Will the tabling of the Ram Pradhan Committee report affect Ajmal Kasab’s trial or is it under wraps only for political reasons? Harinder Baweja accesses the report to find the answers
DURING HIS visit to Mumbai after the terror attack, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram apologised to the citizens of the state; this itself indicated lapses from the Union government… Forget the Mumbai police, no police force of the country was prepared to face the warlike situation.”
This is what RD Pradhan, former governor and union home secretary, said in April, soon after submitting his committee’s report to the Maharashtra chief minister in April. In many ways, Pradhan’s comments reveal the tone of the report. The two-member committee had been constituted in December 2007, soon after the horrific attacks in Mumbai on 26/11 and had been expressly asked to uncover any lapses by the state government in acting on intelligence inputs provided by the centre and probe lapses by the Mumbai Police in reacting to the attacks.
The report was submitted in April but Chief Minister Ashok Chavan has steadfastly refused to table it in the assembly and has stalled it being made public – on the grounds that it could affect the trial of Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist to be caught alive.
What does the report really contain? Is the information really sensitive or is the state government worried that the contents could become politically damaging in Maharashtra’s forthcoming assembly elections? The BJP is already in rabble-rousing mode, with Nitin Gadkari, its state President alleging that the government is attempting a “cover up,” while “the common man needs to know who is responsible for the deaths of several police officers and citizens. If there is any incriminating information on the role of ministers and bureaucrats, it should be made public.”
TEHELKA has managed to examine the controversial Pradhan report. We found that while the Committee has detailed the Mumbai Police’s fault lines — no arms, no ammunition and no coordination — it has not fixed any responsibility. Alarmingly, while it details the entire process of how the state government handled the intelligence alerts, as well as the Mumbai Police’ rigor mortis under fire, the report stops short of naming names. The only two who come up for criticism are the then Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor and Chhagan Bhujbal, though the latter has not been named but is identified only by his designation – deputy chief minister in 2002, when an order passed by him severely delayed the procurement of arms and ammunition, crip pling the police’s modernisation process.
Let’s examine some findings of the Pradhan committee as to how Maharashtra reacted to intelligence inputs.
“The Committee found total confusion in the processing of intelligence alerts at the level of the state government and the Police”
It is well known that there were several intelligence inputs indicating a possible attack on Mumbai via the sea route. It has also been documented and established that the Taj Hotel was specifically mentioned in some of these reports. So what happened to these IB and RAW reports that ought to have been taken seriously? Why did the Mumbai Police fail to put their heads together and realise that a major attack was being planned on the city? As the committee’s report says, “an overall assessment of the intelligence reports would have revealed a strong indication that some major terrorist action was being planned against Mumbai city, had the essence of these intelligence alerts been analysed.”
The answer to why the intelligence was not ‘analysed’ — mildly put — is shocking:
Two senior officers – Additional Chief Secretary (Home) and the Principal Secretary (Home) – told the Pradhan committee in writing that they had NOT (emphasis needed) received any intelligence alerts from the Ministry of Home Affairs
‘I have taken a step back so that I can hit harder’
Accused of involvement in a sex scandal, J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tells Harinder Baweja that he is in an honour battle
Kashmir is a political landmine but did you expect an allegation of involvement in the Srinagar sex scandal?
Well, I knew that my Opposition would do everything possible to rattle the government. But I didn’t expect them to stoop as low as this.
Why now? The scandal is three years old. How do you explain what the Opposition has done?
They are obviously panicking. We have our problems but we deal with them in a far more transparent and timely manner than they did. They are seeing the support we are getting from the government of India. They are, in desperation, willing to fling mud everywhere and hope that something sticks.
People feel you have reacted emotionally rather than politically.
If we divorce politics from emotions then there is nothing to separate a politician from a robot. We are still very sensitive to allegations of moral corruption as opposed to financial corruption or administrative mistakes and things like that. I don’t think there was any other way of reacting to it and I am actually glad that I have done it.
So would the state now have to stay without a chief minister?
The state is not without a chief minister. I have 22 very competent ministers who are going about their work and it’s not as if we have suddenly left a vacuum.
What would you say to people who are saying that you don’t have the stomach for a fight?
They just have to look at my record over the last six years of surviving in the Opposition when Mufti [Mufti Muhammad Sayeed] did everything possible to destroy us. I fought. If I didn’t want to fight this, I would have quit and said I’ll go abroad. I haven’t left the ring. By taking a step back, I am in a position to hit back harder.
Only a few months ago you heralded hope as a young, clean politician. Now you are in the thick of controversy. And I am referring not just to what happened in the Assembly, but to Shopian as well.
Nobody expected Kashmir to be an easy state. It never has been, it never will be. But even if Shopian was my worst mistake, I don’t think that’s a bad track record. What happened in Shopian and the way the government reacted could have been better, but there have been lessons learnt.
You spoke a new language of development, of employment, of janta darbars. Do you think you have been judged too soon?
No, I have always maintained that the people will sign my report card in six years from now when we go back to them for a fresh mandate. Till then, the media is welcome to judge me as much as they like.
Was Delhi better than Kashmir?
If by better you mean easier, sure. Delhi is a cushy place to work. The blame falls on the prime minister and the ministers get away scot free. Here the buck stops at my table. So just because something is easier doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s better.
Do you regret your statement about the Shopian case, that “it was death by drowning”?
I did not make a statement. I arrived at that press conference to announce a judicial enquiry stating very clearly that we are dissatisfied with the initial findings. The mistake I made was only in answering the question about the initial findings.
Justice Jan has created a controversy by saying that the police have actually added a report to his report, which he does not stand by.
As far as I know what was released and what was acted upon was the report that came to me in a sealed envelope from the Justice Jan Commission. If anything has been added to this report, then Justice Jan needs to explain how a report was handed over to me without him verifying what went into it.
But we still don’t know who raped and killed those women.
We will do everything possible to arrive at those facts but we have lost two or three crucial days of evidence-gathering partly because of the local involvement in the covering up of the evidence, which Justice Jan has alluded to in his report, and partly because of the circumstances that were created there in terms of the civil unrest.
So clearly the police does have a lot to hide, right?
This is now a matter for the special investigation team to find out.
There is criticism that you spend more time in Delhi than in Kashmir.
None of my visits to Delhi are without justifiable reasons. Without the intensive lobbying that I did in Delhi, it would have been impossible for Jammu and Kashmir to get a jump from Rs 4,500 crore to Rs 5,500 crores. My work is not suffering, my files are not piling up. If my trips to Delhi are being used as a stick to beat me with, so be it.
You also have detractors who say you lack political experience.
The only thing I lack is age because I have as much, if not more, administrative experience than a number of chief ministers. I had spent almost 11 years in politics by the time I became chief minister. Give the Devil his due.
In the middle of all this, Kashmir is suffering. One of your main promises was to seek cooperation from Delhi to dilute or to get rid of the AFSPA.
Trust me when I tell you, nothing is suffering. What frustrates my political opposition is that nothing is stopping me from doing what I am supposed to do.
Is Delhi paying attention to the larger problem of Kashmir, now that you are in coalition with the Congress and reportedly close to Rahul Gandhi?
The real issue is political and I have been making this point from the very beginning, including in the prime minister’s roundtable initiative. The genesis of the Kashmir problem lies in its politics and a dialogue is essential. Even the home minister has realised this and has talked of a political engagement. To expect Delhi to have a homogenous opinion is impossible but the prime minister recognises the need for engagement.
So are we soon going to see a phased withdrawal of troops?
Commenting like this gives the impression to the troops here that somehow they are an unwelcome force. There is a need to strengthen the role of the J&K police and reduce the footprint of the other armed forces. But it won’t be done in a hasty manner.
Muzaffar Baig has said that if his allegations turn out to be false, he is willing to go to jail
Well, he is welcome to go to jail. I am not bothered. Let’s not forget until six months ago, he was law minister under the leadership of Ghulam Nabi Azad. I am only going to remind him of a statement he made sometime in 2006 when he told a Srinagar news agency that the women involved were willing to sell themselves for Rs 250.
Farooq Abdullah has said that you are fighting a battle for honour. Is that how you see it?
Absolutely. It’s a battle for honour, a battle for my selfrespect, and I am not going let people snatch that away from me.
shammy@tehelka.com
With Justice In Mind
Ajit Sahi
Editor-at-Large
Some readers and activists have faulted our coverage of the rape victims in Chhattisgarh whose testimonies the NHRC has denied. Their key points are: Naming the rape victims and their villages, and publishing their pictures (not pixellated enough in the opinion of some) has “severely compromised the victims’ attempts to cope with the assault” and “jeopardised their security”. It has also made it “that much more difficult” for these women to seek justice in the “highly polarised environment” of Chhattisgarh “amidst documented atrocities by the Salwa Judum”. Some letter writers say these rape victims are now “vulnerable to harassment and pressure to retract the testimonies”.
Veena, a mother of two little daughters, is a social activist from north India who settled in the tribal forest heartland of south Chhattisgarh 17 years ago. She has dedicated her life to working among the extremely poor and destitute tribal people. Veena is the vice-president of the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, an NGO that is fighting a grim battle against an extremely violent security apparatus, to bring justice for the tribal people being brutalised by the State and the Salwa Judum. Veena has risked life and limb to champion the cause of these rape victims.
The rape testimonies
Veena, who works with the rape victims, says the Tehelka report does not jeopardise their security but will, in fact, make the Salwa Judum fearful
This is what she said to me after the publication of The Rape Testimonies in TEHELKA: “You have done a great service by publishing these rape victims’ stories in this format. These girls are my family. They have been our lives for years. I have run from pillar to post with them to get justice. Especially since they went to the NHRC and the NHRC rejected their testimonies, they have lived in the dread of the Salwa Judum. They have constantly faced pressure to retract their testimonies. It is important that we don’t hide the truth about them. The publication of this story does not compromise or jeopardise the rape victims’ security. It makes them safer, not more insecure. TEHELKA’s report ensures that the Salwa Judum will now have some fear. By hiding the truth about these women, we were emboldening the State and the Salwa Judum. The Salwa Judum, the police, the government have always known the identities of these women. And they were taking advantage of the fact that the outside world knew nothing of these unfortunate victims, because nobody was willing to write about them. TEHELKA has done absolutely the right thing by taking their story to the outside world. You should know that this story is just the tip of the iceberg. The men of the Salwa Judum have raped hundreds of women.”
Sudha Bharadwaj, who, too, is a woman, is a criminal lawyer at the High Court of Chhattisgarh based in Bilaspur city. She represents some of these rape victims in the case they have initiated in a judicial magistrate’s court in the south Chhattisgarh town of Konta. When I spoke to her on the phone before writing the story, Bharadwaj expressed some misgivings about my attempt to document The Rape Testimonies. However, after the publication of the story, she sent me this text message from her mobile phone: “Excellent and factual report! No hard feelings about my earlier reservations, I hope.”
Nandini Sundar and a few letter writers claim I gave an “undertaking” that the identities of the rape victims will not be revealed. This is a reference to a series of e-mails Sundar and I exchanged roughly three months ago. (Some letter writers claimed that Sundar led me to the victims, but withdrew that line from a reworked mail they sent me later.) I have never met Nandini Sundar. She did not lead me to the rape victims. I have traveled rather extensively inside Chhattisgarh since last January, and I found out about the rape victims through my sources. I travelled to one village to meet a victim who had deposed before the NHRC.
Upon hearing of my quest, Nandini Sundar wrote to me asking me not to reveal the identities of the women. I wrote back saying the choice rests with the rape victims, who, I humbly believe, do not need lawyers, journalists and activists to tell them how to run their lives. Yes, I did in the end write back to her saying we would not reveal the victims’ identities. Short of giving the women fake names, we have not revealed their identities: we scratched out their faces from the pictures and we abbreviated their given name.
TEHELKA has always practiced journalism of integrity, and to publish The Rape Testimonies in its current format was no easy decision for us. Our own unique experiences in the battlefield over the last nine years have convinced us that the best “protection” we can provide the underdog is to push their story into the public domain, because the fear of exposure of their criminality often best deters the evildoers, especially those who represent the State. It is this principle which has, over the years, protected TEHELKA itself as it broke story after story — exposing the truth behind the Gujarat killings of 2002 as well as the truth of the Sikh massacres of 1984 — that upset the establishment and hit out at vested interests.
The Evil That Men Do
In the Indian setting, refusal to act on the testimony of the victim of sexual assault in the absence of corroboration as a rule is adding insult to injury. A girl or a woman in the tradition-bound non-permissive society of India would be extremely reluctant even to admit that any incident that is likely to reflect on her chastity had ever occurred… [A rape victim’s testimony] does not require corroboration from any other evidence, including the evidence of a doctor. — Supreme Court justices Arijit Pasayat and P Sathasivam, July 2008
FOR DECADES, the Supreme Court of India has cleaved to a rigorous legal standard in cases of rape: the testimony of the victim is enough evidence to launch the prosecution of the accused. Successive judgments over the years have reinforced this position. Thousands of convictions of alleged rapists have been effectively obtained on the basis of victims’ testimonies, with no corroborative evidence sought or offered. Often, the courts have overlooked minor discrepancies in the victims’ accounts, if the main narrative holds up.
Jurists and social commentators in India have long argued that, apart from being a most heinous crime against a woman’s person, her rape doubly curses her in the Indian society by imparting her a stigma that no other crime matches. That is why criminal investigation processes that the police must follow, as well as the judicial procedures prescribed when charges of rape arise, are unambiguous. This is best illustrated in the case of Hindi film actor Shiney Ahuja, who was arrested last month in Mumbai when his maidservant accused him of raping her. Ahuja has been denied bail, and rightly so, for his right to seek justice shall arise at the trial and not before or outside it.
What happens when the victims are destitute tribal women with no access to police, judiciary, media?
But what happens when rape becomes a brutal tool of class oppression in a wider social, political and economic war that men wage against one another, the raped women merely the pawns on their chessboard, the act of rape itself a side story, a cold-blooded strategy to terrorise an entire population into submission? What happens when the victims of rape are some of India’s most destitute tribal women, who live in virtually unreachable forests in subhuman conditions; who have absolutely zero access to the police, the judiciary, the media; whose verdant lands the mighty industrialists covet because they hold in their womb some of India’s richest mineral resources?
What happens when those accused of rape are the hired guns of a dubious state-backed militia that is the frontline in one of the world’s most brutal civil wars? What happens when the Indian State pivots this war against deeply entrenched Maoist insurgents on a take-no-prisoners approach, because unless the Maoists are killed off and millions of tribal people removed from their forests, hills and fields, corporate India won’t be able to claim the bounties of their lands? What happens when it is abundantly clear that accepting the charges of rape from such women would be very dangerous indeed because that step just might begin to unravel this barbaric anti-people militia, bringing an end to its unchecked reign of terror?
THIS IS the heartrending story of Chhattisgarh, and all the above questions have only one answer: the Indian State cannot afford to honestly investigate these women’s charges of rape and secure them justice. Therefore, it must be forced to do so. In the following pages, readers of TEHELKA will find graphic gut-wrenching testimonies of some tribal women of Chhattisgarh describing how they were brutalised by the men of the Salwa Judum, the tribal militia that the state government sponsored four years ago and has since terrorised tens of thousands of innocent tribal people, burning their houses down, forcing them to abandon their villages where they had lived for generations, to move into squalid government- controlled “camps”.
We traveled deep in the state’s highly forested southern region known as Bastar, and located six women who were raped by the men of the Salwa Judum [literally, peace movement]. We also spoke to one man who saw his sister raped and then found her killed; their father, too, was killed then. The women and the man we met voluntarily gave their testimonies to us, which we have recorded on tape. Most rapes pertain to the period following the setting up of the Salwa Judum in 2005.
But the most disturbing part of this story came last year when the Supreme Court asked the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to go to Chhattisgarh and investigate the charges of murder, rape, pillage and arson brought against those men of the Salwa Judum who have been hired and armed by the state police as Special Police Officers (SPOs). The report that an NHRC ‘fact-finding’ team wrote is deeply troubling in that it blindly toes the police and government line.
The NHRC report is deeply troubling as it blindly toes the police version. It absolves the accused, too
Created by Parliament in 1993 as an autonomous statutory human rights watchdog, the NHRC has long pretended to be the champion of the underdog. Log on to its website today, and you will be justified to feel a gush of relief at the rather self-congratulatory headlines about jobs well done – “NHRC takes suo moto cognisance of the alleged fake encounter in Uttarakhand and recommends CBI inquiry”; “NHRC takes the railways police IG to task as cops throw pregnant woman from moving train”; “NHRC orders the payment of three lakh rupees monetary relief in a case of death in police custody”.
And yet, the NHRC refused to accept the testimonies of these tribal women of Chhattisgarh that unequivocally detail how SPOs brutally raped them. Instead of making the legally and morally sound recommendation that the state government launch the prosecution of the accused, the NHRC wrote: “During the enquiry of some specific allegations, the enquiry team also did not come across any case of rape which could be substantiated.” Shockingly, the NHRC happily absolved the accused too: “The allegations of rapes levelled against the SPOs and security forces were not substantiated during the enquiry.”
The most stunning fact, of course, is the NHRC’s rejection of the testimonies of five women from a single village – Pottenar in Bijapur district – who deposed before it. Says the report: “The matter was personally enquired from each of the five girls by a lady IPS officer of the team. During the enquiry, it was observed that there were many inconsistencies in the versions of alleged victims, in the petitions given by them, as well as in the statements of the alleged victims. These inconsistencies were with regard to the number of rape victims, number of SPOs who took them away from the camp, number of SPOs who actually committed the act and their identity and the accompanying circumstances.”
Shockingly, the report goes on to say: “All the victims stated that none of them reported this matter to their parents or relatives or anyone else in the camp or to the police.” Because the women raped by policemen did not report the rape to the police, their testimonies are suspect?
So just when did the NHRC convert itself into a trial court? Just when did it become the job of the NHRC to summarily dismiss, without proper investigation, the charges of rape directly brought forward by the alleged victims of that crime?
The NHRC was asked to probe charges also against Salwa Judum. But it spoke mostly to Judum supporters
The chicanery at the NHRC began as it formed the investigative team. Acting on a lawsuit from activist-lawyer Nandini Sundar against the Salwa Judum, the Supreme Court said: “…We feel that in view of the serious allegations relating to violation of human rights by Naxalites and Salwa Judum and the living conditions in the refugee settlement colonies, it will be appropriate if the NHRC examines/verifies these allegations… We leave it to the NHRC to appoint an appropriate fact-finding Committee with such members as it deems fit…”
So what did the NHRC do? To investigate charges of rape against Special Police Officers who are fully backed by the state police and the government, the NHRC decided to send a 16- member team — made up of exclusively policemen and women! This included three IPS officers, four Deputy Superintendents of Police, seven inspectors and one constable. Just why would the country’s premier human rights watchdog not include even one well-respected independent social activist in its fact-finding team? (The team head, former DIG Sudhir Chowdhary, refused to talk about this. “I have nothing to add to what is already in the report,” he told TEHELKA.)
IRONICALLY, THE NHRC investigation in Chhattisgarh was launched at the behest of complainants Nandini Sundar and others, because they claimed that the Salwa Judum was brutalising innocent tribal people of Chhattisgarh. Yet, an overwhelming part of the NHRC report is based on the testimonies of people inside the Salwa Judum camps – all, therefore, predictably speaking in support of the Salwa Judum. An overwhelming number of documents and conversations relied upon are with the state police – whose very conduct the team had gone to investigate. The police and/or other security agencies accompanied the NHRC team’s “independent” visits to the villages to investigate allegations of police excesses. The petitioners complained that, once, after the NHRC enquiry team had visited a village, “the Salwa Judum leaders subsequently went there and issued death threats…” So how did the NHRC investigate this complaint? It sought a report from the state’s Director-General of Police!
In fact, the entire NHRC report reads like a primary school textbook that pares down everything to a simple black-andwhite narrative, the Salwa Judum overwhelmingly white – and hardly guilty of any excesses, absolved of all charges of rape and murder – and the Naxals the blackest of the blacks, the grossest violators of human rights. The 16-member NHRC team toured the region a total of only two weeks. But its report reads like a sociological treatise waxing eloquent on the history of the Naxal movement, offering innumerable sweeping statements without any piece of evidence that they may have collected during their two-week investigations.
Shockingly, the NHRC report says: “From the interaction with the villagers it also appears that many of the tribal girls were sexually exploited by the Naxalites.” And yet, the NHRC did not move to document the testimonies of such girls.
At least one of the petitioners, former CPIMLA Manish Kunjum, says the NHRC report quotes him wrongly that he “admitted during interaction with the enquiry team that the policies followed by the Naxalites were responsible for the spontaneous outburst of the tribals”. “I never said anything of this sort,” Kunjam told TEHELKA. “They are exaggerating my view.”
All is not lost, though. On June 16, 2009, some of these victims saw a glimmer of hope as Amrit Kerkatta, a local judicial magistrate in a Dantewada sub-district, began recording the testimonies of six rape victims after receiving their petitions. On July 3, he heard six witnesses, one for each of the victims. The judge has now fixed the next hearing for July 17.
Sudha Bharadwaj, a lawyer at the Bilaspur High Court in Chhattisgarh who is representing these women, told TEHELKA: “The magistrate has taken the longest possible route to make doubly sure that the testimonies of the women are on record. It is now up to him to prepare the charge-sheet — which the police should have done in the normal course — and commit the case to trial.”
If indeed the accused are finally tried on the basis of the testimonies of the raped women, then the lawyers representing the victims will certainly press these words of Supreme Court justices Pasayat and Sathasivam:
“It is an irony that while we are celebrating woman’s rights in all spheres, we show little or no concern for her honour. It is a sad reflection on the attitude of indifference of society towards the violation of human dignity of the victims of sex crimes. The socio-economic status, religion, race, caste or creed of the accused or the victim are irrelevant considerations in the sentencing policy. Protection of society and deterring the criminal are the avowed objects of law and that is required to be achieved by imposing appropriate sentence.
“We must remember that a rapist not only violates the victim’s privacy and personal integrity but inevitably causes serious psychological as well as physical harm. Rape is not merely a physical assault — it is often destructive of the whole personality of the victim. A murderer destroys the body of his victim, a rapist degrades the very soul of the helpless female.
“A prosecutrix of a sex offence cannot be put on par with an accomplice. She is in fact a victim of the crime… What is necessary is that the court must be conscious of the fact that it is dealing with the evidence of a person who is interested in the outcome of the charge levelled by her.”
ajit@tehelka.com
‘The RSS can walk straight without the crutches of the BJP’
RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya takes the BJP to task in a hard-hitting interview with Harinder Baweja
I want to start with the concept of Hindutva. What is the meaning of Hindutva? Even senior leaders like Jaswant Singh are asking this question and you were a general secretary with the BJP when this word was coined.
There are five constituents of Hindutva. First, respect to all modes of worship. Second, there is one and the same consciousness in all animate and inanimate beings. There is nothing like inferior or superior. Therefore egalitarianism is Hindutva. Third, man is not a conqueror of nature but a part of nature. Therefore, an eco-friendly economy is what Hindutva proposes. Fourth, because of the special quality of motherhood, women have a special respect in the public welfare society. The purpose of life does not end in eating, making merry and dying, but transcends that. And finally, there is the nonmaterial value of pursuing a goal, even if it may be endless. A faint realisation or feel — that is what Hindutva is. That is what the RSS also believes in.
So how does the RSS expect the BJP to translate this politically?
The BJP must have an understanding of what Hindutva means in terms of governance, economic policies, relating itself to the whole spiral of individuals, society, cosmos and reality. They must understand the statecraft pertaining to these aspects. That is what is expected of the BJP as the political component of the same ideological family.
And you feel that the BJP has failed to translate the concept of Hindutva?
I won’t be uncharitable to them because they neither had any conviction nor did they want to understand Hindutva. Therefore they cannot be blamed for functioning contrary to their beliefs. In a way, they were the tools of pseudo-Hindutva. For example, the content and tenor of Varun Gandhi’s election speech could be endearing to some people, but it wasn’t Hindutva. It is pseudo-Hindutva of the reactionary, irresponsible kind. In response to MG Vaidya’s article, if BJP president Rajnath Singh says that he is a strict adherent of Hindutva and so is his party, he is also being opportunistic; without having the onus to prove that they are following Hindutva.
Are you saying that the current leadership of the BJP, including President Rajnath Singh, is practising pseudo-Hindutva?
Yes, because they neither have the conviction nor the commitment. They think politics is everything – from the beginning till the end. Their thought process revolves only around power. They are more of achievers than performers.
They have not succeeded in achieving either. The BJP is down to 116 seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha election.
They still have some six to seven state governments and for the post of prime minister, they had a challenger in Advani. They had enough to win with and therefore I wouldn’t attribute much value even if they had come to power. How they function and what they can deliver is more important. For example, if ecofriendly techno economic order is Hindutva as I see it, then the attitude and response of the Uttarakhand government should’ve been different to the ecodestructive hydel projects that don’t subscribe to the norms. Such an unscrupulous handling of such a pious issue like Gangaji speaks of how hollow the claim of having worked with Hindutva is. There could have been 100 ways of generating electricity to fulfil the needs of Uttarakhand and saving the surplus too without destroying the fragile eco-balance of Uttarakhand. Similarly, there were five more alternatives for Sethu Samudram Pariyojna, for which even the environmental assessment could not be carried out. They catered to the ideology of Hindutva neither as a party in power nor as a party in opposition. They could not endear to vast mass of supporters they had gathered 20-25 years back. They ran out of that capital.
How is the RSS leadership viewing the election results?
As a responsible swayamsevak, this is how I read the mind of the RSS leadership — the RSS will have a straight talk with the BJP now, and tell it to decide what kind of relationship it wants to have with the RSS. Whatever the paradigm of the relationship was till now, it needs to be discussed further. If needed, the mechanism has to be thrashed out. The RSS will tell them: if you want to go without us, don’t worry; you are welcome to take your own course. We don’t even attribute good or bad values to it. If you are taking yourself with us then we will proceed on our own path. We feel that we don’t need any appendage or extra baggage. Nor any crutches. The RSS can walk straight without the crutches of the BJP. This is the message the Sangh leadership has given to the BJP. One more thing, if at all the BJP thinks of having a relationship with the RSS, then the RSS has made it clear that it should function in terms of ideology. The Sangh will then definitely want to have a say, command and intervention. That’s what they have conveyed to the BJP.
To Advani or Rajnath Singh?
To both.
You said the RSS does not need the crutches of the BJP. But isn’t the opposite true – the BJP needs the Sangh?
I don’t know. There is a big section in the BJP – and the number has gone up in the last 15 years — that thinks that the RSS is an appendage and that if they get rid of the RSS, they will be able to fly much higher. I will just compare this with an anecdote of a soaring kite, which is connected to a thread. The kite may think that it can fly on its own, and if it thinks it better to delink the thread and soar higher, it’s okay.
Which is the section in the BJP that thinks it can do without the RSS?
I had a glance over the list of the MPs elected this time. Of them, 30 odd MPs have some link, weak or strong, with the RSS or with its ideology of integral humanism; the ideology propounded by Deendayal Upadhyay. That’s the basic ideology of the BJP, even today. But there are about 85 MPs who may not have even heard of Deendayal’s ideology. And among them there may be many who may think that the RSS is not needed. If this is the problem with the composition of this parliamentary party, then the executive committee will have the same problem. The BJP therefore is a party full of opportunists and careerists and if I were to be charitable, then I can say that it is a party full of liberal democrats. They are taking politics only as a career, or a dhanda.
What about the better-known leaders of the BJP like Advani, Jaswant Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Yashwant Sinha. Does the RSS consider them as careerists and opportunists?
There is not just one group. There are subgroups. There is a phenomenon of ego conflicts and personality clashes. Such factors are there in the BJP and this has created many complications. Suppose the person speaks in favour of Hindutva, it does not mean that the person is actually in favour of Hindutva. For him, it may be suitable at the moment. Among other parties also I have seen many people who privately say that they are strong Hindus but don’t say it openly. I have found these double standards in some BJP leaders also. For example, if one says Ram Janmabhoomi is a cheque which can be encashed only once, what does it mean? Similarly, there are innumerable examples, anomalies, conflicts, duplicities. So what I feel is that 20 to 25 MPs can talk on ideology. Whether they can function as a lobby needs to be seen.
As far as the RSS is concerned, you said it is okay if the BJP goes a separate way, but if they don’t, what would the RSS expect of the BJP?
Perhaps some people of the RSS and the BJP must be sitting together to chalk out a roadmap on how to bring the BJP back on the roads of ideology and idealism. It may also happen that the RSS may think in terms of promoting new names from the lower rung of the party cadre and also freshly induct from other organisations.
Was the RSS totally behind projecting Advani as the BJP’s PM candidate?
It was.
Did he make a mistake by running a presidential style campaign?
I didn’t keep the track of the election. I saw it from a distance. I think the basic premise of the election campaign itself was on a wrong footing. It said, ‘mazboot neta, nirnayak sarkaar’. People’s issues could have been projected better instead of entering into an arena of competition.
Do you refer to Advani harping on Manmohan Singh being a weak PM?
That is one issue. Similarly, in the realm of mazboot neta or strong candidate, the issue of Kandahar kept coming up. It was really a competition between two weak prime ministerial candidates. On the one side, there was Manmohan Singh and on the other side there was Advaniji. Both of them were weak. As home minister, Advani’s comparison can only be made with Shivraj Patil. There was nothing much to choose from.
Do you think the BJP runs the risk of losing its space as a national party?
In the present scenario, BJP exists as a competing political force more at the state level than at the Centre.
‘BJP leaders are tools for pseudo-Hindutva. They are opportunists who use Hindutva as a vote plank. For them, politics is a career, a dhandha’
So it is no longer a national force?
It is not a national party in terms of ideology, policies, and conviction. I feel the Congress and BJP are both pro-US and pro-rich. This does not go in favour of Bharat. Take disinvestments — when the UPA mentioned it, Arun Jaitley said that was also their position, so both BJP and Congress become pro-disinvestments.
One of the things that created quite a stir is what Sudheendra Kulkarni wrote for TEHELKA. He said that the RSS and the BJP made a strong man like Advani look weak and helpless.
He shouldn’t have made the RSS a scapegoat. In no way was the RSS involved in any kind of election strategies. Only BJP people occupied the war room and they should be held responsible for all this.
Jaitley was a member of the war room. Is it okay that he is now the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha?
See, Rajnath Singh has come out with a dictum – that the BJP take collective responsibility. That does not allow for individual accountability. That, in fact, gives an escape route to everybody, including the BJP president. In Rajnath’s own home state, Uttar Pradesh, there was a pathetic performance. But now I see that he is enacting the same strategies and taking the very steps he took in Uttar Pradesh as its state president (when Kalyan Singh was the chief minister). Those strategies did great damage to the party at that time.
Has the RSS asked for accountability?
No, the RSS does not involve itself unless asked to. The BJP comes for advice. The RSS says if you are fine with it, do it. Face the music.
But then the RSS can’t be happy with Rajnath Singh as the president.
No, the RSS will not analyse in political terms as I am analysing now. I analyse because I have been in the BJP.
But Mr Vaidya’s article enters the political realm.
He only says very sarcastically that if you want to get rid of the RSS, you are welcome. Go ahead, if you dare. And face the music afterwards.
I am quoting from Kulkarni’s article that a lot of the BJP’s allies went away because of Gujarat. Do you agree?
I don’t agree with it. Because the allies have come closer to the BJP for two reasons. One, when they don’t have to protect a Muslim base because there is no Muslim vote base in their state, be it Orissa, Punjab, Haryana or even Tamil Nadu. Two, when they think that the BJP’s vote share is more than the Muslim vote in their state, they just measure it in terms of loss and profit and then they ally, like in Bihar. Therefore the BJP is easy to ditch, like the Telugu Desam Party did. They are all opportunist political groups. Ajit Singh and the TRS had no qualms going against the BJP or coming towards it as the occasion demanded. They are just opportunist groups that take advantage when required for political gains.
The BJP is introspecting the whole business of Hindutva. Do you feel that maybe Hindutva is out of tune with today’s India?
Their perception may be out of date or irrelevant. But Hindutva is a steering wheel for the post-industrial society in the world. Hindutva is tomorrow’s ideology, not just yesterday’s. So the introspection is because of the lack of knowledge, and conviction about Hindutva. So if anybody says that they don’t know anything about Hindutva, I don’t know what they mean.
Jaswant Singh said on record that he does not know.
He should have specified as to what he thinks of it. I know personally that he also thinks about Hindutva on the same lines as Govindacharya. If he were given the opportunity to complete his thoughts he would have done it. I am confident about it. Because he is a practicing Hindu.
Does the BJP appear like a party of yesterday because of Hindutva?
It’s because of its opportunist approaches – of treating Hindutva as a vote plank rather than a comprehensive vision and ideology, complete in itself.
‘Many in the BJP think the RSS is not needed. The BJP has 85 MPs who may not have even heard of Deendayal Upadhyay and integral humanism’
Why is the BJP such a divided house?
Because it could not evolve the scientific form of functioning required. The Congress could evolve in a manner that is power-centric. And the Left could also evolve in a style whose history goes back to 1848. When the BJP started out as the Jan Sangh, function methodology was a feeble thought. They thought more about ideology than the style of functioning. I feel personally that the BJP’s main problem is that it lacks a style of functioning. That is why today it appears to be so divided.
Is that why you say there are too many ego problems?
Naturally. If ideology and idealism take a back seat and the style of functioning doesn’t enforce those components, then naturally politics becomes just a power game. You cannot avoid ego-politics and ambition clashes. There has to be something more moral and superior as the chief parameter. When that goes missing, only vote gaining and fund raising capacities matter. Gradually, the degeneration starts. Sycophancy and conspiracy take front seats. Dedication, sacrifice, hard work – they will not matter.
‘The election was a competition between a weak Manmohan Singh and a weak Advaniji. The slogan“mazboot neta, nirnayak sarkar” was wrong’
Was it a mistake to project Narendra Modi’s name as the PM?
It was certainly by default. Not by design. Arun Shourie held a press conference in Ahmedabad and said that Modi has all the capabilities of becoming a PM, which was thoroughly unwarranted. But the war room should have taken immediate initiative to instruct all the responsible office bearers of the party to not engage or respond to this question. But they just sat. So this issue was raised by the opponents and also by the media.
Is there a feeling within the RSS that perhaps it’s time for Advani to retire?
The RSS, unless asked to think and advise on these aspects, will not apply its mind on such issues.
That’s not true because some years ago, Sudarshanji said on camera that there should be a retiring age.
As a person, he may have said that, but it was never discussed in any forum of the RSS. It was not a collective feeling.
Is there such a thought now?
Advaniji has definitely expressed the will for a retired life. He desires it and deserves it also. He doesn’t deserve this kind of lampooning and cartooning from either the media or from within the sections of the BJP. He deserves a happy and serene life.
‘Advani wishes a retired life; he desires it and deserves it also. He doesn’t deserve to be lampooned by either the media or the party’
So why defer it till December?
I don’t think there is any such decision. I don’t think there will be any change except that the working time of Rajnath Singh is ending in December. Advani has never said anywhere that he is going to quit in December. This is rumour, conjecture.
Who will make a good president of the BJP after Rajnath retires?
I don’t want to spoil the chances of that person by naming him. He will be unnecessarily targeted.
So are you a ruling out a ‘she’?
(Laughs.)
What do you think of Yashwant Sinha’s letter?
Yashwant Sinha had all the time at his disposal in the last 10 years. He should have deliberated upon these matters with all the responsible people concerned.
Somebody like AB Vajpayee, who was considered to be more moderate, was able to lead the party to power at the Centre. There’s something that needs to be said about the moderate face. Does the RSS also need to introspect?
At that time Atalji was the supreme leader. He never adhered to Hindutva.
That’s my point. If the BJP, without adhering to Hindutva, could be in government for six years…
But they could not win on the basis of disconnecting themselves from Hindutva. Because of Hindutva they rose from 2 to 182 seats in the 1980s and when they left it, they came to 137, and now 116. Let them experiment. They are more than welcome. But don’t blame Hindutva.
There is something called a youth vote now and in contrast, the BJP came across as a communal party. That’s why I am asking, should the RSS too not introspect?
Don’t attribute the whole success to Rahul Gandhi. What happened to his karishma in Bihar and Orissa? It is a cumulative effect of various factors. Elections are a complex game.
Does the RSS need to reconsider the way it remote controls the BJP?
The fact of the matter is that it should have controlled remotely but it hasn’t. That you can deduce from Sudarshanji’s interview. He sought the resignation of Brajesh Mishra but he couldn’t. So there is no pressure like that. At best, the RSS plays the role of an elder person giving suggestions. It is the BJP that has come to the RSS, twice or thrice. Once at the inception of Jan Sangh, then after the defeat in 1984, and then in 1991, when they asked for more pracharaks. Even in 1984, the RSS told the BJP to return to the ideology of integral humanism. The same as they are being told today.
Given the divisions in the BJP, the way it is rocked, how do you see the future of the party?
I leave it to the wisdom of the leaders. If things go as they are, the party will be reduced in the arithmetic of elections, and then they won’t even hold as many states in power as they do today.
WRITER’S EMAIL
shammy@tehelka.com
‘We were told there could be 1 or 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 terrorists in Taj’
Jyoti Krishan Dutt, the Director General of the National Security Guards (NSG), had three months left for retirement. Till 26/11 — that apocalyptic night when he set off for Mumbai with his commandos — he was better known as the CBI officer who had been in charge of the infamous Purulia arms drop case.
The terror attacks in Mumbai changed everything. The three-day-long operation at the Taj, the Oberoi and the Nariman House, made Dutt a national hero. He now proudly displays paintings gifted to him by Anjoli Ela Menon and Jatin Das. Dutt, in fact, has painted one himself. He now lives a retired life with his wife and two children in Delhi, but remembers each moment of the operation, right from seeing visuals of the terror attack on his television screen at home. His thoughts went something like this — this is not a gang war; the same set of persons are roaming the streets of Mumbai; underworld dons don’t linger and they seldom carry automatic weapons.
A proactive Dutt told his officers to get ready even before the official request from the Cabinet Secretary at 00.50 am on November 27, 2008. While on his way to Delhi airport, he got a call from the then Home Minister Shivraj Patil’s residence. Both he and Patil then flew to Mumbai. In a two-hour interview to TEHELKA, Dutt discusses the NSG’s operations and reveals how little he had to proceed on, the television being his main source of information.
You apparently started making preparations for Mumbai even before you got a formal request. Did you know that the operation was of such scale and magnitude that the NSG would need to be brought in?
You see, I was watching TV that night. The visuals of the terrorists and some of the scenes of the havoc made it clear that it was not a gang war. In a gang war, indiscriminate firing does not continue over a long period of time. Different places are not attacked. Gang wars are basically hit-and-run operations but in this case, I could see that the same set of people were moving around and firing. And then I came to know that the head of the ATS had been shot. I knew then that the NSG would be called. So even before I got an official call, I asked my officers to be on alert – get ready, pack ammunition and equipment and be set to move. When the call saying the NSG may be required came, my second move was to tell them to move to the airport.
How did you know how many commandos to take? I don’t think you were given a specified number.
We knew from TV visuals that the locations were the Taj, the Oberoi and Nariman House and that the terrorists had moved out of Leopold Café and the railway terminus. It was clear that they would take shelter in these three locations and hold hostages. So we mobilised the number of commandos we thought were necessary. On reaching Mumbai, I realised that that number was not enough. Only after we reached Mumbai did we realise that it was not just the Taj, the Oberoi and Nariman House. It was the Oberoi, the Trident, the Taj Heritage and the Taj Towers. Nariman House, too, is located in a built-up area, surrounded by buildings from all sides. You have to make sure that no other person gets hurt or killed in crossfire. I realised we needed more commandos. The second lot arrived on November 27, 2008 at 1.35pm.
What time did you get the formal request?
The formal request reached me at around 0050 hrs.
Was it from the Home Secretary?
No, the Home Secretary was out of country. I received official word from the Cabinet Secretary. And 10-15 minutes before that, I had also got in touch with AN Roy, Director General of Police, Maharashtra. I asked him what exactly was happening and if he would need the NSG. That’s when he confirmed what I had seen on TV – that terrorists had taken up positions in three places. It was only after reaching Mumbai that I realised that we were actually looking at five buildings, not three.
So you’re saying that you didn’t really get too much information from the Mumbai end.
Yes, not immediately.
And you had to make an assessment from what you saw on TV?
Yes, initially the NSG got more information from television than from the Mumbai Police.
Isn’t that a sad reflection of our internal security apparatus and our preparedness?
Post-operation, a lot of things have been drawn up and brought into focus but yes, there are certain drawbacks.
In the absence of any concrete information, what kind of briefing did you give your officers?
My briefing to my commandos was, again, based on what I had seen on TV. I told them I did not want any innocent lives to be lost — the innocent lives of hotel guests, those who had been visiting the hotel, the hotel staff and anyone else in the vicinity. The second instruction I gave was that as far as possible, we should try to catch the terrorists alive. My experience of being with the CBI had taught me that if you kill a terrorist, you also lose a lot of information. The third point was that we should cause as little collateral damage as possible.
Did you have an idea about the kind of arms and ammunitions the terrorists had?
We did get some feedback on this once we reached Mumbai. In fact, we could also tell from the scenes on TV that they had automatic weapons.
Did you know their numbers? Did the Mumbai Police tell you how many terrorists had entered each location?
No. I didn’t know the precise numbers. In fact, at that time, what was being said over the TV was that these terrorists have come via the sea route. The second pointer was that such terrorist activity is not possible without local support. The third was the fear that the terrorists might have checked into the hotels as guests and might have stocked up on ammunition and explosives. So there were a lot of theories floating around and no real way to verify them. Even the state authorities didn’t have much data. As for the number of terrorists, they told us that they had spread out to different locations, but that there could be one or five or 10 or 15 or even 20 terrorists at the Taj.
This is what you got from the Mumbai police?
Yes, the Mumbai police. The same thing was mentioned about the Oberoi. That the number could be between 4 and 6. In Nariman House, too, they said there could be up to six terrorists.
This was on November 27, one day after the attacks?
Yes, this was on the 27th, the day we landed.
Was this the first briefing you got from them?
Yes, on the number of terrorists. There was nothing definite on anything else. As a result, we made our own assessment based on the intensity of the firing we saw. We arrived at our own figures after that. On the third day of operations, we were told by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to account for 10 AK-47s, which also meant 10 terrorists. Out of the 10, Kasab was already in custody, and one had been killed. We needed another eight AK-47s. At Oberoi, we got two and two more at Nariman. On the 29th morning, one terrorist fell out of the window. And the bodies of two terrorists were found near the spiral staircase and the Harbour Bar at the Taj. So now, we had nine weapons. That is when I spoke to the Director of the IB in Delhi to ask if he could confirm how many terrorists there were. He said 10, but we had only nine AK-47s. So even after the shooting in the Taj stopped, I had to tell my men to be cautious during what we call the ‘render safe procedure’, when we trace any unexploded material lying around. We had to check every room, and make sure that a terrorist was not holed up somewhere. If this is not done thoroughly, a terrorist we don’t spot can just come out and start shooting — the whole thing starts again. We could lose the entire game. I told my men to tell the hotel guests and local police that one more terrorist needs to be found. Ninety minutes later, when we were taking our NSG dog around to sniff out explosives, we detected the tenth gunner — lying covered under a lot of burnt material, soot and carbon.
So the IB’s information was accurate?
Yes, they were absolutely accurate about the 10 terrorists. The Mumbai Police did not know and the journalists outside Taj kept saying there was only one terrorist in the Taj. My assessment was that there were between three and five there.
And there were four
Yes.
Since Kasab had been caught on day one, why did the Mumbai Police not know how many others were there?
I don’t exactly recall the details. I don’t know if Kasab disclosed the number or whether only those who had come through the boats were there or if some locals had also joined them. All kinds of information was floating around. I had no intention of coming before the media but there was no one else to brief them and I knew the entire world was watching. I thought it would be better to brief them rather than allow various speculations.
Given the fact that you got a very skeletal briefing, how did you go about the operation? I believe the DGP was serving biscuits in Raj Bhawan when you arrived there with Shivraj Patil, the then home minister?
I don’t remember biscuits but we did have a cup of tea. As for the operation, we were moving on to tactics and strategies. Each special force has their own strategies and none will talk about them. But they need enough factual input — Are there three miscreants or 10? Where are the entry and exit points? Where are the vantage points to shoot from? The terrorists can also try to take hostages and act in a particular way. How do we guard the area? How do we crush them? How do we neutralize them? Sometimes, even a hint of the miscreant’s act is enough to assess what needs to be done. Other times, we have to evoke a response.
I don’t mean to compromise tactical procedures, but you went into an operation not knowing that there is an Oberoi and there is an Oberoi Trident. I believe you had no maps either.
We got something about the Taj and Nariman but that was much later.
So you went into the Taj without maps?
That was the first thing we asked for. We also asked for the layout of the hotel. See, when you go to the cinema hall, you see an outline map. The same map was found for the Taj, with little squares showing the rooms. But how many exits and entries were there? How many service lanes and passages? How many corridors? Those are very relevant but were not shown. The terrorists in the Taj knew the place inside out. They never entered a place with only one entry and exit point because they would have been trapped. They were always moving in areas with lots of passages. They were familiar with the layout and knew exactly where to go and where not to go.
Are you saying they had done a good recce?
Whether they did a recce, whether they visited the place before, whether the whole place was explained to them, whether they were shown a 3D film, they did not get into a room where there was no separate exit. I would even go to the extent of saying that except for one particular room where they did enter and kill the occupant, I don’t think they went into any room with a single door and shot anyone inside. Unless they were chasing someone like they did in the Chambers – they chased a few guys into the kitchen and shot them there. Even the kitchen has a lot of passages and entry points.
According to CCTV footage, the terrorists spent close to three hours in one room and there was a Mumbai Police DCP present there, monitoring the footage. Did the Mumbai Police lose an opportunity to contain the terrorists and mount an operation even before the NSG arrived?
The first question is: Did they have the resources to mount an operation of that scale? Secondly: All right, they have seen some terrorists entering a room, but could they rule out the possibility of more terrorists in another room? These strategies require planning.
Hasan Gafoor, the Mumbai police commissioner has said on record that DCP Nangre Patil wanted to launch an operation but he told the DCP not to take any risks and that the NSG was on its way. I repeat the question. Could the terrorists have been contained on that floor at least?
Well, a lot of debriefings have taken place. All I can say is that the entry and exit points on that floor could have been secured. If the NSG had been informed that the terrorists were in a particular room, I’m sure we could have immediately devised a plan to limit them to that floor, even if we did not have the resources to mount an assault.
Were you fearful that the NSG would suffer casualties, since you went in practically blind?
See, we do mock exercises in training. Earlier, when I joined the NSG, these exercises were done very close to the training schools. They needed to be done in all sorts of terrains and so we sent our men to places like the Shivalik range, and the forest areas in Dehradun. They also do exercises in places with a combination of land and air. Now, when an attack happens in Mumbai, the same kind of tactics are involved. Some stock tactical responses are already prepared in training. In fact, in February 2008, during the SAARC meeting, we went to Vigyan Bhawan and another five star hotel. I wanted our men to know what a five star hotel looks like from the inside. We spoke to the hotel management and let some of the commanders go inside in civilian clothes to have a look. I said: Show them how the kitchen is. See how they have service lanes; how there are toilets and suites. We looked at a small room, fire exits, passages, conference rooms, service lifts and lifts for the guests.
Why did this idea occur to you? Because all the VIPs stay in these hotels?
It’s not a question of VIPs, it’s a matter of security. We wanted to cover different areas that may become targets. Hotels are one such place. When there is hard rooftop combat, we know all about it. But apart from that, they must also know how to tackle situations in the interiors.
So when you reached the Taj how did you know if your strategy should be to go top-down or bottom-up? You had no knowledge of whether they were on the third floor or on the ground floor or in the kitchen.
I cannot reveal strategic details. To put it simply – if you have a four storey building and you’re playing a game with your friends, like chor sipahi, when you cover each floor, you will be cautious, except that in these cases we also go on positioning our men to see that nobody gets taken by surprise by the enemy. We had to guard ourselves from that.
What was the most critical moment for you during the operation?
There were two or three moments. The first one was when I lost Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan at the Taj. In an operation like this, everyone feels that nothing will happen to him. But when the first casualty takes place, a feeling spreads that anything can happen to anyone.
When I was informed that Major Unnikrishnan had lost his life, I wanted to visit the spot where the encounter had taken place and see how he lost his life. I wanted to know if there was any defect in the positioning or in my tactics. Was there something more I could have done in my strategy? If there was a defect, more commandos could get hurt. I did not want to lose more of my men, I wasn’t prepared for that.
We went to the first floor, where there is a landing. From the staircase you can go to the left and to the right. My officers explained that the terrorists had thrown a grenade and that one of our men had gotten injured. When the shooting was going on, the team came back and saw this injured person near the staircase. So Unnikrishnan again got his team to move left. He led his team to rescue the injured comrade and picked him up. While he was being rescued and taken down, there was some more firing from the terrorists. Unnikrishnan decided to go after them. He went up the landing and turned right. If he had gone left, he would have faced only one terrorist. He went to the right. So the result was that there was one terrorist there and one at the back. He got caught in crossfire, but still told his men not to come up because they might get caught in the process. So when he reached over there, he started shooting and managed to make the person in the eastern corner duck. At that time, the person at the back started firing at him and made as if he was trying to run to the corridor. Unnikrishnan thought he is trying to escape and went after him. In the middle of all this, a door opened and another terrorist came out. This third terrorist shot him.
There was nothing wrong with the tactics. This was an officer acting on the call of duty. He saw a window of opportunity. If he had succeeded, we would probably have wound up the operation much faster. As it is, we did come to know that there were three or four terrorists at least. I had to tell my officers that the tactics are absolutely correct; stick to them and carry on. This message had to go out. The men had to know that they were on the right path, that the life of this officer must not go to waste, that we have to get the terrorists now.
Is it correct that the Mumbai Police have commandos who have been trained by the NSG?
We keep training officers from different states. Off hand, I cannot tell you when or how many men we trained but yes, they were trained.
You mentioned that your attempt was to try and get the terrorists alive. Did you come close to it? Was it possible?
It was possible at one or two places, especially at the Taj, when we thought that we had managed to corner the men in a particular area. We told them that it would not be possible for them to escape and that if they surrendered, they would be treated as per the law. But their reply was just a string of abuses and the hurling of a lot of grenades. We didn’t need any other reply to tell us what we had to do.
So, they were on a suicide mission.
Yes. But at the same time, my mind goes to the intercepts.
They tried to negotiate?
No, according to the intercepts, their handlers told them that there are a few MPs and some very senior bureaucrats staying at the Taj. The terrorists were told that they could take any of the VIPs hostage and make demands. That does not indicate a suicide mission. If they had managed to take one of those people hostage, I wonder what they would have asked for in return.
So how did you manage to secure the hostages?
This is why we were constantly trying to keep the hotel guests away from the terrorists. We didn’t want them to get an opportunity to enter the hotel rooms. Which is why it was very disturbing when it was mentioned on a news channel that the family of a person was in such-and-such room. What is this madness? It’s like telling the terrorists to go to that room and find hostages.
What are the critical lessons that you have learnt? Which areas need improvement?
There are lessons to be learnt for the state police and for the state authorities. There are weaknesses and drawbacks but those are not things I should reveal.
Is there anything you can share without compromising future operations?
I would only suggest one thing. There is a lot of expansion happening in the NSG divisions. Regional centres are being set up. We require trained manpower. We also require lots of equipment, not only to improve our existing forces but also to equip the forces that are being set up in various states.
We need to have procedures where we can get things get done within a month or two. This is a special force that should not have to wait for equipment. Things are changing and developing so fast; if we want something now and we get it after one year, the product itself will have undergone a change.
Which is the one product that you missed in the Mumbai operations?
These are things that you could also find on the Internet — like audio or video equipment — which are very useful. Equipment that tells you about the presence of men inside a room. There is equipment that can give you a picture of the inside of a room. If one has something like that, we can know the positions of the terrorists.
Did the process of requisitioning the IL-76 aircraft lead to any delay?
It depends on your perspective. From the NSG perspective, we were on alert even before the official request. First, I was told that the plane would have to come from Chandigarh. I called the Air Chief and he gave me the name and number of an officer to contact. Meanwhile, fortunately, I received a call from the Director of the Aviation Research Centre (RAW’s aviation wing) and he said they had a plane available in Delhi. Until 26/11, the NSG DG could requisition a plane only in the event of a hijacking but some of these procedures have since been amended.
If you were to mention one thing that the Mumbai police ought to have told you on your arrival, what would that be?
If they had told us the number of terrorists present at each location, that would have helped.
WRITER’S EMAIL
shammy@tehelka.com
Slaughter house files
Ajmal Kasab and Abu Ismail could have been thwarted. Transcripts of police officers’ frantic calls from Ground Zero on 26/11 reveal a story of terrifying — almost criminal — official chaos. Harinder Baweja reconstructs that apocalyptic night
THE EVENTS of that night are only too well known, they are etched in the nation’s conscience. That night, on 26/11, terror unfolded, step by step and went something like this — ten well-armed terrorists got off a dinghy and walked ashore in the posh Gateway of India area and broke up into pairs. Trained to navigate the high seas and wage high-tech urban jehad, each pair had been tasked to separate locations. The first bullet rang out at Colaba’s popular Leopold Café, just after 9.30.
Yes, the events of that night are only too well known, but the truth is not. Police call log records accessed by TEHELKA reveal the utter chaos that also unfolded, step by step. Mumbai, of all places, has been struck by terror once too often, beginning with the multiple blasts that exploded in quick succession in March 1993. For the record, the financial nerve centre has fifty commandos who have been trained by the National Security Guards, but that night, no one thought of tasking them. For the record, the Mumbai Police also has a standard operating procedure that is supposed to kick in under the command and control of the Commissioner of Police but that too failed.
The police transcripts — each phone call, each walkie talkie communication is recorded — reveals a chilling story. One of the pairs, Ajmal Kasab and Abu Ismail, walked into the teeming Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) and went about their business of spraying death. Platform number 13 was full of passengers and the duo felled 37 people before they walked out of the Terminus and towards the Times of India Building. Within minutes, they had entered Cama Hospital.
There are critical questions the Mumbai police needs to answer. First, why did it not respond to its own officers’ calls for help?
Mumbai was under attack and the police control room was buzzing. At precisely 22.29 pm, the Azad Maidan police station (barely a stone’s throw from Cama) called South Control (Mumbai Police is divided into regions and zones) and, as per the call log record, this is what was conveyed: “Two terrorists from CST are walking towards Azad Maidan”.
The messages kept coming:
22.38 pm: Azad Maidan to South Control again: They are walking in the lane towards Special Branch 1 office.
22.39 pm: Beat Martial to South Control: Can see suspicious looking persons with bags on their backs.
22.40 pm: Have you got my message that there are two suspicious people.
22.54 pm: Peter MRR to Control: There is firing in the TOI lane.
22.59 pm: LT Marg 1 to Control: Terrorists have reached Cama.
Photo: Deepak Salvi
Ironically, Kasab and Ismail had even walked into the Azad Maidan police station compound and tried to enter the residence of Brijesh, a Deputy Commissioner of Police. The pair had gone about their business with little resistance at CST and appeared emboldened. They had, in fact, walked all the way from CST to Cama without any resistance. It is clear from the log that the Control Room was aware of their movement from 22.29 —when Azad Maidan alerted their bosses — to 22.59, the precise minute that Kasab and Ismail had entered Cama. Thirty long minutes during which they were being tracked but not intercepted.
Kasab and Ismail even walked into the Azad Maidan police station compound and tried to enter an officer’s residence
Mumbai Police officers acted on their own, but clearly with no command or control to guide them. One such officer was Sadanand Date, Additional Commissioner of Police, incharge of Mumbai’s Central Region. The terror attacks were not taking place in his jurisdiction but he contacted Control after he received word from the Worli Division. He immediately sent an SMS to the Additional CP (South) and the Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order). He was asked to go to CST and Date was soon on his way.
READ DATE’S account — gleaned from the transcripts and the 26/11 charge sheet — carefully. It captures the chaos and rigor mortis that the senior officers were seized by. What Date experienced that night is both callous and harrowing.
Photo: Kamlesh Pednekar/DNA
Kasab and Ismail reached Cama at 22.59 and Date arrived at 23.05. He had been asked to go to CST but after leaving home, he went to the Malabar Hill police station and got a carbine issued. He asked for bullet proof jackets for his team but none were available (only he and his operator had bullet proof vests). While on their way to CST, Date met police inspector More who informed him about the firing at Special Branch 1 and learnt that the terrorists had entered Cama and had taken patients and nurses hostage on the fourth floor.
As he entered Cama, he saw two dead bodies at the front entrance and the watchman told him that the nursing staff on the fourth floor had been desperately calling for him. Date told his operator to inform the Control room about the situation. He then proceeded to the sixth floor of the multistoried building in the Cama compound and threw a metal object towards the terrace where Kasab and Ismail had taken position. The minute the object was thrown, there was a burst of fire from the terrace.
Date and his team took positions in the passage of the sixth floor and called Control to update them about their position and the firing. At 23.19, the first call for reinforcements was sent out. Date thought he could pin down the terrorists on the terrace till the reinforcements arrived.
Now read the police log carefully and find out what happened after the first call for reinforcements at 23.19.
23.19: Firing going on in Cama hospital. Send commandos immediately. Central Region sir is present.
Control: Noted.
23.20: Firing going on, on the sixth floor. Help quickly.
23.20: Central region walkie talkie sends out a desperate message: Make arrangements for bullet proof jackets.
Control: Noted.
23.23: Two-three blasts have taken place. Help immediately.
23.25: South Control to Control: Firing going on, on sixth floor of Cama. Need reinforcements. Send the nearest striking (team).
23.26: Shortage of striking at Cama.
23.27: Send striking to Cama, running short of men.
23.28: (Date is now desperate. He and his men have been injured) Central Region walkie talkie sends out an SOS: Heavy firing. We are all injured. Need help. Please send reinforcements.
So, what was happening on the sixth floor where Date and his team had taken position?
Soon after Date took position in the passage of the sixth floor, the terrorists lobbed a grenade. One officer and two men were badly injured and Date’s right eye blacked out after a splinter injury. Date’s operator was not in a position to fire so Date took his carbine and fired.
Date and his men were badly injured but retreat was not an honourable option. Women and babies were stuck below
Reinforcements did not arrive but retreat was not an honourable option because women and newborn babies were stuck on the fourth floor. At 23.25, Date asked his operator and the injured men to go down for medical help and also asked them to convey the message for reinforcements. Sub Inspector More and PC Khandekar could not be sent down because they lay unconscious on the floor.
Date and Kasab/Ismail exchanged fire for another 25 minutes and Date was hit again and his left leg badly injured. It was now around midnight. The pair lobbed one more grenade at Date’s direction and crossed the landing between the sixth and the fifth floor.
Kasab and Ismail could’ve been caught on the terrace. They could’ve been stopped from leaving cama. They were not
There are many critical questions that the Mumbai Police need to answer.
Photo: AP
QUESTION 1: Why did the reinforcements not arrive? If the calls for help had been heeded, Kasab and Ismail would not have been able to leave the terrace of Cama Hospital.
The question is critical because if Kasab and Ismail had not left Cama, ATS Chief Hemant Karkare, ACP (East region) Ashok Kamte and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar would be alive.
A LITTLE MORE on Date, first. After he saw the two terrorists leave, he sent an SMS to the Joint CP (Law and Order) and to the DCP Zone V at 00.00 hours informing them about the departure of the assailants, that they had automatic weapons and grenades. He also gave the exit route the terrorists had taken and called for help, saying he needed to be evacuated as he was injured in the eye and in the left leg. Khandekar and More too needed to be evacuated. They still lay unconscious on the floor.
Date waited from 00.00 to 00.45 hours but neither did he get a reply to his SMS and nor did anyone come to his aid. He finally called the assistant commissioner of police, Central region, who came and took him to hospital. Khandekar and More died. Nobody from the South region came to the aid of the injured and the dead. Nobody even sent reinforcements.
While Date was battling Kasab and Ismail, Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar had come towards Cama. They had not been sent as reinforcements for Date, but had come after they — like Date — had learnt that firing was going on at Cama.
Kamte had, at first been asked by Mumbai Police Commissioner, Hasan Gafoor, to come to Hotel Oberoi, and was then asked by JCP (Crime) Rakesh Maria — who was manning the Control room — to go towards Cama. Karkare went to CST and from there, by foot, towards Cama. Salaskar’s movements have been detailed by Arun Jadhav in the charge sheet. (Jadhav survived to give a first hand account of what happened to Karkare, Kamat and Salaskar. He was in the same car as them when Kasab and Ismail opened fire, killing all three officers in one go.)
Kamte — in an act of supreme bravery — got off the car and fired into the bushes. He managed to wound Kasab
According to Jadhav’s statement, he was informed of some firing in Colaba at 21.45 by his colleague Alak Noor, who also asked him to call Salaskar. Salaskar then told Jadhav to get weapons issued and come to Colaba Police Station. He took a carbine and 35 rounds and reached the police station. Salaskar and Noor were already there. They got to know from the Control room that some persons were walking towards Special Branch office, after firing at CST, and that they had entered Cama. The three of them got into a car and went towards Cama, where they met up with Kamte and Karkare, who had taken up positions there. They were all at the rear gate of Cama.
Photo: Deepak Salvi
Soon, they saw an injured policeman walking towards them. Just then, they were fired on, from the Cama terrace and, according to Jadhav, Kamte returned the fire with his AK 47. The injured policeman told them that an injured Date was on the 6th floor and that others too had been injured. Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar had a quick discussion and decided to move towards the front gate — they knew Kasab and Ismail would try and escape from the front. (While the entire Cama compound has many exits and entries, the multistory building on whose terrace Kasab and Ismail were on had only one exit/entry — a front gate).
Before they could start walking — under cover — towards that front gate, they noticed a Qualis police jeep which belonged to the nearby Paidhuni police station. Salaskar sat in front on the driver’s seat, Kamte to his left and Karkare on the back seat. Jadhav and three others got in from the rear on the two slim seats at the back. While the Qualis was making its way towards Special Branch 1, information came from the Control Room that the two terrorists had taken shelter behind a red car in the nearby Rang Bhawan lane. Kamte told Salaskar to go towards the lane.
The ATS chief, Kamte and an encounter specialist lay on the road for at least forty minutes. No ambulance came for them
But, before we go into the details of what happened in the lane, it is important to recount what happened when Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar were at the rear side of Cama. It is clear from Date’s statement and the call log record that Kasab and Ismail only left the Cama terrace at about midnight, when Date sent out the SMS.
Before that, at 23.20, to be precise, ATS Chief, Karkare (code named Victor on the Motorola wireless channel) sent out an urgent message:
23.19, Victor to Control: We are at Cama hospital. There is firing going on here. Blasts are taking place. Three or four grenade blasts have taken place in front of us in the last five minutes. It is essential to encircle. We are next to Special Branch office. Send a team to the front of Cama Hospital and tell them to co-ordinate, so there is no cross firing. Prasad (JCP Law and Order, who was also in the Control room with Maria) will be there. Tell him to speak to the army and send commandos.
Control confirms what Victor has just relayed and asks, “Sir, in front of the building, right?”
Another SOS is sent after a few minutes.
23.28, Victor to Control: ATS and Quick Response Teams, Crime teams are on the side of Special Branch. We need to encircle Cama. Ask Prasad to request the army.
23.30: Noted.
Reinforcements had not come to Date’s rescue. They did not come to the rescue of Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar.
QUESTION 2: Why was the front gate (the only exit Kasab and Ismail could possibly take) not encircled?
Kasab and Ismail could first have been taken on the terrace but that did not happen. Next, they could have been prevented from leaving Cama but that did not happen either, despite desperate calls from Karkare. Mumbai Police Headquarters is barely three blocks away from Cama. Why were reinforcements not sent? Why was the gate not secured? Had the gate been secured with reinforcements, Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar need not have died. They were definitely there from 11.20 to midnight.
QUESTION 3: Why were a full forty minutes wasted? (When IC 814 was hijacked from Kathmandu, the Crisis Management Group failed to prevent the plane from leaving Amritsar. That proved to be a costly mistake, for the plane was eventually flown to Kandahar and the passengers were secured only after three terrorists were traded in their place.)
Instead of feeling any heat or pressure, Kasab and Ismail sailed out of the front gate and came towards the Rang Bhawan lane, totally unhindered. Here, they took shelter behind the red car in a thicket.
Kamte had told Salaskar to drive towards the Rang Bhawan lane after receiving information from Control that the terrorists were hiding there. The Qualis was barely 100 to 150 meters away from the red car, when a burst of fire came in its direction. According to Jadhav’s statement, “Suddenly, there was a burst of fire at our car from the right hand side. I saw two persons with AK 47s. Karkare Sir, Kamte Sir and Salaskar sir also started firing. I got a bullet on my left hand and shoulder and my carbine fell from my hand and I couldn’t pick it up.”
When vinita kamte asked the police for her husband’s call records, JCP (crime) Rakesh Maria stalled her wilfully
THROUGH THE volley of fire, Kamte — in an act of supreme bravery — got off the car and fired in the direction of the bushes. Kamte hit one target and succeeded in injuring Kasab, who got a bullet on his hand. To continue with Jadhav’s statement, “The two kept firing and Karkare sir, Kamte sir and Salaskar sir also got injured. Firing stopped after a while. The taller one (Ismail) came to our car and tried to open the back door but it didn’t open. I pretended to be dead. The person next to me had fallen on top of me. Soon after, the front door opened and the car started moving. The taller one drove the car and it was speeding on Mahapalika Road and I realized that Karkare sir, Kamte Sir and Salaskar Sir were not on their seats. They stopped the car behind Vidhan Sauda (Assembly) and got off the car. Again, I heard the sound of firing.”
Unknown to Jadhav, Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar were thrown out of the Qualis. Salaskar was still alive when taken to the hospital, where he was declared dead at 01.05.
QUESTION 4: Could Salaskar have been saved if he had been taken to the hospital on time?
Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar were shot at about 00.05, according to police records:
00.19, South Control to Unknown walkie talkie: Public is saying that a police vehicle has been hijacked.
00.25, Control to Abal mobile: Qualis car has been kidnapped.
00.40, South Control to Peter LT Marg: Send reinforcements to Special Branch 1 lane. There, 2 / 3 persons have been injured. I think it is Kamte Sahib. Send reinforcements immediately.
Nobody came to the rescue of Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar till at least 00.40. The ATS chief, the ACP (East region) and an encounter specialist lay on the road for at least forty minutes. Reinforcements had not come earlier and now, no ambulance was in sight. By 00.25, Jadhav — according to the call log records — had sent a wireless message from the Qualis saying, “From Rang Bhawan lane, a Qualis car has been kidnapped after firing at Salaskar Sir, ATS Sir and East region Sir. Now, the terrorists have left the car near State Bank of Mysore, Mantralaya.
Photo: Kamlesh Pednekar/DNA
The families of the policemen who laid down their lives in the call of duty — and with no response to any of their SOSs — are distressed and disturbed. Vinita Kamte wanted to understand the circumstances in which her husband, Ashok Kamte died. She was tired of answering the question as to why all three senior officers were together and decided to seek answers from her husband’s senior colleagues, but realised, soon enough that she was being misled.
It was, with difficulty, she says, that she even got the JCP (Crime), Rakesh Maria to issue a press statement acknowledging that it was her husband who injured Kasab. Vinita told TEHELKA, “I told him that it was absolutely fine if it was not Ashok who injured Kasab, but if it was, then I am not going to let you share that bullet with anybody.” She had found out from eyewitnesses that Ashok had come out of the car and fired. Kasab’s interrogation confirmed the fact that one officer in uniform got off the car and fired. Kamte was the only one in uniform that night.
She also wanted to see the log details of her husband’s calls but despite writing to Commissioner of Police Hasan Gafoor, Vinita Kamte got no reply. “I was being told different stories. Instead of being gracious, they were only misleading me.” Vinita then filed an RTI application with the help of her advocate sister Revati Dere, but Rakesh Maria, in a telltale response, wrote to the Information officer saying, “Reject the application under Section 8(h) {impeding the process of investigation}.
QUESTION 5: Why is a Joint Commissioner of Police trying to mislead the families?
Maria was within his rights to say he cannot part with the information, but in his letter (a copy of which is with TEHELKA), he is clearly pressurising the Information Officer. Not one to give up, Vinita appealed against the RTI order and now has got permission to inspect the call record. The subsequent order, passed by a DCP is damning, for it says that Maria had indeed tried to pressurise the Information officer and that Vinita be given permission, for after all, her husband had given his life for the nation.
Quite clearly, both the Mumbai Police and the Maharashtra government are trying to cover up the truth of 26/11, as has been made clear from the call logs. Maria, when contacted, said he was in London and Commissioner of Police Gafoor has “no comment.” The state government set up a two-member committee headed by former home secretary Ram Pradhan in December 2008, to probe the role of the state government and the Mumbai Police.
Photo: AFP
While submitting the 100-page report to the Chief Minister, Ashok Chavan, Pradhan virtually gave a clean chit to both. He told the media, “During his visit to Mumbai after the terror attack, Union home minister P Chidambaram apologized to the citizens of the state; this itself indicated lapses from the Union government.” As for the role of the Police, Pradhan said, “Forget the Mumbai police, no police force of the country was prepared to face the warlike situation.” According to V Balachandran, the second member of the committee, “We checked logs of 5,000 calls made to the control room and the response as well as action taken by the control room staff was satisfactory.”
The report has not yet been tabled in the Assembly — where the Opposition is staging walk-outs over the ‘clean chit’ — but both Pradhan and Balachandran have made it amply clear through their responses to the media that no responsibility has been fixed.
The report will clearly not be the last word on 26/11, for Vinita Kamte says she will go to the extent of knocking on the doors of the court, after inspecting her husband’s call records. Kavita Karkare, too, has responded to the Pradhan committee report, telling the media in Mumbai that “the committee’s findings will not help fight terror. There was no co-ordination between the Intelligence departments, the Coast Guard, the Police and the state government. But the committee is not admitting this and I know they will never admit to or find out any lapses in what has happened on 26/11. Otherwise, I would have never lost my husband.”
Mr Chidambaram, hope you are reading this. The committee has used your apology to bury some essential truths. You have promised to shake up the internal security apparatus — that’s another reason why we hope you are reading this. Are we prepared for the next attack, if even, reinforcements are not sent on time?
WRITER’S EMAIL
shammy@tehelka.com
Goodbye, Prodigal son
Voters no longer have patience for political scions who do not perform
Ajit Sahi
WRITING IN The Indian Express last week, Orissa politician Jay Panda tells us the secret behind his boss’s success. Three factors, he says, have won Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s three assembly elections in a row. One, a “remarkable level of sincerity,” reflected in Patnaik’s “monk-like total immersion” in his job; two, a “deep commitment to good governance,” reflected in his rigorous economic management; and three, a “clinical, dispassionate political decision-making process” that Panda claims did away with “intrigue, lobbying, drama, sabotage, subterranean tests of loyalty, unverifiable caste arithmetic, and even kickbacks”, especially in naming candidates for elections.
What Panda doesn’t list is that Naveen Patnaik is also the son of Biju Patnaik (arguably, Orissa’s most charismatic politician ever) on whose death a decade ago Naveen exited elite circles in Europe and entered Orissa’s politics as a 50-year-old novice. Three elections later, it is clear that the electorate has handed Naveen successive wins more for his work than for being his father’s son.
The voter now says, “No matter what your bloodline, you need more than a surname to get my nod.” As Omar Abdullah, now Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, found in 2002, when he lost from his father’s ‘safe’ Assembly seat, and BJP leader Jaswant Singh’s son, Manvendra Singh, discovered this month.
Rahul Gandhi talks of intra-party democracy, which can sweep out dynasties such as his
The Lok Sabha success of the Congress party in Uttar Pradesh this year is credited to Rahul Gandhi’s strategic leadership. Two years ago, the same electorate in the country’s most populous state had handed Rahul a humiliating defeat in the Assembly elections. Yet, despite his spectacular success of 2009, Rahul and his mother, Sonia Gandhi, couldn’t possibly have installed him as Prime Minister, as any move to usurp a position undeserved would surely turn the mood against them. (Incredibly, Rahul now talks of bringing about intra-party democracy, which, if followed through, can only sweep out dynasties such as his.)
This is a big deal, considering how Rahul’s father, Rajiv Gandhi, a first-term MP who had never been minister, was sworn in as Prime Minister in 1984 with no other qualification — not even having won his party an election — other than that he was the son of the just assassinated PM Indira Gandhi.
Indeed, it’s debatable if Lalu Yadav could as blithely replace himself today with his homemaker wife, Rabri Devi, as Bihar’s Chief Minister, as he brazenly did to the nation’s outrage in 1997. That spouses, sons and daughters must work hard is evident in the South, where the various children of DMK president and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, from his three wives are forced to slice up the party cadres as their factions.
Remember the TDP of Andhra Pradesh? In 1996, the party rank and file revolted against their venerated chief NTR, who had founded the party 13 years earlier. His son-in-law, Chandrababu Naidu, ousted NTR when NTR began imposing on the party his second wife, who was widely seen as a gold digger.
Son or nephew, cadres and voters want leaders to ably further their vested interests. So, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s son Uddhav hasn’t had the same traction with voters as has the old man’s renegade nephew, Raj, who is now usurping the alma mater’s nationalist slogan and votes. Finally, voters expect principled politics and development even from a dynasty, as the father-son duo of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda and HD Kumaraswamy found out last year, after their humiliating defeat in the Karnataka Assembly elections.
The Charioteer’s Last Ride
Lal Krishna Advani
Harinder Baweja, Editor, News & Investigations
THE SHADOWS are lengthening and as the political sun sets into the dark, foreboding clouds, LK Advani, already 81, must surely be revisiting his 986-page autobiography — My Country My Life — he released only last year. He would certainly be turning the pages of a chapter called, ‘Defeat in Polls [2004], Turmoil in Party’. The chapter is candid and reveals what defeat did to the grand charioteer of Indian politics five years ago. He writes: “Why did we lose the parliamentary elections in 2004?… that question haunted my colleagues and me for a long time. The taste of bitter defeat is by no means unfamiliar to me. Indeed, for most part of my political life in the early decades, defeat was the norm and victory an exception. This, coupled with my innate nature of reacting to any situation with restraint and moderation, had prompted me to develop a rather philosophical attitude towards the outcomes of elections — neither to get depressed by defeats, nor to let victories breed boastfulness. Nevertheless, the results of the 2004 polls affected me more deeply than any other setback in the past…”
The philosophical attitude helped him journey along for a bit, but what Advani did not know in 2004 was that he would once again be affected very “deeply”. That happened soon enough; the very next year when he visited Pakistan and made a speech praising Mohammad Ali Jinnah at his mausoleum in Karachi. His book, once again, gives an insight into what the old man of Indian politics must be currently thinking, now that he has lost the American presidential-style campaign he ran in the hope of making it to the top job. Back in 2005, his party openly bayed for his blood and he was forced to step down as the President of the BJP, a party that he had singularly guided and taken from only two seats in Parliament in 1984 to 182 in 1999. Of the Jinnah controversy, he wrote, “The turmoil began when I was still on Pakistani soil… the ensuing developments affected the cohesion within the party in an unprecedented manner and confused the minds of millions of supporters. They brought me pain, deep and unyielding. This was quite simply the most agonising moment of my political life, more distressing, indeed, than when I faced corruption charges in the ‘Hawala’ episode in 1996. At that time, my mind was at peace because my party had stood solidly behind me… In contrast, in the 2005 controversy over my Pakistan visit, several of my own party colleagues chose not to support me…”
“One day in the middle of 2005, I was told that I should step down from the presidentship of the BJP… All this was profoundly agonising for me. I was in a dilemma… My predicament often made me wonder if it wasn’t time for me to embrace the peace and comfort of a quiet family life… My state of mind was not quite unlike that of the unsure Arjuna on the battlefield. But every time the thought of escapism entered my mind, I was reminded of Lord Krishna…”
Verdict 2009 has left him in a similar predicament. Only, this time, his party colleagues are not ‘insisting’ that he stay on as the Leader of the Opposition — they have merely agreed to it so the baton can be passed on without the ugly infighting waiting just below the surface.
If LK Advani had to add a new chapter to his autobiography, how would he describe the bloodbath of Vote 2009?
So, as Advani contemplates his future and draws on a philosophical attitude to analyse why Vote 2009 went so unexpectedly wrong for him and the BJP, he may just decide to add a chapter to My Country My Life. If in 2004, the chapter was titled, ‘Defeat in Polls, Turmoil in Party’, this time, it could well be titled, ‘Drubbing in Polls, Bloodbath in Party’, and it will read as follows (many in the party would probably like him to title it ‘Why I Lost’):
“In 2004, no single factor of nationwide relevance accounted for the electoral outcome. Rather, different factors influenced the electorate in different states. Thus it was not a national verdict, but an aggregate of state verdicts. The phraseology of ‘Feel good factor’ and ‘India Shining’ hurt us. This time, the party and the Sangh Parivar vested faith in me and announced my name as the BJP and NDA’s prime ministerial candidate. I accepted the challenge with humility and, aware of the enormous task at hand, went about my work diligently, addressing meeting after public meeting in the blistering sun.
It pains me deeply to see that the BJP is down to 116 seats from 138 in 2004, and I am aware that many of my senior colleagues are now blaming me for running a presidential-style campaign and for attacking Manmohan Singh for being a weak prime minister. The fact of the matter is that for four and a half years, till he put his government on the line over the nuclear deal, Manmohan Singh was a ‘selected’ PM, a night watchman, someone who constantly went to 10 Janpath for guidance. So what was wrong if I called him weak? I am a young 82 and showed the electorate that, unlike Manmohan Singh who underwent a bypass surgery, I was fit enough to even lift weights.
I ran my campaign Obama-style but the basic reason for our defeat is the limit of our geographical existence. The BJP has no hold in the important states of West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, one of the reasons why TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu pulled out of the NDA.
I AM PAINED by the whisper campaign in the party that I am well past the sell-by date and therefore, in some ways, out of tune with the New India. A majority of our cadres and supporters are now sending us emails and letters and there is a sympathy factor that is building around me, but the fact remains that the electorate was unmistakably in favour of a stable government and they did not want a government which could be pulled around by smaller partners. So, on a closer examination, it is evident that if the Congress went up from 145 to 206, it is because they gained these seats in states like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, which have a third front.
I have described the turmoil in the party over my Jinnah remark to be the most agonising moment of my political life. My own colleagues didn’t stand by me then, but what they failed to understand was that the remark had great political significance for the BJP. I had intended it as a transition point in the life of a party that was struggling with the loss of success, after the Ram temple campaign of the 1990s had lived out its sell-by date.
By then, it was clear to the BJP’s top leadership that Vajpayeeji could only be our mentor and guide and it was important, therefore, for both the party and me, to acquire a new image — an image in tune with changing India. I was trying to make the transition from being the hard, Hindutva face (maybe cultural nationalism is a better phrase), to someone who is seen as being softer, more amiable. Nobody in the party had any problems with the fact that Vajpayeeji was aloof by temperament or that he wrote poetry and enjoyed quiet evenings with his family. I am in a dilemma over why my colleagues are now saying that I have retreated into my family at the cost of the party; that my family and a few of my trusted aides (led by Sudheendra Kulkarni) ran a parallel campaign for me when there was also a campaign committee being run by my colleague Arun Jaitley, out of the same precincts — 28, Tughlak Crescent. The criticism now is that I listened more to Kulkarni’s team, which comprised of bloggers, techies and software professionals. There is a contradiction here, for those who are willing to see it — I had a high-tech team but the analysis is that I cost the BJP the youth voters.
The party as a whole should have done a political postmortem after we lost the assembly elections in Delhi and Rajasthan in December 2008. It is a matter of record that till the Mumbai attacks on 26/11, we were sure that we were on an upward trajectory. The economic meltdown followed soon after that and though I raised the issue of terrorism, there was a psychological shift towards stability (read: Congress), which none of us were able to spot.
I was making the transition from the hard Hindutva face to someone who is seen as being more amiable
Unlike in 2005, when I was in a dilemma and my mind was not quite unlike that of the unsure Arjuna, I was quick to take moral responsibility this time and offered to resign as soon as the results were out. But once again, the party is ridden with infighting. Murli Manohar Joshi lost no time in staking claim as the leader of the opposition and other senior leaders are attacking me for not disowning Varun Gandhi after he made his hate speech. Others still are saying that projecting Narendra Modi as primeminister- in-waiting was a costly mistake. It pains me the most to hear that I am the one who is ‘weak’. If I agreed with both Sudhanshu Mittal and Arun Jaitley when they came to me independently, complaining about each other, it was because I am a consensus man and I did it in the best interest of the party. I wanted to put a lid on an unsavoury controversy; cover up the infighting within the BJP, known to be ‘a party with a difference’.
Should I refuse to be the Opposition leader or bow to the wishes of my colleagues? I am in a dilemma. I have never been enamoured by any political post or the power that supposedly comes with it. I will pass the baton soon and continue to be a philosopher and a guide…”
shammy@tehelka.com
Nightmare in Free India
Chhattisgarh hounds rape victims who dare to raise their voice
Illustration : Naorem Ashish
Ajit Sahi
LAST MONTH, TEHELKA published a report on how India’s apex statutory human rights watchdog, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), has virtually connived with the Chhattisgarh police to deny justice to that state’s poor tribal women – women who were raped by Special Police Officers (SPOs) from a tribal militia paid by the state police. Ever since these women moved a judicial court in the southern Chhattisgarh district of Dantewada two months ago, police and SPOs have been terrorising them to take back their case, forcing them to run from their ‘protectors’.
This militia, the Salwa Judum (literally: peace march), has wreaked havoc on the poor and defenseless tribals of Chhattisgarh for four years, burning entire villages, beating men and women and forcing thousands into government-sponsored and -protected camps. From these forced migrants, the state police have enrolled over a thousand people and has had them turn guns and brutalities on other tribals.
In June 2008, on orders from the Supreme Court, an allpolice team from the NHRC met several women who accused SPOs of raping them – but rejected their testimonies. Even as copies of the TEHELKA issue which carried the horrifying rape testimonies were being distributed, SPOs began swooping down on the villages of these women, threatening them openly. In one such village, Shamshetty, a dozen SPOs rode in on motorcycles, claiming they wanted to meet the women “to pay them money.”
One rape victim who lives in a village close to the border with Andhra Pradesh had the AP police arrive at her door, threatening to take her and her husband to AP – unjustifiable because she has no criminal or civil case, against her or filed by her, in AP. In a third village, the SPOs were actually accompanied by the police. They asked for the rape victim by name.
On August 2, these rape victims turned up at the makeshift office of the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA), a Gandhian NGO run by activist Himanshu Kumar, at Dantewada town. Angry over Kumar’s fearless and resolute campaign against the Salwa Judum atrocities, the police had illegally demolished his 17- year-old sprawling ashram three months ago. On August 11, Kumar took the victims to meet the city’s district magistrate (DM), IAS officer RB Kangaley. “Police goons are threatening to kill these women on Independence Day, August 15th,” he told her. Is this freedom? Is this Gandhi’s free India? Kumar says Kangaley has promised them protection. Will she succeed?
A word here about the judge hearing the rape victims’ testimonies in Konta, a sub-district of Dantewada. For the last two hearing dates – July 17 and August 12 – the judge has been “called away to headquarters”. The victims’ lawyer says they have no formal explanation why he is unable to come to court when the victims are to be heard.
Is it just the State that is callous and brutal towards hapless, defenseless victims of rape? Or are we as a class complicit in refusing to accept these rape victims as full citizens of independent India? Nine years of pioneering journalism has made TEHELKA a household name across India, with wide acceptability overseas. Last week, one of India’s most prestigious journalism awards, instituted by the Rajasthan Patrika newspaper, was awarded to my colleague, Harinder Baweja, for her stunning exclusive reportage from the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan. On the other hand, India’s top media organizations – from newspapers to TV channels – have ignored the heartrending testimonies of these six women from Chhattisgarh. It is a pity that sixty-two years after India earned independence, promising justice and liberty for its sons and daughters, tribals in our forest lands find no support from India’s social and political elite in their fight for justice.