Plundering HindustanThe richest heritage of
India is its diversity and multi-religious people and the RSS is not happy with
it, writes Mustafa Khan.
Mustafa Khan
-
October 19, 2020
The sudden
and complete failure of the Indian polity is at hand thanks to the relentless
pursuit of Hindutva ideology. If criminal procedure
act of murder 320 is the war cry over the death of a film actor of some fame,
the unseemly covering up of the gang rape and murder of the 19 year old Dalit
girl is the tip of the iceberg of enormous difficulties the country is facing:
there are more reasons for meltdown. It has led to the point of no return.
Dalits and Muslims have no future in Modi’s India. The ominous prediction of a
sudden bus causing him accidental death has come to haunt some. It reminds of
the poetic justice in Graham Greene’s The Case for the Defense.
It is now a
well established fact that terror committed by the Hindutva ideology is mire
that is coming home to roost. Asghar Mansoori’s death in Nashik central jail is
a hobby horse of the police as well as the hordes of the right wing. It has
gone to such an extent that the widow of ATS chief Hemant Karkare, Professor
Kavita Karkare was forced to pen:
Don’t make
the mistake of becoming a martyr in this country
Such will be the sophistries after your death,
The prime investigative committees will blame you after your death
No country subjects their martyrs to an alcoholic test as ours did.
Read
more: Babri Mosque case: Indian courts are no longer immune to
Hindutva frenzy
The price
that her husband had paid was what Gustav Flaubert had called “ ‘L’homme c’est
rien—l’oeuvre c’est tout; Man is nothing, the work is everything.” The
Bihar government has given ticket to retired army Major Ramesh Upadhay.
This is the meltdown effect that is a nightmare because, even the fig leaf of
democracy and law and order is at risk. There were no detectives as was
Karkare, he was fit like Sherlock Holmes whose “lust of the chase would
suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to
the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with
his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that
of other mortals.” Our detectives are captive to the Hindutva ideology and
obtuse enough not to even know what intuition is and so are the courts.
The richest heritage of India is its
diversity and multi religious people and the RSS is no whit happy with it
The
hypocrisy is a mechanism to whitewash what PM Imran Khan has taken upon him as
a mission to tell the truth about RSS to the world. A part of the rebuttal comes from
Asaduddin Owaisi: “..to make Muslims second class citizens I don’t want to hear
you say that we’ve to be grateful to majority for living in our own homeland.
We’re not seeking majority’s good will, we’re not in a competition with world’s
Muslims to be the happiest. We just want our fundamental rights (sic),” Imran
Khan’s mission in educating the world about how RSS is behind all acts of
discrimination and hence, cruelty being meted out to the minority Muslims in
India.
It is also
untrue what the weekly columnist in Indian Express claims,
that Indian democracy has become illiberal because the congress party has not
taken it up as an issue. The heart of the matter is that RSS does not want
democracy in the country or else how would they make India a Hindu rashtra?
Neither is Indian democracy complacent enough to claim that either the people
or Bollywood is comfortable with the claim that they are “content about the
valor, values and culture of India” as Karan Johar has put it.
Read
more: Plundering Hindustan in the name of
Hindutva: Emperor, where are your clothes?
The richest
heritage of India is its diversity and multi religious people and the RSS is no
whit happy with it. This is made clear and underlined by the letter Sangh sent
immediately after the bomb attack in Malegaon in September 2006 and repeated
the attack in September 2008.
“Do you
remember or not the bomb blasts? Or have you forgotten! If you have forgotten
then be prepared for further bomb blasts. The power of the Sangh (RSS) is all
over the state and the country. Remember this is a Hindu Rashtra and we will
make it one. Muslims, leave India. Jamaitul ulema-e-Hind, don’t try to be
smart. We are enclosing here with our deeds”
India has not squeaked at all and
squeaking wheels get the grease and India’s got to be squeaking loud. It’s got
to be doing things, some risky, some dangerous, some positive
The
mastermind behind this was none other than a serving lieutenant colonel of the
Indian Army, by his own confession, Lieu Col Prasad Srikant Purohit. The letter
makes no bone of contention the gravamen of the extreme right wing ideology. It
includes a warning to the body of the Muslim minority, Jamiatul ulema-e-Hind
which is also fighting with whatever little money it can spare against the
bogus and premeditated arrested of Muslims in terror attack.
Another
dimension of it is that the chief minister of UP Yogi Adityanath used his
executive power to cover up the gang rape and murder of the 19 year Dalit girl.
By hook or by crook, the Yogi government wants to create an impression that the
Dalits are content with their lot by releasing staggered information that would
attenuate the ghastly rape and death. The fact of the matter is, the
country is in a state of meltdown. “Her family told the court that the
cremation was done by the Hathras district administration against their
wishes,” said senior advocate Jaideep Narain Mathur, who was appointed amicus
curiae in the case. Why is there so much of shunning and distancing of the
district official? It may be because he recorded the CM’s order on the phone.
Read
more: Has Narendra Modi’s Hindutva ideology
destroyed India’s secular image across the globe?
“If Mr. Modi
were to explain his role in the violence and show genuine remorse, we would
consider backing him, but he never has; it would be wrong for a man who has
thrived on division to become prime minister of a country as fissile as India.
We do not find the prospect of a government led by Congress under Mr. Gandhi an
inspiring one. But, we have to recommend it to Indians as the less disturbing
option.” “And if they still choose Mr. Modi? We would wish him well, and we
would be delighted for him to prove us wrong by governing India in a modern,
honest and fair way. But for now he should be judged on his record—which is
that of a man who is still associated with sectarian hatred. There is nothing
modern, honest or fair about that. India deserves better.”
Rise of Modi & the demise of secularism
Since then,
Modi has risen higher and higher in power and as PM, he unfurled the tricolor
and in his impromptu speech, he forgot what the papers said. But he spoke of
how he was awakened to the warfare that was the standard practice between
departments of government in the Delhi durbar of new Modi Sarkar. Now his
legacy from Gujarat has churned up such warfare between Intelligence Bureau and
Central Bureau of Investigation. On Thursday August 21, 2014 IB appealed to the
Supreme Court to intervene in CBI filing a charge sheet against 4 IB officers
Rajendra Kumar, P Mittal, M K Sinha and Rajeev Wankhede) who were behind fake
encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others. This, if we have to believe GL
Singhal who participated in shooting the four, was ordered by chief minister Modi.
Stephen
Cohen speaking at the Brookings Institution said of India: “India has not
squeaked at all and squeaking wheels get the grease and India’s got to be
squeaking loud. It’s got to be doing things, some risky, some dangerous, some
positive.” Narendra Modi’s foreign policy will of course be of concern. The
visa ban on Modi was the result of the genocide of Muslims in 2002 from which
despite the clean chits issued to Modi the legal battle is still going on.
Read
more: Hindutva mindset, stubbornness kindle chaos &
conflict: FM Qureshi
Among the
three things risky and dangerous have been there before the 2014 polls started,
throughout the polls, and even post poll, the pogroms in Assam are the most
portentous ones after Muzaffarnagar’s share of the preplanned events. All on
account of the phenomenon Narendra Modi has created. It is bound to have
tectonic changes if Modi is to assume office as prime minister of India. India
has been squeaking without the foreigners taking serious note of it except, the
US Commission on Religious Freedom. It did recommended visa ban. Cohen says
that once Modi is in office, India may squeak “with a vengeance with the advent
of a Modi foreign policy.” This is undeniable because Muslims were massacred in
2002, Muzaffanagar in 2013, Assam in 2012 and, the same repeated in May 2014.
The last was
on account of the poll which has churned out the Modi phenomenon as a
presidential type of electioneering tsunami. It sucked up the highest amount of
money so far spent on election by a single party. The human rights violations
by the police and the militia in Gujarat and Assam and also the upsurge of the
Hindutva militia be it in Muzaffarnagar or Gujarat 2002, have marred the image
of India as a multiracial society. Its repercussion is there to see: the US
ambassador Nancy Powell resigned for opposing visa to Modi. Cohen has had this
in mind among other things when he observed: “Modi has close relations with
China, Japan, and South Korea, and bad relations with the US.” It is not Modi
who has bad relations. Cohen is being ironic. It the human rights violation and
concern over religious freedom that is at the heart of the matter.
The cases
that pile up crying for justice point an accusing finger not just at Modi but
also the police and courts: how could a two page letter as suicide note in a
plastic bag reached into Asghar Mansoorie’s stomach when his niece found him so
optimistic and jovial? He had completed 14 years of imprisonment and was given
a responsible duty of warden and then suddenly, he was sent to the solitary
cell.
The case of Mohammad Qateel Siddiqui
Mohammad
Qateel Siddiquy was in prison for seven months and refused to own up a crime he
had not committed. On the day of the German Bakery attack on 13 February 2012,
there was another attempt to blow up the famed Dagdu Seth Halwai temple in
Pune. This claim by the police needs to be scrutinized, as a similar claim in
Malegaon on 13 September 2006 turned out to be fake and the police reportedly
drove away the planter of the would be bomb as weak minded and framed innocent
Muslims from the nine accused, instead.
Qateel was
accused by the police to be involved in the attempt. There is no proof that he
was there. But the police say he wanted to plant the bomb there but a florist
did not let him do so. Did the florist recognize him in an identity
parade? Eleven others were also accused along with him. The failed
attempt of the police and especially ATS chief Rakesh Maria to implicate him in Dagdu Seth
Halwai temple is reminiscent of the failed attempt of the same agency in the
case of Khwaja Yunus in the Ghatkoper bus attack of December 2, 2002.
Read
more: Has Narendra Modi’s Hindutva ideology
destroyed India’s secular image across the globe?
In the case
of Yunus, ATS officer Sachin Vaze and others had hit his chest with their feet
and knees so hard that another accused Dr. Mateen Ansari realized that he would
not survive. Yunus vomited blood and could not survive. Dr. Mateen provided
this fact in writing. Till then, false news that Vaze had given was the
sensational news that the police jeep carrying Yunus had over turned and the
accused made use of this to escape law.
Till today
when even Yaseen Bhatkal is safely in the hands of the Indian police, there is
no trace of Yunus’ dead body.
Another
accused acquitted in many charges of terror was killed in Tihar jail, when a
couple of other false charges were still pending. He was Shakeel Ahmad of
Delhi. He was in jail for fourteen years and during that period his toddler
daughters grew up and now live in sorrow. Till this day the Indian police have
not come clean on Shakeel or Qateel. Both had told their wives how the police
had snuffed out any hope of their survival. They had stubbornly refused to sign
the fake confession.
Another
accused Muzammil Akhtar of Malegkaon is still alive because he signed the bogus
confession when the ATS brought him in the presence of his father and
threatened that even his mother and sister too would be unrobed and insulted
like his father. The moot question is that Muzammil has spent not just seven
months like Qateel, he has spent ten years and he is still not out even on
bail: Why? He was accused of the Mulund local train attack that killed 14 on
13th March 2003 in Mumbai. It is really strange that all other accused have
been let off, discharged. Even Dr. Mateen was given bail and discharged
subsequently in the same case. Why has the wheel of justice stuck in the morass
of miscarriage of justice for so long?
Read
more: Tracing the roots of Hindutva &
Modi’s BJP party
There are
even more serious and disturbing questions which reflect on the nature of how
the judiciary and jail system work in India against Muslims. Qateel was already
doomed by the police or else why would he have been put in the top security
Yerwada jail instead regular jails. He had not been proved to be such a
dreadful criminal as the dacoit Alok Bhalerao or a proved killer of two and
extortionist, Sharad Mohol (who killed him) to require a top security jail.
Qateel was to appear later on that Friday 8th June 2012 in the Pune court. The
ATS had not found any culpable evidence against him in the Pune case and would
have let the Delhi police take his custody. It is likely that he knew who had
blown bombs in Pune German Bakery and it was a fatal cover up by the police. He
was bumped off in the same way as Shahid Azmi was. Who would fear the truth
revealed to the Delhi police?
If Qateel
had taunted the dacoits and extortionists Alok Bhalerao and Sharad Mohol, it
would mean that he knew the real terrorists and would go on to tell it to the
Delhi police. Given the location of five lock ups of three cells each in such a
high security set up it was impossible to kill him there. So the only way would
be when the prisoners are brought into the open at 9.45 to 11.45 in the
morning. It is but natural that at such a time there should have been even more
tight security. Yet, one of the two dacoits held Qateel’s legs and the other
strangulated him. Even then the guards or the police did not come to know of
the murder. It was only when one of the killers told another prisoner who in
turn told the guards that the news reached the ears of the authorities.
Even if close circuit cameras were there, the police would have conveniently
lied as in so many other cases that the camera system was not working. So what
we have here is extra judicial killing.
The police
claim that Yaseen Bhatkal had given one lac rupees for the treatment of
Qateel’s daughter who later died. Now that the police in Delhi are
interrogating Yaseen, they should find out if he had really given one lac to
Qateel in addition to the one lakh he had sent to his wife on the occasion of
Eid. When the police has 40 charges against Yaseen even before his arrest, why
don’t they have anything on his connection with Qateel and a host of other
Muslim youths accused of being his associates?
Read
more: Hindutva led India on a way to destruction under Modi
How
improbable it is that the police claim that Qateel had tried to plant the bomb
at the temple but a florist refused to let him and so he took it all the way to
the sea in Mumbai to dispose it off there? If Qateel was not involved in the
Pune German Bakery case, how could he have known where Yasin Bhatkal was hiding
in Bihar. And after Yasin Bhatkal was arrested from the border region in Bihar
on Wednesday 28th August 2013, why would the Bihar government refuse to
register the crime and take custody of Yasin Bhatkal on 29th August?
In this
melee, what hope is there for truth to see the light of the day? The only way
for the truth to come out would be impartial inquiry by international bodies of
repute. This is a way out as even David Coleman Headley and Swami Asimanand
have been either prevaricating or retracting whatever they have said. The
Ministry of Home Affairs has also been hiding crucial information and facts
like in the case of Intelligence Bureau special director Rajendra Kumar’s
involvement in Ishrat Jahan case as well as many other cases. It is not only
the Bihar government which is casting aspersion on Yasin Bhatkal’s arrest by
its refusal to do anything with him.
Qateel
taunted Sharad Mohol and Alok Bhalerao which led to his killing but there was
no one who saw the murder. So the question is still open as to who killed him.
If the duo killed him, who was behind them? The duo and Qateel were playing
together, chatting and hobnobbing with each other well. Then how and what could
go so wrong that could lead to murder? It could not have been the taunt then
that led to the murder. It could only be the fear that if the Delhi police
which had arrested him a year before could come to know the stark truth, which the
ATS did not want to share with it.
Read
more: To be Secular or not: Stop India’s
Hindutva Juggernaut
It is also
unexplained till today why did the ATS not hand over Qateel to Delhi police on
29th May 2013 when his police custody ended? He had been in the custody of the
police in Pune Yerwada jail from 1st May. There was enough time to have interrogated
him in four weeks. Why did not the two so called ‘extremist nationalists’ kill
him on 29th May itself?
The ATS
prepared 81 pages of charge sheet in September 2012 in which it says that
Qateel had threatened a “second attempt” to blow the same temple. How could the
police verify this and the court to judge? If nobody was present there in the
notorious anda cell prison how could the ATS accept this when they had not
accepted Qateel’s own insistence that he was not involved in crimes? In what
way two criminals and dacoits are more reliable in jail than an innocent
person? If the alleged threat to make second attempt was a boast why in
heavens should it be taken as de facto intention of crime? There was little
chance of Qateel ever coming out to commit a crime others have ascribed to him?
Would he with no record of previous crimes threaten a second attempt? He would
have been a fool to even think of a second attempt after having gone through
the hell that is Indian jail for seven long months.
Inexplicable
is also the fact that Delhi police had arrested him on 22nd November 2011 and
had him for more than five months to know all they wanted. Why did they not
finish their job? Why did they not ascertain from him before handing him to
another agency of another state? Why is the Hindu party BJP silent over this
whole affair? Is the onus only on the Muslims all the time to struggle to prove
their youths’ innocence?
Updated: October 19, 2020 3:51 pm IST
Shashi Tharoor said
the theme was "brilliantly
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/malegaon-blast-accused-joins-jdu-in-up-says-wish-to-work-for-society-6758178/
Ramesh Upadhyay,
an accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case, has joined the Janata
Dal (United) in Uttar Pradesh and has been appointed state
convenor of its ex-servicemen cell. His appointment letter was issued by UP
JD(U) chief Anoop Singh Patel on October 12.
Upadhyay, a retired army major, had been arrested along with Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Lt Col Prasad
Shrikant Purohit by the Maharashtra ATS for his alleged role in the 2008
Malegaon case. He was, however, released on bail in 2017. Trial in the case is
on before a special NIA court in Mumbai.
Upadhyay,
a resident of Pune and a native of Ballia in UP, had contested the 2019 Lok
Sabha elections from his native constituency as an Independent candidate.
Earlier, in 2012, he had contested the UP Assembly elections from Bairia in
Ballia district on a Hindu Mahasabha ticket, after seeking permission from the
court.
Speaking
to The Indian Express, Upadhyay said, “Members of the JD(U) in UP had approached me.
After discussions, I decided to work for the party… I do not plan to contest
elections as of now. I am currently residing in Pune, but will travel to UP for
party work.”
Research| How Thakurs have dominated UP politics
since Independence
Upadhyay
said he believes in the JD(U) leadership and its idea of “samajik nyay ke sath
vikas (development along with social justice)”. Asked about the terror charges
against him, Upadhyay said, “I am innocent. I am a nationalist, and a patriotic
and secular person. I was falsely implicated in the Malegaon bomb blast case… I
am waiting for my acquittal. I wish to work for society. JD(U) is sincerely
working for the development of poor and downtrodden”
Hari
Shankar Patel, General Secretary of the JD(U) in UP, said, “Major Upadhyay has
contested elections from UP twice in the past. Our district chief from Ballia
knew Upadhyay and asked him to join the party. We respect the courts and law.
Upadhyay has not been held guilty by the court.”
Sadhvi
Pragya Thakur, also an accused in the 2008 Malegaon case, had contested and won
the 2019 Lok Sabha election on a BJP ticket
from Bhopal.
Persistent role of Hinduva in terror has failed
India and humiliated it in the eyes of the world
Mustafa Khan
Meltdown of India that Modi built
The sudden and complete failure of the Indian polity
is at hand thanks to the relentless pursuit of Hindutva ideology. If criminal
procedure act of murder 320 is the war cry over the death of a film actor of
some fame the unseemly covering up of the gang rape and murder of the 19 year
old Dalit girl is tip of the iceberg of enormous difficulties the country is
facing: there are more reasons for meltdown. It has led to the point of no
return. Dalits and Muslims have no future in India of Modi. The ominous
prediction of a sudden bus causing him accidental death has come to haunt some.
It reminds one of the poetic justice in Graham Greene’s The Case for the Defense.
It is now a well established fact that Terror
committed by Hindutva is mire that is coming home to roost. Asghar Mansoori’s
death in Nashik central jail is a hobby horse of the police as well as the
hordes of the right wing. It has gone to such an extent that the widow of ATS
chief Hemant Karkare, Professor Kavita Karkare was forced to pen:
Don’t make the mistake of becoming a martyr in this
country
Such will be the sophistries after your death,
The prime investigatve committees will blame you
after your death
No country subjects their martyrs to an alcoholic
test as ours did.
The price that her husband had
paid was what Gustav Flaubert had called “ ‘L’homme c’est rien—l’oeuvre c’est
tout.’ Man is nothing, the work is
everything.” The Bihar government has given ticket to retired army Major
Ramesh Upadhay. This is the meltdown
effect that is a nighmare because even the fig leaf of democracy and law and
order is at risk. No detective of India was like Karkare and he was fit like
Sherlock Homes whose “lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and
that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were
unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose
knowledge was not that of other mortals.” Our detectives are captive to the
Hidutva ideology and obtuse enough not to even know what intuition is and so
are the courts.
Plundering goes on in all kinds of calling names
like Indian Muslims are most content in India. This hypocrisy of RSS
boss has been bobbling up from time to time. In doing so he is in fact
insulting them. It is a mechanism to whitewash what PM Imran Khan has taken
upon him as a mission to tell the truth about RSS to the world. A part of the
rebuttal comes from Asaduddin Owaisi: “..to make
Muslims second class citizens I don't want to hear you say that we've to be
grateful to majority for living in our own homeland. We're not seeking
majority's good will, we're not in a competition with world's Muslims to be the
happiest. We just want our fundamental rights (sic)," Imran Khan’s mission
in educating the world about how RSS is behind all acts of discrimination and
hence cruelty being meted out to the minority Muslims in India. It is also not
true to say how the weekly columnist in Indian Express claims that Indian
democracy has become illiberal because the Congress party has not taken it up
as an issue. The heart of the matter is that RSS does not like that there
should be democracy in the country or else how they make India a Hindu rashtra?
Nor is Indian democracy complacent enough to claim that either the people or
the Bollywood is at comfort with the claim that they are “content about the
valour, values and culture of India” as Karan Jauhar has put it.
The richest heritage of India is its
diversity and multi religious people and the RSS is no whit happy with it. This
is made clear and underlined by the letter Sangh sent immediately after the
bomb attack in Malegaon in September 2006 and repeated the attack in September
2008.
“Do you remember or not
the bomb blasts? Or have you forgotten! If you have forgotten then be prepared
for further bomb blasts. The power of the Sangh (RSS) is all over the state and
the country. Remember this is a Hindu Rashtra and we will make it one. Muslims,
leave India. Jamaitul ulema-e-Hind, don’t try to be smart.
We are enclosing here
with our deeds”
Sangh”
In this no other than a serving
lieutenant colonel of the Indian Army was the mastermind by his own confession,
Lieu Col Prasad Srikant Purohit. The letter makes no bone of contention the
gravamen of the extreme right wing ideology. It includes a warning to the all
India learned body of the Muslim minority, Jamiatul ulema-e-Hind which is also
fighting with whatever little money it can spare against the bogus and
premeditated arrested of Muslims in terror attack.
Another dimension of it is that the chief minister
of UP Yogi Adityanath used his executive power to cover up the gang rape and
murder of the 19 year Dalit girl. By hook or crook the Yogi government wants to
create impression that the Dalit are content with their lot by releasing
staggered information that would attenuate the ghastly rape and death. In real facts the country is in a state of meltdown. “Her family told the court that the cremation
was done by the Hathras district administration against their wishes,” said
senior advocate Jaideep Narain Mathur, who was appointed amicus curiae in the
case. Why is there so much of shunning and distancing of the district official.
It may be that he recorded the CM’s order that came on the phone.
“If Mr Modi were to explain his role in the violence
and show genuine remorse, we would consider backing him, but he never has; it
would be wrong for a man who has thrived on division to become prime minister
of a country as fissile as India. We do not find the prospect of a government
led by Congress under Mr Gandhi an inspiring one. But we have to recommend it
to Indians as the less disturbing option.” “And if they still choose Mr Modi?
We would wish him well, and we would be delighted for him to prove us wrong by
governing India in a modern, honest and fair way. But for now he should be
judged on his record—which is that of a man who is still associated with
sectarian hatred. There is nothing modern, honest or fair about that. India
deserves better.”(1)
Since then Modi has risen higher and higher in power
and as PM he unfurled the tricolor and in his impromptu speech he forgot what
the papers said would be highlights of the Independence Speech. But he spoke of
how he was awakened to the warfare that was the standard practice between
departments of government in the Delhi durbar of new Modi Sarkar. Now his
legacy from Gujarat has churned up such warfare between Intelligence Bureau and
Central Bureau of Investigation. On Thursday August 21, 2014 IB appealed to the
Supreme Court to intervene in CBI filing a charge sheet against 4 of IB
officers Rajendra Kumar, P Mittal, M K Sinha and Rajeev Wankhede) who were
behind fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others. This if we have to
believe GL Singhal who participated in shooting the four was carried out by the
order of Chief Minister Modi.
India squeaking : pas and now
Stephen Cohen speaking at the Brookings Institution
said of India: “India has not squeaked at all and squeaking wheels get the
grease and India’s got to be squeaking loud. It’s got to be doing things, some
risky, some dangerous, some positive.” Narendra Modi’s foreign policy will of
course be of concern. The visa ban on Modi was the result of the genocide of
Muslims in 2002 from which despite the clean chits issued to Modi the legal
battle is still going on.
Among the three things risky and dangerous have been
there before the 2014 polls started, through the polls and even post poll. The
pogroms in Assam are the most portentous ones after the Muzaffarnagar’s share
of the preplanned events. All on account of what phenomenon Narendra Modi has
created. It is bound to have tectonic changes if Modi is to assume office as
prime minister of India. India has been squeaking without the foreigners taking
serious note of it except the US Commission on Religious Freedom. It did and
recommended visa ban. Cohen says that once Modi is in office India may squeak
“with a vengeance with the advent of a Modi foreign policy.” [2]This is
undeniable because Muslims were massacred in 2002, 2013 Muzaffanagar and Assam
in 2012 and the same repeated in May 2014. The last was on account of the poll
which has churned out the Modi phenomenon as a presidential type of
electioneering tsunami. It sucked up the highest amount of money so far spent
on election by a single party. The human rights violation by the police and the
militia in Gujarat and Assam and also the upsurge of the Hindutva militia be it
in Muzaffarnagar or Gujarat 2002 have marred the image of India as a multiracial
society. Its repercussion is there to see: the US ambassador Nancy Powell
resigned for opposing visa to Modi. Cohen has had this in mind among other
things when he observed: “Modi has close relations with China, Japan, and South
Korea, and bad relations with the US.” It is not Modi who had bad relation.
Cohen is ironic. It the human rights violation and concern over religious
freedom that is at the heart of the matter.
The cases that pile up crying for justice point an
accusing finger not just at Modi but also the police and courts: how could a
two page letter as suicide note in a plastic bag reached into Asghar Mansoorie’s
stomach when his niece found him so optimistic and jovial she observed on her
phone till October 7 2020. He had completed 14 years of imprisonment and was
given responsible duty of warden and then suddenly he was sent to solitary
cell. (3)
The case of Mohammad Qateel Siddiquy
(26)
Mohammad Qateel Siddiquy was in prison for seven months and refused to own up a
crime he had not committed. On the day of the German Bakery attack 13 February
2012 there was another attempt to blow up the famed Dagdu Seth Halwai temple in
Pune. This claim of police needs scrutiny as similar claim in Malegaon on 13
September 2006 turned out to be fake and the police reportedly drove away the
planter of the would be bomb as a weak minded and framed innocent Muslims from
the nine accused, instead. Qateel was accused by the police to be involved in
the attempt. There is no proof that he was there. But the police say he wanted
to plant the bomb there but a flower seller did not let him do so. Did the
florist recognize him in an identity parade? Eleven others were
also accused along with him. The failed attempt of the police and especially
ATS chief Rakesh Maria to implicate him in Dagdu Seth Halwai temple is
reminiscent of the failed attempt of the same agency in the case of Khwaja
Yunus in the Ghatkoper bus attack of December 2, 2002. In the case of
Yunus ATS officer Sachin Vaze and others had hit his breast with their feet and
knees so hard that another accused Dr Mateen Ansari realized that he would not
survive. Yunus vomited blood and could not survive. Dr Mateen gave this fact in
writing. Till then the false news that Vaze had given had been the sensational
news that the police jeep carrying Yunus had over turned and the accused made
use of this to escape law. Till today when even Yaseen Bhatkal is safely in the
hands of the Indian police there is no trace of the dead body of Yunus. Another
accused acquitted in many charges of terror was killed in Tihar jail when a
couple of other false charges were still pending. He was Shakeel Ahmad of
Delhi. He was in jail for fourteen years during that period his toddler
daughters grew up and now live in sorrow. Till this day the Indian police have
not come clean on Shakeel or Qateel either. Both had told their wives of how
the police had snuffed out any hope of their survival! They had stubbornly
refused to sign the fake confession. Another accused Muzammil Akhtar of Malegaon
is still alive because he signed the bogus confession when the ATS brought him
in the presence of his father and threatened that even his mother and sister
too would be unrobed and insulted like his father. The moot question is that
Muzammil has spent not just seven months like Qateel, he has spent ten years
and he is still not out even on bail: Why? He was accused of the Mulund local
train attack that killed 14 on 13th March 2003 in Mumbai. It is really strange
that all other accused have been let off! Discharged! Even Dr Mateen was given
bail and discharged subsequently in the same case. Why has the wheel of justice
stuck in the morass of miscarriage of justice for so long?
There are even more serious and disturbing questions which reflect on the
nature of how the judiciary and jail system work in India against the Muslims.
Qateel was already doomed by the police or else why should he have been put in
the top security Yerwada jail instead regular jails. He had not been
proved to be such a dreadful criminal as the dacoit Alok Bhalerao or a proved
killer of two and extortionist as Sharad Mohol (who killed him) to require a
top security jail. Qateel was to appear later on that Friday 8th June 2012 in
the Pune court. The ATS had not found any culpable evidence against him in the
Pune case and would have let the Delhi police take his custody. It is likely
that he knew who had blown bombs in Pune German Bakery and it was a fatal cover
up by the police. He was bumped off in the same way as Shahid Azmi was. Who
would fear the truth revealed to the Delhi police?
If Qateel had taunted the dacoits and extortionists Alok Bhalerao and Sharad
Mohol it would mean that he knew the real terrorists and would go on to tell it
to the Delhi police. Given the location of five lock ups of three cells each in
such high security set up it was impossible to kill him there. So the only way
would be when the prisoners are brought into the open at 9.45 to 11.45 in the
morning. It is but natural that at such a time there should have been even more
tight security. And yet one of the two dacoits held Qateel’s legs and the other
strangulated him. Even then the guards or the police did not come to know of
the murder. It was only when one of the killers having told another prisoner
who in turn told the guards of it that the news reached the ears of the
authorities. Even if the close circuit camera were there the police would
have conveniently lied as in so many other cases that the camera system was not
working. So what we have here is extra judicial killing.
The police claim that Yaseen Bhatkal had given one lakh rupees for the
treatment of Qateel’s daughter who later died. Now that the police in Delhi are
interrogating Yaseen they should find out if he had really given one lakh to
Qateel in addition to the one lakh he had sent to his wife on the occasion of
Id that was celebrated on 9th August. When the police have 40 charges against
Yaseen even before his arrest why they don’t have anything from him on his
connection with Qateel and a host of other Muslim youths accused of being his
associates!
How improbable it is that the police claim that Qateel had tried to plant the
bomb at the temple but a florist refused to let him and so he took it all the
way to the sea in Mumbai to dispose it off there! If Qateel was not involved in
the Pune German Bakery case how could he have known where Yasin Bhatkal was
hiding in Bihar. And after Yasin Bhatkal was arrested from the border region in
Bihar on Wednesday 28th August 2013 why would the Bihar government refuse to
register the crime and take custody of Yasin Bhatkal on 29th August?(1)
In this melee what hope is there for truth to see the light of the day? The
only way for the truth to come out would be impartial inquiry by international
bodies of repute. This is a way out as even David Coleman Headley and Swami
Asimanand have been either prevaricating or retracting whatever they have said.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has also been hiding crucial information and facts
like in the case of Intelligence Bureau special director Rajendra Kumar’s
involvement in Ishrat Jahan case as well as many other cases. It is not only
the Bihar government which is casting aspersion on Yasin Bhatkal arrest by its
refusal to do anything with him. Qateel taunted Sharad Mohol and Alok Bhalerao
which led to his killing but there was no one who saw the murder. So the
question is still open as to who killed him. If the duo killed him who was behind
them? The duo and Qateel were playing together, chatting and hobnobbing with
each other well. Then how and what could go so wrong to lead to
murder?(2) It could not be the taunt
then that led to the murder. It could only be the fear that if the Delhi police
which had arrested him a year before could come to know stark truth which the
ATS did not want to share with it.
It is also unexplained till today why did not the ATS hand over Qateel to Delhi
police on 29th May 2013 when his police custody ended. He had been in the
custody of the police in Pune Yerwada jail from 1st May. There was enough time
to have interrogated him in four weeks. Why did not the two so called
‘extremist nationalists’ kill him on 29th May itself.
The ATS prepared 81 pages of charge sheet in September 2012 in which it says
that Qateel had threatened “second attempt” to blow the same temple. How could
the police verify this and the court to judge? If nobody was present there in
the notorious anda cell prison how could the ATS accept this when they had not
accepted Qateel’s own insistence that he was not involved in crimes. In what
way two criminals and dacoits are more reliable in jail than an innocent
person? If the alleged threat to make second attempt was a boast why in heavens
it should be taken as de facto intention of crime? There was little chance of
Qateel ever coming out to commit a crime others have ascribed to him? Would he
with no record of previous crimes threaten such second attempt? He would have
been a fool to even think second attempt after having gone through the hell
that is Indian jail for seven long months. (3)
Inexplicable is also the fact that Delhi police had arrested him on 22nd
November 2011 and had him for more than five months to know all they wanted.
Why did they not finish their job? Why did they not ascertain from him before
handing him to another agency of another state? Why is the Hindu party BJP
silent over this whole affair? Is the onus only on the Muslims all the time to
struggle to prove their youths’ innocence?
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(1)http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21600106-he-will-probably-become-indias-next-prime-minister-does-not-mean-he-should-be-can-anyone?zid=309&ah=80dcf288b8561b012f603b9fd9577f0e
(2)http://www.rediff.come/news/report/Is-election-danger-to-modi-as-prime-minister-wii-be-from-his-right-stephen-cohen/20140513hmt
Danger to Modi as prime minister ‘will be from his
right’:Stephen Cohen
(3)https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/nashik-prisoner-hangs-
himself-note-found-in-body-blames-jail-staff-6727540/
case of Qateel Siddiquy
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(1)
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/terror-suspect-killed-by-fellow-inmates-in-pune-jail/article3504634.ece
(2)
warrant-taunt-led-mohd-qateel-siddiqui-death-in-jail/1/200010.html
(3)
http://zeenews.india.com/news/maharashtra/siddiqui-killed-for-bragging-about-pune-temple-attack-cops_7981
in the name of Hindutva
