architect of the yatra. Incidentally it has become a hobby horse for investigation agency to hunt Juhapura (a refugee camp for the displaced and disposed Muslims during 2002 pogroms) in Gujarat for all kinds of terrorist acts. For July 13, 2011 attack also the police reached there. Why would the agencies do it with the Muslim victims of pogroms of 2002 in Gujarat when there are other communities who have also been targeted for mob violence?
If not Juhapura in Ahemdabad or Azamgarh in UP, then there are the wandering Jews of the Muslim community, like Subhan Quereshi alias Tauqeer. Only last month Intelligence Bureau identified him as the one behind 13/7. However the agency has now acquired new sights, as if after a cataract operation, perhaps. Now it says that the two planters are absconding in Nepal. (Asian Age, August 22)As if the duo Ramchander Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange were not enough that we have two more there. So why only two?

In this juggling of words and statements the agency and the doughty politicians are engaged in evasion, instead of taking on terrorism head-on.

Hemant Karkare had seized the truth of terrorism in a trice. The slain head of the Anti Terrorist Squad was no-nonsense man of probity and excellent professional abilities. He took office on August 1, 2008 and declared that there was no trace of SIMI in terrorist attacks of 2006 (Malegaon). (Urdu Times August 16, 2008) If anyone it is Karkare who deserves the highest tribute for fighting terrorism.

He did not play politics but playing politics is the oxygen of the politicians. The local MLA of Malegaon Mufti Ismail did not join the other Muslim MLAs who visited Home Minister Chidambrum on August 17 in a delegation headed by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra Prithaviraj Chavan. He has a running feud with the family of one of the accused whom he thinks is in the pay of the police. The former veteran leader and long time MLA Nihal Ahmed regularly addresses Ismail as the khubri or police informer.
The first step that the mufti put forward raised the eye brows of the serious minded people. In the May 2006 arms haul case the local police reportedly broke open a shop and took away CPUs full of RDX, Ak 47s, etc. Instead of doing panchnama or registration of the crime by calling the well established neighbours there and then as witness the police called the mufti several miles away from the site, at a place near the police colony around the church in Malegaon camp much afterward that too late at night. It was here that the mufti remarked that his head was cast down with shame that youths of his community had smuggled arms into the town and were caught. He put his signature on the report the police had prepared. The police as usual blamed the accused as members of SIMI. This matter also is a part of the imbroglio that Malegaon 2006 has become and has created fame worldwide as the explosions were made out to be fall out of the arms haul.

The arms haul has serious bearings on the first terrorist attack three months later on September 8. What Hamid had told Abrar and the police had recorded has transformed itself into Zahid saying the same sentence to Abrar. What they could not bring into the town could be the RDX! Or, what more important is the material they are talking about?

The mufti’s close association with former additional SP Mr Rajwardhan is the Gordon’s knot of the Malegaon 2006 blast case. At the instance of Rajwardhan Abrar Ahmed (the accused police informer) got his reliable friend Hamid Hussein Javid Iqbal phone to him (Abrar) and utter the sentence “mader chod , jitna bolna tha tu bol chuka ab sun. Hum logon ko jitna samaan gayab karna tha hum kar chuke magar hum isko gaon me nahin lasake.” (Mother fucker, what you had to say you have said. Now listen. Whatever material we had to take we have taken but we could not bring it into the town.) Hamid rang Abrar from a coin box at Pahelwan restaurant on Kidwai road in Malegaon and told him the above. The phone which Abrar had had the number 9823436809. It was the same phone that Rajwardhan had given Abrar. The phone call was made in the first week of October 2006, hardly a month after the first blasts in Malegaon.

Abrar claims that Rajwardhan kept him in Jagtap farm house near Nasik where Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit of the 2008 blasts case accused also stayed. He was treated to a feast with Purohit. Just before Id on October 25, 2006 the ATS were recording a statement of Noorulhodha, another accused in 2006 case. Noorulhodha was uttering threat to Abrar that Abrar was implicating others like Noorulhodha in the blasts case of 2006 in which Abrar was himself involved. The ATS made Abrar listen on a hand-free mobile the tape recording going on in another room. This double crossing of Abrar made him fall into the trap of the ATS, either he had to do as the ATS wanted or face conviction and imprisonment.
The above incident Abrar has narrated in his affidavit and submitted it to the MOCOCA court of Justice YD Shinde on April 18, 2009. The trial has yet to begin. But if there is some truth in it, it would open a Pandroa’s box for all.

It would reveal the wiliest way of fighting terror. That the army appointed Purohit as in charge of anti terror intelligence wing and the serving lieutenant colonel was framing up the nine accused. The ATS has charged Zahid of having spoken the sentence (“Mother fucker…”) to Abrar. This accused (Zahid) was imam of a mosque in Phoolsangvi village in Yawatmal, 500 km away from Malegaon. He was leading Friday prayer there on September 8, 2006 when the bombs went off in Malegaon and 37 Muslims were killed and hundreds injured. The police say he planted the bombs at the graveyard mosques!

Is this how the ministers, investigation officials, politicians, muftis and Lt Cols of the army fight terrorism?

What the people have failed to realize in all these is that high ranking officers in the police and investigation agencies are involved in the mess. Hence granting bail to the nine accused is no simple matter. It would be political expediency if the government sends its attorney general and the government prosecution withdraws the case against the nine.


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http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bjp-rath-yatra-root-cause-of-terrorism-in-in/371186/
Sharad Pawar “If ‘green terror’ is fine with them, why should ‘saffron terror’ upset them so much? Isn’t green too a colour in our national flag?” he said. (Hindustan times 29 Aug2010)
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Pawar-promises-to-address-minorities-woes-in-iftar-speech/Article1-735637.aspx
(Hindustan Times , August 21, 2011)
He began by decrying the ‘unjust’ atmosphere prevailing in the country and said right wing terrorism was putting Muslim minorities to great trouble.

“It is unjust and unfair that crimes are committed by one group and another hauled up for them and punished,”

Appointment of Antani as New Home Secretary:Modi cocking a snook at the present brouhaha over the sidelined cops

At present there is a noisy and overexcited critical response and display of interest and trail of publicity over the sidelined post Godhra cops. So much so that even national mainstream papers are taken in and forget to look closely into the matters and unearth the truth and publish it rather than being carried away by sops dished out to them. The government of Nrendra Modi in Gujarat has promoted MD Manoj Antani as Home Secretary. He was the DSP of Bharuch in 2002. Showing open contempt to the civil society, Modi has dared to take them on. But his shrewd move though bewitching some for the time being has also given away the truth.

It has been mistakenly reported that Antani was a sidelined cop who did not carry out the instructions of Modi to let the Hindus wreak havoc on the Muslims in revenge for the train fire on the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002. The truth is far from this. He on his own opted for the central government deputation from the Gujarat lot because he feared his record was quite incriminating, to say the least.

If the police officer KK Mysorewalla’s remaik that there was order from the above not to save the Muslims from the marauding hordes made the title of a report by a Human Rights book on Gujarat 2002, the remark of Antani will one day become a much more publicized title of another book. Antani had led his police men break the doors of Muslims in Bharuch city. He took away sixteen Muslim youths and tortured them while in detention. The torture started when he ordered his men in uniform “These Muslims are filthy people, burn them to ashes!” (Yeh sab kshan Muslims hain, unko jala do aur khakh kar do!) The blood curdling beating started and continued.

The highly inhuman and criminal behavior of Antani comes in a context which is even more horrifying. In an area of Bharuch called Bahar ki Undai a blood thirsty mob was led by the Home Guards and also some police on March 19, 2002. The Home Guards opened fired on Muslims and killed some. Home Guard Bharat Sunderlal Bhatia killed Sayyid Sirajuddin Jibbo. Another Home Guard Deepak Samardas Rana killed a woman called Najma. Another Muslim who was injured in the firing was Shabbier Khan.

This crowd had come from Dandia Bazaar where Deepak Samardas Rana lived. He led the mob to Undai. He had deserted his post which was 200 meters away in another area. As he led the mob, those behind him started a hail of stones at the Muslims after he had opened fire on the Muslims.

The subsequent breaking of doors and arrest on the orders of Antani was a sequel to this. Most notable feature is that this recrudescence of pogrom happened full seventeen days after Modi’s stipulated three days sanction for anti Muslim violence.

The same white powder that burnt down to ashes Gulberg society was used in Bharuch too with the same disastrous effect. How could hundreds of packets and bottles of the powder find their way to these farfetched places? What more proof would the courts need to judge the genocidal fury unleashed on the Muslims by Modi and lieutenants, like Antani? “Burn them to ashes” (unko jala dalo aur khkh kar do!) thundered the man who is now Home Secretary to Modi.

There is a base side to human nature of some. In the present case it is, like master like servant. It is not confined by one’s being born in any particular faith. It is such a depravity that its greed makes man feel no shame, let alone any remorse. An episode that local Narmada channel had telecast live was the collector of Bharuch Anju Sharma and DSP Manoj Antani gorging on cashew nuts and almonds. These two had let the mobs of Hindus break open the shops of Muslims in Barelikho in Bharuch on February 28. The marauders passed on the booty stolen from the dry fruits shops of Muslims. They ingratiated the ‘sahebs’ for their largess in allowing them to loot and then burn. These officials of Modi administration were carrying out the instructions that Modi had given them in the late night meeting at his residence only twelve hours ago.

Question: How does one prove all these accusations?
Answer: The strike called by Vishwa Hindu Parishad on February 28 started the three days stipulated time Modi gave the mobs to take revenge upon the Muslims when his police would let them vent their anger. His satrap Viral Desai was the boss of VHP unit of Bharuch. Antani was its DSP of the town. Aju Sharma its collector. Given the kind of situation that was created there the order passed from the administration to the religious wing of the party which ruled the state. After all, the chief minister and the Prime Minister Vajpayee and his Home Minister LK Advani always felt proud to be members of Rashtra Swayamsevak Sangh. VHP and BJP are different configurations of the same.

On the same channel Desai had unsheathed his sword and gave a call for the strike while shouting in his fervor “It is official secret that the police are with us in this” (“Yeh under ki baat hai, police hamare saath hai.”) By no means was it an empty boast. The sword struck its victims while the hordes encored the slogan “Yeh under ki baat hai, police hamare saath hai.” The police and the hordes shared the open secret and so there was no need to deny it. The police and the government never bothered to issue any denial. It was a foregone conclusion.

Antani was not sidelined. A punitive action was taken against him because the High Court was hearing a case. In that case Antani had made a blunder. There was some trouble in another part of Bharuch called Haji Khana Bazaar right on March 18 when Hindus had gathered in the house of Bhupender Manilal Gandhi. It followed attack on Taiba mosque. The attackers included Desai. He was in the crowd which demanded the imam to hand Muslim youths accused of unlawful gathering, under section 144. When the magistrate Mr Trivedi came there and Muslims demanded release of the seven youths the police had caught, Desai prevailed upon the magistrate and the section was changed to 307. The youths could not be released. As if this was not enough, Antani botched up and joined the 16 youths he had forced his men to break doors and drag out and detain and put their names in the same FIR. How could the sixteen in one place Undai be shown to be in a far away Haji Khana Bazaar case?

Therefore, it would be appropriate to say that Antani was shunted to avoid the blot from becoming too prominent and when the transfer to the central government deputation came handy he was allowed to escape. And now he is reinstated with promotion in office and dignity!

How could he be described, as in the words of the national mainstream paper, ‘sticking to the rule book during the riot’? At long last his master should now heed the rule of law, the rule book ceases to matter before the rule of law.

The Gujarat Genocide and the Man who craftily wrought it

Chief Minster Narendra Modi of Gujarat fashioned everything since he contested election early in 2002. This includes manufacturing rumour for consumption by the people like saying that Ahsan Jafri had used his gun on the crowd. A man who campaigned against him for February 23 elections was the former Member of Parliament, Ahsan Jafri. He correctly feared and warned the people of the dangerous ideology of Hindutva that the RSS pracharak Modi had espoused and what it spelled for the state. Modi’s anger saw no limit as he was filled with hubris at the way the miyan (Muslim) was trying to oppose his election on February 23, 2002 and also showing pluck to consider himself equal to anyone howsoever high or low as a citizen of the country! Since then Modi took such a course of action as the head of the government after being sworn into power that he proved himself a desi Slobodan Milosevic of the Indian state of Gujarat bent on denying Muslims that they were equal to other fellow Indians. He and many others like him in the hardcore communal minded feel that the Muslims need to be taught a lesson which would show them their place.

There was a grand design hatched out and executed as Hindutva laboratory experiment. It was so systematically carried out that its very cunningness showed how well planned and diabolically and ruthlessly practiced it would be. It would be what many feared and most did not articulate in words and their deafening silence proved to be: genocide of Muslims.

The burning of the compartments of the Sabarmati express train was used to initiate that most violently inhuman course in the history of the state, nay, of India, that it would bring shame to the country but not the man who shrewdly worked behind the scene and controlled and factored everything into the grand design. In the meeting of February 27 late evening it was enough that he told his police and administration that the Hindus would get free hand in the murder and mayhem of Muslims for three days so that the history of the state of balancing Hindus and Muslims evenly in a political correctness of sorts would end forever in favour of the Hindus.
When the pogroms started, Modi was in contact with VHP chief Jaideep Patel and the fire brand minister in charge of children and women affairs, Maya Kodnani. His office phone record shows this. He also had talks with the Police Commissioner PC Pande as 15 phone calls made from his office establish it. As the phone records have been deliberately destroyed despite the gravity of the crimes committed during the pogroms it is high time that a grand jury should look into the role that such people that surrounded Modi as PC Pande, DGP K Chakravarti,, JCP MK Tandon, DCP PB Pondia, chief secretary Subha Rao, health minister Ashok Bhatt (deceased), urban development minister IK Jadejia, minister of state home Govardhan Jhadafiya have played. It is also relevant to go into the CD that IPS officer Rahul Sharma had submitted.
Modi had his administration yoked to one overwhelming task of not only conducting the pogroms of Muslims but also tackling and fixing the far reaching effect. After the arrest of Amit Shah minister of state for Home, it was not only his additional advocate general Tushar Mehta who was operating behind the scene but even an otherwise independent minded Ram Jethmalani offered his services in the juggernaut. It was he who settled the 89 page petition of Amit Shah where he ascribes motives to the two judges. The SC order of transferring the Sohrabuddin case to CBI dated January 12, 2010 had rubbed them on the wrong side. The petition says, “the order (is) a product of a tripartite understanding and arrangement to the effect that the CBI investigation would be ordered by Hon’ble Mr Justice Tarun Chatterjee (the lead judge who issued the January 12 order) as desired by the Central Government, the Central government will provide the Hon’ble Justice a post-retirement assignment, and the CBI will refrain from chargesheeting the Hon’ble Justice in the PF scam case.”

And, Justice Aftab “does not know whether the fact of the aforesaid pending and ongoing CBI investigation (on PF scam) against his brother Judge was known to Hon’ble Mr Justice Aftab Alam. He too should have offered to recuse if he did know.”

It seems that the basic strategy to cover up the genocide was to send probe reports of Special Investigation Team to the state additional advocate general Tushar Mehata. It was under secretary (home) Vijay Badekha who would forward the reports to Mehta. Mehta would find out in real time the vulnerable weak aspects of an accused in the atrocity committed on the Muslims. He would then write to Gurumurthy Swaminathan, the RSS ideologue. Gurumurthy in turn would gather crucial points to find out chink in the armour of the prosecution. So in the most developed state of the country the government exchequer was to pay an additional advocate general to prepare in advance to defend an accused that he should be in reality prosecuting. As the suborning of the judicial system in the state cannot come about at such higher echelon of the government without the nod of the chief executive officer of the state, the chief minister himself, at the wheel of the ship steering the course of the state and his active connivance, is amazing. If he had an iota of a sense of justice and responsibility he should have dismissed Mehta and ordered recovery of the salary drawn during the period the errant additional advocate general had infringed his constitutional duties.

Modi’s silence over this even after Sanjiv Bhatt and Tehelka brought it out in the public shows that he alone should be held responsible for the genocide and the forethought and calculated fall out of the cover up. And those who carried it out using the administrative machinery will be guilty violating the chain of command responsibility. The Nuremberg principles that all these guilty are individually responsible for the crimes of genocide, that, national laws of the land do not prevent criminal responsibility, that, head of the state or government and other government officials involved in genocide are not immune from prosecution, and, that, even being an accomplice to the crimes is enough to constitute an international crime clearly show the need to prosecute the guilty. Vajpayee government had rushed the chair person of the National Human Rights Commission, justice Verma and attorney general Soli Sorabji to Vienna to prevent the UNO human rights commissioner Mary Robinson from visiting India during the Gujarat genocide. The Nuremberg principles and India’s response to the visit make it obligatory that it should not be left to Gujarat government alone to come clean. India has to come clean on it lest we let the door open for anyone to take the matter of the genocide to the UNO under its optional protocol sometimes in the future as the Nero of Gujarat is still fiddling.

The suborning of the system is further borne out in the state setup singling out for dismissal and punishment those officers who chose to remain upright and speak against the genocide or provide evidence about the complicity of the state and its chief minister.
With more and more IPS officers coming out in the open and exposing the misdeeds of Modi it looks awkward what RK Raghvan said in his report which Tehelka reproduced: “As many as 32 allegations were probed into during this preliminary inquiry. These related to several acts of omission and commission by the state government and its functionaries, including the chief minister. A few of these alone were in fact substantiated… the substantiated allegations did not throw up material that would justify further action under the law”.
It is also becoming clear how location-al analysis confirms what many suspect. That PC Pande was raised to the post of DGP for his complicity in the genocide. Pande it was who had ordered the dispersal of the more than a hundred bodies of Muslims to different areas of Ahemdabad to dilute the crimes committed at Naroda Patia. He also visited Ahsan Jafri at 10.30 on February 28 but chose to ignore sending succor. His role in Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and also in the case of Tulsiram Prajapati is also damning. Rajnish Rai has said in a petition to the SC submitted on August 11 2011: "Pande's conduct is clearly and sufficiently establish his culpability in the conspiracy to kill Tulsiram Prajapati in fake encounter, destruction of evidence in Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and in causing willful obstruction in investigation of the fake encounter case by using his office as DGP of the state," Pande prevented police officers under him from visiting Tulsiram in Rajasthan jail so that the matter would be hushed up or remain out of focus of attention.

That Gujarat 2002 was a genocide of Muslims prepared well in advance is clear not only from the readily available print outs of the voter lists and the record of the Muslim commercial establishments to the marauders, etc., but also from the ground reality. On February 27, 2002 six officials of the chief ministers’ office were in Meghaninager. They were preparing for the intended wreaking of revenge on the Muslims the next day, the bandh day of February 28. It was hours before the chief minister declaring the Godhra train incident as a work of Lashkare Toiba or Jaishe Mohammad. Meghaninager was not known as communally sensitive place. No Hindu from the adjoining Bhagwatinager had taken part in the attacks on Gulberg society although it was a Hindu colony. The six officers of CMO turned it into a communal cauldron over night. In three hours they spent there from 2 pm to 5pm they over saw the preparation. For, the next day the pogroms started at the Gulberg society which is located in Meghaninager. Hundreds of bottles containing white powder which increased the intensity of burning were found in Gulberg society during the attack. This indicates how meticulously the preparation was made. Who had arranged for the supply of such incendiary substance in such a short time between the visit of the six and the onset of the violence at 7.30 the next day?
Even when the ghastly dance of rape, murder and arson and playing with the skulls of the victims was so overwhelming the cover up of it was even equally horrifying if suborning of the judicial system gives any indication. “Mehta prepared a reply affidavit to be filed before the apex court on behalf of the Gulbarg accused and forwarded a copy to the principal secretary to the chief minister on April 15, 2010.

“Mehta also forwarded a copy of the petition and the affidavit by the accused to Gurumurthy.” This ideologue of the RSS would then add crucial points for argument against the prosecution in defense of the accused.
Thus even the most horrendous crimes of the Gulberg society are taken as a matter of routine cover up giving one the feeling that the administrative set up was hell bend to show that it was the prerogative of the officials to carry on what they were doing. The life, dignity, rights to live, and the property of the hapless victims ceased to have any meaning in Gujarat of Modi.
Even more bizarre is a note to N Ram, editor of the Hindu. In this Gurmurthy has imputed motive to the SC judges as mentioned earlier in this paper. This is yet another case of cavalierly and even nonchalantly disregarding the all the norms of civilized society on account of their taking Muslims in the country as sub humans ala Aunt Polly in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She did not consider Negroes reported dead in accident as humans. She counted only the dead white as human casualty!

The Parsi woman who lost her twelve year old son and a grown up daughter in Gulberg society had even recovered herself in her decency. When her powerful rescuer phoned her as to how many were trapped there, she said three and then looked at the others and corrected herself that there were forty! The police and others including the marauders there and the ones covering it all up do not have even this fig leaf to hide their guilt.

A strange sense of proprietorship prevailed where those tainted with genocide of Muslims and its cover up operation came to believe that they would deal with the President of India Pratibha Patil in the same callous manner. Gurumuthy had prepared a memorandum for her Excellency which the additional advocate general had asked him. Shushma Swaraj, LK Advani, Arun Jaitley and Nitin Gadkari were to present it to the President. Even to complain against the bête noir of Modi, Teesta Setalvad, the government officers meant for prosecuting the accused were employed to carry out a vendetta against civil rights activists thanks to the brazen way Modi had conducted the genocide.

There are many dimensions of genocide in the case of Gujarat 2002. One is the fake encounters carried out in the name of deshbhakti or patriotism and the other is the continued harassment of government servants who did not toe the dictate of the state run by Modi. What Modi and his hordes did was to stigmatize a whole community as terrorists and lawbreakers. Modi took the initiative when he dubbed the Ghansi Muslims of Signal Falia in Godhra as lawless. He blamed them to be responsible for the burning of the two compartments of the Sabarmati express on February 27. He went further and called them agents of Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan. This set the agenda for the worked up outraged Hindus. They would naturally extract a heavy price in terms of human life and property in the stipulated three days the chief minister had given them. Then his lieutenants in the police force like DG Vanzara extended it to the fake encounters that took place one after another. When the Muslims were dubbed as treacherous to the country the inference was that it was patriotism to kill them. Modi carelessly taunted them as child producing factories and scoffed at them working by the roadsides repairing vehicles in their greasy attire. He would say a male Muslim marries four wives, the five then produce twenty five and then it goes on. His audience cheered him lustily and during the pogroms they aimed at causing maximum number of casualties. For example at Gulberg society there were more than a dozen children in the arms of their mothers and fathers. The attackers snatched them and killed them. In several other cases even the pregnant women had their womb slashed open and their fetus pierced with spears. This is the stuff of genocide. In the case of the fake encounters Muslims caught in Gujarat and outside like Maharashtra were taken to illegal private bungalows as detention centres and detained there and they were tortured and murdered. They would be brought to road turnings and dumped there. The police would give it to the press that they were agents of ISI or terrorists groups and were on way to kill Modi. Ishrat Jehan, Sohrabuddin, Sadiq Jamal Mehtar and a host of others were wiped out in this way. Modi government would reward the murderous cops with promotion in office and awards.

As a well orchestrated cover up operation is still underway its sheer brazenness will pale into insignificance other genocides of the recent history including what Pol Pot did in Cambodia. Pol Pot was a military man while Modi is elected repeatedly by his fellow Gujratis and hence a constitutionally elected head of government neck deep into the genocide of 2002. Neither the central government of BJP under Vajpayee and Advani had any qualms over it despite the President of India RK Narayanan remonstrating them nor has the mainstream media and intelligentsia done anything beyond token protest or rapping the knuckles. Rahul Sharma was a high ranking officer in charge of Bhavnager in Ahemdabad, a prime posting. He had opened fire at the mob baying for the blood of the Muslims on its way to a madrasa where 300 Muslim kids were housed. Had he not done his duty the kids would have met the fate like their fellow religionists elsewhere. For this he was demoted and sent to the police control room as deputy commissioner of police. He recorded on his official CD telephonic conversation of government officers, Hindu extremists of VHP and Bajrang Dal and the police who were involved in the genocide. He was instantaneously shunted to Surat and now charged with defaming the chief minister. The political configuration of the extremist Hindu groups is of course the political wing called BJP. Its leader Arun Jaitley in his sophistry calls it walking away with secret records. Such is the ever ready pugnacity of the Hindu party BJP that let alone feeling remorse over massacres of Muslims its leaders issue serious warnings to the Home Minister Chidambrum for daring to articulate the constitutional guarantee of safeguarding central government cadres in the police service in Gujarat state who are being harassed, penalized chargesheeted and suspended just because they refused dereliction of duty when the genocide was conducted.

Sanjiv Bhatt was second highest ranking police officer in charge of the security of not only the coastal areas, crucial installations but also the chief minister. He had maintained the official secret act for eight years until he submitted a part of the official record to the Supreme Court hearing one of the most traumatic cases of the genocide, Jakia Jafri’s petition on how her husband and others were gruesomely killed in the Gulberg society on account of the involvement of 62 ministers (Modi included), police officials and political leaders. Since then he has been chargesheeted and suspended from service. It is such a Machiavellian statecraft perfected by Modi that he sticks to his chair like limpet and loses no opportunity to score a point over his rivals or excoriate at them as if he is innocent like the lamb. Guinness book of world record must assure him a place for a government head that crafted the gruesome genocide in real time and conducted it in full steam for three days and can get away with it even in the twenty first century!

“The NIA will not do anything wrong”: Malegaon 2006 near denouement

“The NIA will not do anything wrong”: Malegaon 2006 near denouement


The question of granting bail to the two accused in Malegaon blast of September 29, 2008 Shyam Bhavarlal Sahu and Shivranaryan Kalsangra has again foregrounded the denial of bail to the nine accused in Malegaon blasts of September 8, 2006. Of course, we are fair minded enough not to have this situation amidst us on the ground that the two are Hindus and have been let off and the nine are Muslims and therefore they must languish in jail. In fact the judge did use the word “languish” in granting the bail to the two. Therefore what are the compulsions behind the appearance of this phenomenon?
Shivnarayanan is the real brother of the accused offender and absconder Ramchander @Ramji Kalsangra. According to ATS Ramji had given his brother two bomb timers to keep. This is veritably the material connection. Shyam was a dealer in sim cards and had sold sim cards to Ramji. Over a period of several years timers have been used by Kalsangra and his accomplices to make and explode bombs. If the brother was aware of the work of Ramchander he could not be presumed to not know the kinds of work Ramji was doing. Furthermore the arrest of Shivnarayanan Kalsangra was on account of ‘statements of witnesses’. Even so Justice AM Thipsay ruled: “The NIA which has taken over the probe recently from the State ATS, has been unable to point out specific evidence against the two accused and are claiming that the probe is still on the trial is not yet started in the case and in such circumstances the accused is not required to languish in jail.” It means that the judge refuses to consider them guilty even when the ATS presumes them to be guilty.
Presumption of guilt cannot make an accused guilty. Justice Geeta Mittal while removing the ban on Students Islamic Movement of India observed: “You (the government) say that SIMI is connected to bombs blasts, riots, (and) destructive activities. Place specific material before me, you can not presume their involvement.” Thus discrepancy surfaces in the case of 2006. All the nine accused of 2006 case are alleged to be members of SIMI based on their forced confession under duress. There is no material to link them to bomb blasts.
Even the Home Minister Mr Chidambrum is vague and may be afraid to be candid when he said on August 4, 2011 about the three scenarios of terrorism. The first is that India was the epicenter of terror but now it is shifted to Afghanistan. The second is the home grown terrorists like SIMI now morphed as Indian Mujahideen. And the third is the nascent growth of the rise of the right wing terrorists or fascists groups. Then making a sweeping generalization he goes on to say that "The home-grown terror groups, as popularly believed, do not practice one religion." What ordinarily we would infer is that the right wing and the fascists and the home grown are desi terrorists, be they Muslims or Hindus or Sikhs or Christians. He acknowledges that there is unconvincing belief that all these terrorists belong to one faith or religion. This has “led agencies to wrongly put young men in jail for several years for no fault of theirs.”
This raises the moot question, are all the nine accused in 2006 Malegaon case innocent? They happen to be Muslims.
As against the nine of 2006 there are twelve accused in the case of the 2008 case. These happen to be Hindus. There is material difference. The kind of torture the Muslims have undergone seems to be altogether absent in the case of the Hindus. Some of them have been even pampered. Lt Col Shrikant Purohit has been favoured with a laptop in prison. He can now email whatever applications his wife wants to give to court or else how would she know what to write! This is the world of Alice in Wonderland. There is Major Ramesh Upadhya who would like the court to ban factories around the prison so that they could spend time in jail in a healthy atmosphere. There is Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur who pretends to be sick and wants ayurvedic treatment which the allopath doctors of JJ Hospital are giving her. When she does not want to leave Bhind province as she had spent her childhood there the police fly her back to Mumbai in a plane. The other group of nine has no imagination to even think of these!
As expected this has led to even the most unheard of. Purohit says that he has aided and abetted his fellow members of Abhinav Bharat but he does not think this is terrorism. “Even the (MCOCA) sanctioning order does not say that I (Purohit) have committed any terror attack. I have only aided and abetted.” This kind of nefarious argument would open Pandora’s box of trouble and would take India back into the darkness of the middle ages. For, what does Purohit’s lawyer means when he says that his clients’ crimes are “a continued unlawful activity but not an organised crime.” Was attacking Malegaon with bombs at two times in 2006 and 2008 not an organized crime? Was stealing RDX from army stock not a crime? Giving it out for blowing Samjhauta express not an organized crime? Selling government seized guns not an organized crime? Getting fake military ID not an organized crime? Purohit and others are neck deep into all these. All these were well organized and connected activities.
Thus the National Investigation Agency has no other option except to call a spade a spade. It has taken the first clear and bold step not to oppose bail application of the nine accused in 2006 Malegaon blasts case. They would breathe the air of freedom soon. It will be in the fitness of things that their fellow countrymen cutting across all religious groups should not just heave a sigh of relief but rejoice that justice will ultimately prevail.
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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/mumbai-blasts-could-be-handiwork-of-a-home-grown-terror-module-p-chidambaram/articleshow/9487225.cms
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/MCOCA-in-Malegaon-case-looks--shaky---HC/827461/
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_malegaon-accused-finally-make-bail_1573373
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110807/jsp/nation/story_14348004.jsp

Mumbai 13/7: can we take CBI’s words to be true?

Caution is the need of the hour as the gruesome tragedy has again raised its ugly specter in the murder and mayhem in Mumbai. Again the façade is there: the 24th birthday of Ajmal Kasab, and the vicinity of the fifth anniversary of 7/11 or July 11, 2006 attacks on the local trains, the scheduled meeting of the Indian and Pakistan foreign officials on July 27. And what has not been added in the list is that Hindu festivals are coming up soon and therefore likelihood of attack. This is the rut through which the investigation agencies under the parentage of Intelligence Bureau have moved so far. But a cautioned nation and enlightened citizenry should have a check up on it hereafter.
A fortnight before the “attack” on Rashtra Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS headquarters at Nagpur the director of Intelligence Bureau EML Narsimhan had gone to meet RSS chief SK Sudarshan in Dombivili, Mumbai, to warn him of an imminent attack of Lashkare Toyba on RSS headquarters. And the “attack” came. The police had fired 63 rounds of bullets on the attackers and the remaining 37 bullets were fired by the so called terrorists. However a fact finding commission under Justice Kolse Patil visited the site and found that the terrorists could not have fired any bullet as there was no trace of it on the walls, roads or the other material surrounding. Of course IB patted on its back for having prevented a Hindu Muslim riot and the central government heaved a sigh of relief. After all its National Security Advisor MK Narayanan had dispatched Narsimhan on the mission. This he had done on the basis of confession of Firoz Ghanswala of Bharuch and Mohammed Chippa of Ahemdabad who were arrested by the Delhi police on terrorist charges on May 9. The government had enhanced the personal security of the RSS boss as well as the headquarters. Will a terrorist group still go ahead with this kind of preparedness of the government? Given this kind of scenario it would rather look like an orchestrated attack mounted by the intelligence/security agency itself.
Is there any need to heave a sigh of relief after 13/7? The nation has heaved such sighs of relief after Malegaon 2006 as well as attacks on Akshardham, and other temples and mosques so often that there is fear of asphyxiation. Quite on heels of it, and to bank on the public paranoia, comes the report “Terror threat to Bhakra Nangal dam, reveals IB report” (Times of India, July 16, 2011). It has come as ponderous on the chest of the people as the family Bible placed on the dying in the hope that he would be dispatched direct to heaven because of the Holy Scriptures weighing on him.
Even before the rains wash away the blood in Zaveri bazaar, Opera House and Dadar Kabuterkhana the IB was ready with its facile result that Indian Mujahideen and the ISI were behind the attacks. The Sakaal Marathi newspaper headlined “On Kasab’s birth day attack on Mumbai” (Kasabcheya vadhdivishi Mumbaiwar hamla). Two operatives of terror of that outfit were recently arrested and therefore the attack. So what is logical inference, Kasab’s birth day or the arrest of the LeT operatives? Another explanation is that 13 and 27 July are “chosen days” of the operatives. (Times of India July 14)
In tandem is the reaction. LK Advani visited the site (remember he never visited Malegaon or any mosque targeted by Hindutva groups) and called for destruction of the terrorist network in Pakistan. After the December 2001 attack on Parliament he had visited the site and remarked that the terrorists looked like Pakistanis. How could he know the Hindutva terrorists like Sunil Joshi who wore saffron dress like his female counterpart, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and who turned out to be the terrorists? Of course some people joked that he was born in Pakistan and should know how the Pakistanis looked. Bal Thackeray: now instead of relying on the government for security, the people should defend themselves, when they see the extremists kill them with whatever weapon they can lay hand on. (aata jantene sarkarwar visambun na rahtaa swata che rakshan karawe, ateereki disle ki, hatat meedel tya shashastra ne teyana khatam krawe. ) This well repeated knee jerk reaction of Thackeray really calls for a knee slapper even when he is inciting mob violence and is directly calling for lynching.
We should thank IB for both, the way ready made-up explanation is given and the reaction based on it.
Resurrecting the dead is one way of handling an explosive situation so the IB and its support groups and individuals will bring back the genii of Ilyas Kashmiri. He is said to be alive and kicking in the tribal areas in the north west of Pakistan. Whether the people there like India and have no enmity is another matter. The IB had followed the same after Mecca mosque attack by recreating Shahid Bilal. He was supposed to have been killed in Karachi. There is another figure called Danish Riyaz . But he is already in a jail in Ahemdabad. As they are fond of many aliases it is left to the discretion of the agencies to supply them to suit the occasion. One “Bhatkal’s” mother even repeatedly objected that her son is not “Bhatkal” but the name is used habitually as the errors that appear in the list of the most wanted fugitive criminals who have sought sanctuary elsewhere or are languishing in the prisons of India, nay riding their motorbikes in Mumbai streets under the nose of the police. The two Bhatkals who are regularly brought back to life are Riyaz Bhatkal and Iqbal Bhatkal. They have fled to Pakistan. Yet in all recent bomb attacks like Pune German bakery attack and now 13/7 the hunt for them is again started. They are far from Mumbai or Pune so why do the agencies resurrect them? In doing so, they seem to be burying much deeper into oblivion the most distinguished Hindutva terrorists and RSS pracharaks, Ramji Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange. There is no red cornered notice given out to Interpol or any agencies of any state or country.
They are at large and yet the nine accused in Malegaon 2006 case are left to the dark dungeon to begin their fifth year in prison. There are three fugitives of the case; one of them was Arsalan who according to the nine was with them in prison. And yet he is not in jail. The CBI came to Malegaon recently before the NIA took over and made a heroic effort to trace the three. But did they ask the local police why and how Arsalan was in jail and got out and disappeared. Munawar was seen in a police van by the local corportator Ismail Mulla who gave an affidavit on it. What have the police done to him that CBI was earnestly asking him to surrender?
It would mean that like Azamgarh, Bhatkal also is turning into a familiar hunting ground for the IB and going after the fugitives is a strategy for dilly dallying.
On this fifth anniversary of Shab-e-barat in Malegaon as I was returning home from market I passed the two blasts sites and saw huge barricades raised with lofty watch towers and wondered at inanity of all this, calling for the halter when the horse has bolted! There was no such elaborate arrangement of security and check posts on that fateful day of September 8, 2006 when I had passed the same route. The police were altogether absent from the site, the gate of the cemetery had the third bomb hung by it. Many were cut down there and others died in the stampede. Zahoor of the Sahara channel was ready with his Sony camera to make a feature programme of the holy day. The clipping clearly shows no police man around and yet the NIA claims that 16 police men were on duty there and were given shelter in a room fearing mob violence. On September 1st 2006 itself the Nasik control room received actionable intelligence that terrorist attack would take place within a short period. The ASP of Malegaon Mr. Kumbhare had informed the SP (Rural) Mr. Rajwardhan that there was imminent threat. The ASP had gone to the trustees of Hamidiya mosque at the grave yard a day before the bomb blasts and apprised them of the danger. He mentioned that police would be deployed within and outside the graveyard and beggars would not be allowed within the vicinity of the mosque and the graveyard. Even then there were no police men in sight when the blasts occurred and many beggars were injured and killed within the premises of the mosque. Why were there no police men at the mosque?

In the present context of Zaveri bazaar and Opera House there were scores of CCTV lenses focused on the scenes and must thrown light on the events. But Mumbai has plenty of examples in the previous terrorist attacks of how the cameras were tampered with at CST and the Saki octroi junction on the periphery of the commercial capital of India. It is also incumbent on the people that they remain alert that such records are in safe hands so that real culprits are caught and punished.

It was in this context that Digvijay Singh observed that no group should be excluded from scrutiny, including the Hindutva terrorists. The people of Malegaon had met the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who had assured them that investigation will not leave out any suspected organization from inquiry. And, yet, on the fifth day of the blasts the police called 20 Hindus from Tilak road and nearby lanes teeming with yarn merchants and gray cloth merchants. Then they changed the course of investigation. Writing on it at that time I called it changing horses in the mid stream. We still rue the day it happened and rue everyday day that innocent people are languishing in prison because of the false confession extracted from them by use of brutal force and third degree torture. How wonderful it would be if the police and investigators solve the case and focus on the present disaster which has the potential of becoming the first incident of a suicide bomber enmeshed in wire on his death at one of the sites. Mere denial of it does not cut any ice.
The intervention into the inquiry is more troublesome than anything else. MK Narayanan had intervened in the case of the Samjhauta express. IB in the case of Malegaon. DGP of Maharashtra Dr Pasricsa had said that Bajrang Dal was involved in the September 8 attack. On the next day Punya Nagri carried an editorial and rejected this observation of the senior most cop. Interestingly this mainstream Marathi paper also carried a report on the front page that Jalgaon had a university of terror there. This was ascribed to IB. As I have argued in my online book “Aggressive Hindutva terror and Malegaon” that “critical thinking” is absolutely necessary in trying to find out the truth. It would mean that critical analysis can completely change your views on terror. There is every chance that it could also alter your attitude as to who is a terrorist. It could turn out that you discover ‘the terrorist at your dinner table’. Another way of discovering ‘the heart of darkness’ within you.
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Intelligence-agencies-yet-to-crack-mystery/articleshow/9218725.cms
sakaal July 14, 2011. July 17, 2011.
http://www.indianexpress/news/2-weeks-ago-ib-chief-told/5617/

Malegaon blasts of 2006 and, now, the pathology of terror

There is a moving scene of courtly love even in the macabre world of terror. There is intrigue within an intrigue, sub plot within a plot. Sunil Joshi and Pragyasingh Thakur had their stars crossed ala Romeo Juliet. What made the duchess have a dimple on her cheek as the painter painted her? The duke in Robert Browning gave an order and all her smiles disappeared forever. Similarly what exactly did Joshi say that violated the modesty of Pragyasingh Thakur? Was it so bawdy that it should not be said in the presence of women? The virile figure of Joshi aroused different passions in different people as did the other protagonist.
There are layers of meaning that surround episodes in high drama. In this euphemism can play crucial role as does innuendoes in the matters of love relationship. There is also sexual jealousy which demands its share in toll of the lovers.
It could not have been just a naughty remark like that of the commissioner of police in Delhi who said some years ago that handsome ladies in the city wear dashing and dazzling and provocative dress. That causes teasing, molestation and rape. The murder of Joshi requires more erudition than the cops and investigators have time to afford.
Euphemism and innuendoes abound in Malegaon 2006 case as well. An important witness and sometimes approver in 2006 case Abrar Ahmed narrates how he fell on the bathroom floor and had his spine injured and was hospitalized on January 1, 2007. Into the JJ Hospital arrived groups of his relatives from his in-laws sides and also from his own blood relations and of course the cops. Then additional superintendant of police of Malegaon Mr Rajwardhan also visited him. At one time in the hospital he allegedly gave one lakh rupees to Abrar’s brother in law Farooq Vardha and five and a half to his father in law Iqbal Chourdhary. He also got him a flat in Bhiwandi and another in Mumbai. This entire largess was given for the reason best known to the cop only. He had also given a gun to the brother in law of Abrar. What was the purpose?
However, Abrar’s wife Jannatunnia contends that her brother had a licence for gun as far back as 2000. Even when the case has not come up for trial well almost into the sixth year of the detention of the nine accused this delay has begun to show fissures. There is mudslinging as to who is barren or impotent. She is still young and good looking and desires another chance in life.
The circumstances of the case constitute one of the most intriguing episodes of Hindutva terror. Soon after the bomb explosions on September 8, 2006 on Shab-e-barat Abrar visited the Galaxy hospital. He overheard that some well known Hindus had exploded the bombs. He went to the house of his in laws and told them about it. They were startled, according to him, and rang up his brother in law Farooq Vardha (another police informer) in Bhiwandi. So the police came in action and instead of going after the Hindus like Dr Bipin Parekh, Someshwar Shanker, Dr Rajender Amin and others they detained Abrar. First Rajardhan gave him work of repairing his inverter at his residence in Nasik. In the meanwhile he was given a phone to contact Rajwardhan. But the additional superintendant of police gave a mobile phone to his wife as well. What had Rajwardhan to do with her and what he talked to her on her contact number 9825826597? In a French novel it would make one wonder at the role of the roué.
The gun that the cop gave to Vardha is more intriguing. Was Abrar so material witness that he needed to be guarded with a gun? Or, liquidate when the time came. Rajwardhan had met Abrar on Sptember 13, on the fifth day of the blasts. Subsequently he sent Abrar and wife to Indore and other places in Madhya Pradesh. They were introduced to Lt Col Shrikant Purohit, Sadhvi Pragyasingh and others. At the Jagtap mala, like the château in a romance, many more intrigues awaited Abrar and wife. They had dinner with Purohit. It is also a fact that later Abrar and wife were kept separate in places alien to the couple and particularly to the woman. How could she live alone?
But then at one meeting Rajwardhan addressed Abrar in the presence of his wife (and perhaps some others) ala ‘kahin per nigahen kahin per nishana’; looking at someone but aiming at another. “Naya juta jab phat jata hai ya khrab ho jata hai to use fenk diya jata hai.” (When a shoe is torn or becomes tattered we throw it away.) Abrar could not make sense of it directly and asked him to explain. Rajwardhan told him that he was quite mature and a hint is enough for a wise man. However, Abrar knew that the cop was a scheming person and wanted to drive a wedge between him and his wife.
That has now turned into a gulf between the spouses. She has sought divorce in the sharia court. There is a new alignment in the families. His father’s family says that she is trying to dodge the National Investigation Agency (NIA) sleuths from getting to the secret surrounding her husband’s role in the blasts. Her father’s family on the contrary believes that her husband’s role in the blasts has besmirched the reputation of her family in the eyes of the people. She feels that the slur of being wife of a police informer is telling on her nerves and ill treatment of her in-laws is excruciating.
In the time of breaking of the family of the accused it is important to note that there is an Iago or villain who has contributed to the worsening of the situation. Now the question arises what exactly was the equation of the villain and the family.
This is not a question of slander. The allegation of shunning investigation by NIA is fraught with deception that has far reaching consequences. It needs close scrutiny in the court of law. There are other cases of the same kind where the cop’s relation with families involved in serious crimes raises serious doubts. And the investigation has either run in cold track or the matter has been hushed up.
Shamshuddin Mushrif quotes a report of the Milligazette of May 1-15 2008 in his book Who Killed karkare? “17 April 2008: The Malegaon police raided a pathology laboratory situated in the basement of a private hospital and recovered five live RDX explosives, three used RDX explosives, one pistol, a laptop, a scanner, two mobile phones, four fake currency notes of Rs one thousand each and Rs 5000 in cash and arrested three persons, viz., Nitish Ahere Sahebrao Dhurve and Jitendra Khema belonging to some unknown organization.”
A Marathi news paper Lokmat carried front page coverage for three days on the same event. The paper does not mention any liaison. But what was not thought of is becoming a probability of equation or relationship. Therefore investigation must also focus on the personal relationship of the important people who figure in the case. Are investigators trained to handle this? Similarly a court cannot dismiss the affidavit of Abrar even when there can be lies in it. But it contains circumstantial evidence. Abrar and Jannatunnisa did stay in hotel Pritam of Dadar in Mumbai. It is also known that LIC agent BK Shaikh met them at the Gateway of India. What was the couple doing there? They were known to be living in necessitous circumstances and therefore how could they afford the hotel bill? Moreover, what Rajwardhan is reported to have told about the frayed relationship of the spouses has come home to roost.
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http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-07-10/mumbai/29757634_1_malegaon-blast-khula-divorce