{"id":50883,"date":"2009-09-26T16:19:43","date_gmt":"2009-09-26T16:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/test.tehelka.com\/?p=50883"},"modified":"2009-09-26T16:19:43","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T16:19:43","slug":"how-the-dead-haunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/how-the-dead-haunt\/","title":{"rendered":"How the dead haunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nON SEPTEMBER 7, 2009, lawyer Mukul Sinha ran to a news conference he had called at sundown in Ahmedabad, excitedly clutching a copy of a report a local judge had signed minutes ago. The 247-page report, handwritten by Metropolitan Magistrate SP Tamang, would grab headlines nationwide, sending shivers down the backs of the BJP government in Gujarat with its unprecedented claim \u2013 that the \u201cencounter\u201d of \u201cLashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorists\u201d, Ishrat Jahan and three others, carried out early on the morning of June 15, 2004, in Ahmedabad, was the cold-blooded murder of innocent people.<\/span>
\n\u201cWe hadn\u2019t yet read the report, so we were as stunned as the journalists when we began reading it, translating from Gujarati,\u201d says Sinha, still marvelling that a three-week probe revealed what he has been fighting to uncover for years. Of course, the next day, Gujarat High Court judge Kalpesh Jhaveri stayed Tamang\u2019s report. He demanded to know why the magistrate had conducted a probe when Jhaveri was already hearing a petition by Shamima, Ishrat Jahan\u2019s mother, who has sought an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the alleged encounter.<\/span>
\nAt the time of going to press, Shamima was readying to move against the stay. \u201cWe are filing a petition in the Supreme Court to pray that the stay on Tamang\u2019s report be vacated,\u201d Supreme Court lawyer Vrinda Grover, who represents Shamima, told TEHELKA.<\/span>
\nThe High Court\u2019s stay certainly gave some political respite to the beleaguered Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. This relief strengthened on September 14 when the BJP won the Gujarat Assembly by-election in five of the seven seats that polled days earlier. BJP leader Arun Jaitley quickly claimed that \u201csiding with Ishrat Jahan\u201d proved costly for arch-rival Congress party, which lost three seats it had won in the 2007 assembly elections. Ahmedabad-based political analyst Achyut Yagnik, however, dismisses the claim. \u201cThat\u2019s propaganda. The BJP wants to prove that the Gujarati middle-class and the people are with them,\u201d he told TEHELKA. \u201cThe fact is that the Congress lost this election because of overconfidence and the wrong selection of candidates rather than because the voters rallied for the BJP in view of any negative fallout of the Tamang report.\u201d<\/span>
\n

\"Anti-hero<\/a>
Anti-hero<\/strong> Former DIG Vanzara waves to supporters after appearing at a courtPhoto: \u00a0AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nCharacteristically, Modi declared his party had won on the plank of development. Because he hadn\u2019t campaigned in the by-election, he claimed his party was no longer dependent on him to draw the votes. But analysts say Modi is at his most vulnerable in his seven years as chief minister, due to his continuing and upcoming legal troubles.<\/span>
\nThese troubles have only added to the political damage to his standing after the BJP\u2019s nationwide loss four months ago in the Lok Sabha elections, during which he was a star campaigner and projected as a future BJP prime ministerial aspirant. At the BJP\u2019s botched brainstorming at Shimla last month, Modi had kept an unusually low profile, not the least because the Supreme Court had ordered that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) directly investigate his role in the 2002 massacre of Muslims in Gujarat during his tenure.<\/span>
\n
\"The<\/a>
The lies of others<\/strong> Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Kausar Bi (above); The body of Sameer Khan (below)
Photo: \u00a0Trupti Patel<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nTamang\u2019s report set the proverbial cat among Modi and his clutch of loyalist police officers, several of whom have allegedly acted as his henchmen from the time the police actively connived in or stood by and allowed the Muslim killings. Retired IPS officer RB Sreekumar, who has relentlessly fought to expose Modi\u2019s alleged complicity in the 2002 pogrom, says these police officers are now threatened by the likely exposure of their roles in fake encounters. Tamang has named 21 policemen, including top officers such as the then Ahmedabad police commissioner KR Kaushik (who later became Gujarat\u2019s Director-General of Police) and the then Crime Branch Joint Police Commissioner PP Pandey, for conspiring to murder Ishrat Jahan and the three others. \u201cSome cops Tamang has named have conveyed to Modi that they won\u2019t keep quiet like Vanzara has,\u201d a source said speaking on the promise that he won\u2019t be identified. \u201cThey have threatened that if a court finds them guilty, they would not hesitate to say that killing innocent Muslims was a state policy.\u201d<\/span>
\nDG Vanzara, a former Deputy Inspector General of Gujarat Police, is in jail since 2007 after being accused of masterminding the killing of Muslim businessman Sohrabuddin and his wife in 2006 and passing them off as terrorists. A widely known Modi loyalist, Vanzara headed the Ahmedabad Crime Branch when most encounters were carried out. Tamang has named him for planning the Ishrat Jahan encounter.<\/span>
\nWhile Tamang\u2019s findings have been widely reported, little is known of the behind-the-scenes bid since June to scuttle any probe into the encounter. After Tamang\u2019s report became public, Gujarat government spokesman Jaynarayan Vyas denounced the magistrate \u2014 which might well be contempt of court because Tamang is a judicial officer \u2014 and claimed the encounter was genuine. The government told the High Court it didn\u2019t know who had ordered the Tamang probe.<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/a>The truth is it was the Gujarat government that directed Ahmedabad\u2019s Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM), DM Patel, to speed up the magisterial inquiry. \u201cA certain official in the Home Department made a phone call on August 12,\u201d says a court official. \u201cThe same afternoon, CMM Patel assigned the inquiry to Tamang.\u201d Patel promptly dispatched all the case documents, such as forensic reports and the FIR, to Tamang with the instruction to \u201cimmediately\u201d complete the inquiry. (Patel was transferred out two days after the report hit the headlines.)<\/span>
\nSO WHY<\/strong> did the Gujarat government seek a magisterial inquiry more than five years after the encounter? The answer lies in the trajectory of Shamima\u2019s petition before the High Court, which came to life earlier this summer after languishing for nearly five years. On June 26, High Court judge Jhaveri ordered that the CBI be made a party in the case. This stunned the police officers behind the encounter who began pressuring Modi to scotch any CBI probe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arun Jaitley claimed that \u2018siding with Ishrat Jahan\u2019 proved costly for the Congress Party<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point, two strategies were set into motion. One was to pressure the Union Home Ministry to tell the High Court that the encounter was genuine. The police officers involved reportedly contacted Rajendrakumar, a top official with the Intelligence Bureau (IB) based at New Delhi. He had been the Centre\u2019s IB Joint-Director in Gujarat in 2004 when the encounter was carried out. (New Delhi-based rights activist Shabnam Hashmi says she had long ago communicated to the Centre that Rajendrakumar was close to Modi and Vanzara and played a key role in the fake encounters.)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n

THE TAMANG REPORT\u2019S FINDINGS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

How a three-week inquiry blew open a five-year conspiracy about the death of Ishrat Jahan<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

1<\/strong><\/span>The exit wounds of bullets were larger than the entry wounds. This proves they were shot from a close range. Many entry wounds were also higher than the exit wounds<\/strong><\/span>Finding: Those killed were sitting when they were shot. The killers stood next to them when they fired the shots<\/span><\/td>\n2<\/span><\/strong>Not one of the 70 bullets the police allegedly fired were found. Police said they shot at the car\u2019s left side and burst a tyre, after which it hit the divider on the right<\/strong><\/span>Finding: This is an obvious lie, because the car would have swerved left and not right if the left tyre was shot<\/span><\/td>\n3<\/span><\/strong>The wounds were from an AK-56 rifle and a 9mm pistol, which police didn\u2019t own. These guns were instead found on those killed. Forensic tests found no remains of \u201cexploded ammunition\u201d on the dead<\/strong><\/span>Finding: The police planted the same guns on the dead men with which they killed them<\/span><\/td>\n4<\/span><\/strong><\/span>Only I-cards were found in their pockets. Why was Ishrat Jahan wearing her college I-Card around her neck at that hour? Not a single rupee was found on them. An unlocked briefcase with Rs 2 lakh was found in the boot<\/strong><\/span>Finding: The police planted the I-cards and cash after killing them<\/span><\/td>\n5<\/span><\/strong>The post mortem at 3.40pm on June 15, 2004 found that rigor mortis had set in. The deaths had thus occurred 12 to 24 hours earlier, that is, before 3.40am. But the police gave 4am as the time of the encounter<\/strong><\/span>Finding: The police killed the four people elsewhere and brought them to the site<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

It was on Rajendrakumar\u2019s watch that the Central IB had sent a controversial \u201cinput\u201d about possible terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba coming into Gujarat to kill Modi. The Ahmedabad Crime Branch had cited this \u201cinput\u201d to justify the encounter. Sources say Rajendrakumar now reached out to Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and \u201cpersonally vouched\u201d that the encounter was genuine. Chidambaram reportedly agreed that his ministry should file an affidavit in the High Court.<\/span>
\n

\"Unwary<\/a>
Unwary pawn<\/strong> Ishrat Jahan, 19-year-old Mumbai resident killed in an encounter<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nMeanwhile, things were moving fast at the High Court. On August 7, judge Jhaveri ruled that he would \u201cexplore the possibility of handing over the investigation to higher officer\/s, that is, officer\/s above the rank of Deputy Commissioner of Police, more particularly, from the cadre of Additional DG\u201d. He adjourned this decision to the next hearing on August 12. Shortly, the Union Home Ministry filed an affidavit in Jhaveri\u2019s court supporting the state\u2019s claim on the encounter.<\/span>
\nAn aside to this affidavit. Sources say the Centre\u2019s lawyer in Ahmedabad, Assistant Solicitor General PS Chapaneri, first refused to back the affidavit when a Union Home Ministry official, VS Mani, brought it. The reason? During an earlier hearing in the case, Chapaneri had verbally told the judge the Centre would be willing to hold a CBI probe. (Ever scared of being politically outmanoeuvered by Modi, the UPA government is in a characteristic flipflop over the question: which side does it stand on? Chidambaram last week said an intelligence input is \u201cno license to kill\u201d. This week, the Centre developed cold feet after deciding to appeal the Supreme Court against the stay on Tamang\u2019s report.)<\/span>
\nThe second strategy was to hasten pending inquiries into the encounter. As it happened, a magisterial inquiry routinely begun in 2004 had never been completed. At that time, this inquiry was with an executive magistrate named Gaurav Prajapati, who was not a judicial officer. In 2006, following amendments to procedural law, the state government handed the inquiry to the judicial side. For three long years, this inquiry lay dormant, until the morning of August 12, the day Jhaveri was to rule on setting up a new probe.<\/span><\/p>\n

The officers involved in the encounter began pressuring Modi to scotch any CBI probe<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jhaveri could take up the matter only on August 13, when he swiftly announced the setting up of a Special Investigation Team (SIT), consisting of three top police officers of Gujarat with the mandate \u201c\u2026 to consider all the aspects from every angle, which are relevant for the purpose of finding out whether the incident was a genuine encounter or a fake one.\u201d This SIT must file its report by November 30, the next date of hearing in the case.<\/span>
\nIt must be pointed out that the Gujarat government did not once denounce the formation of this SIT or insist that the Ishrat Jahan encounter was genuine, as it did after Tamang\u2019s report came out. Is it because judge Jhaveri chose the police officers for the SIT from a list submitted by Advocate General KB Trivedi? Big question: if the Gujarat government believes that the encounter was genuine, then why hasn\u2019t it approached the Supreme Court against the High Court order setting up the SIT?<\/span><\/p>\n

Ihe UPA government is in a flip-flop over the Ishrat question: on which side does it stand?<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(A month later, the SIT hasn\u2019t started work because the Gujarat government is yet to issue relevant orders. The SIT includes at least one officer of dubious antecedent: Gujarat Police Inspector General JK Bhatt. Bhatt was one of the three officers whose investigation had claimed a conspiracy by Godhra\u2019s Muslims to set the Sabarmati Express on fire on February 27, 2002. The theory stands discredited, including by a TEHELKA sting operation. Earlier this year, the Gujarat High Court ruled that the now lapsed Prevention of Terrorism Act was wrongly applied to about 100 Muslims charged for the train fire as no conspiracy had been established.)<\/span>
\n

\"\"<\/a>
On record<\/strong> Tehelka\u2019s May 2007 expos\u00e9 of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s involvement in the Sohrabuddin \u2018fake\u2019 encounter<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nNO DOUBT<\/strong> the SIT\u2019s job is harder now. To find the encounter genuine it would have to trash Tamang\u2019s report, which really makes the encounter an open-and-shut case, based on the forensic examinations.<\/span>
\n\u201cIf there had been no Tamang report, the SIT could well have found the encounter genuine basing it entirely on the intelligence inputs,\u201d says a lawyer connected with the case. \u201cBut now, the SITwill have to prove that the forensic discrepancies Tamang has exposed are wrong if it wants to find the encounter genuine.\u201d But if the SIT upholds Tamang\u2019s findings \u2014 that the 21 policemen conspired to kill Ishrat Jahan and three others in cold blood and falsely pass them off as terrorists \u2014 it could create a legal and political Frankenstein for Modi, for this would be the second encounter after the Sohrabuddin case to be questioned as genuine.<\/span>
\nAnd that begs the question: Were \u201cfake encounters\u201d of Muslims a state policy under Modi? Retired IPS officer Sreekumar, who headed the state Intelligence Branch (State IB) during April-September 2002, claims that the then Director General of Police of Gujarat, K Chakravarty, called him up on May 1, 2002, and told him that the state government wanted such encounters to take place.<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/a>\u201cChakravarty told me that [the then Gujarat Chief Secretary] Subba Rao had told him that some Muslims should be eliminated,\u201d Sreekumar told TEHELKA in Gandhinagar. \u201cI told Subba Rao that if there is an encounter, I will do an inquiry and speak out against my colleagues if I find the encounters are fake.\u201d Sreekumar says he began documenting such daily conversations in a diary, which he has put away at a secure place. Sreekumar was shunted out in September 2002. The first encounter took place the next month. Over the next four years, the Crime Branch killed some 17 alleged terrorists. In most cases, the police claimed that the terrorists had sneaked in with the purpose to kill Modi, BJP leader LK Advani and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Praveen Togadia. Such encounters stopped after the arrest of Vanzara and several other police officers in the Sohrabuddin case.<\/span>
\nModi\u2019s detractors have long admitted to his amazing political skills to overcome nearly all the legal troubles since the killings of Muslims, which made him India\u2019s most controversial politician. But with the Supreme Court-appointed SIT set to investigate the chief minister\u2019s role in the 2002 pogrom, and now the Tamang report calling the Ishrat Jahan encounter as fake, is it possible that the cat is about to use up its ninth life?<\/span>
\najit@tehelka.com
\nThe Other Ishrat Jahans<\/span><\/strong>
\nIn the killing fields of Gujarat, Ishrat Jahan\u2019s death in a \u2018fake\u2019 encounter was no aberration. Before her there was Sameer Khan, and in 2005, Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausar Bi were similiarly shot at point-blank range<\/span><\/em><\/span>
\nSohrabuddin Sheikh<\/strong>
\n\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>On November 23, 2005, Gujarat Anti- Terrorism Squad SP Rajkumar Pandian and his men intercept a bus headed towards Sangli, Maharashtra, in which Sohrabuddin, his wife Kausar Bi and friend Tulsiram Prajapati are travelling.<\/span>
\n\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>A day before, on November 22, constable Parmar, Pandian\u2019s personal assistant, has been instructed by Inspector Dhabi to get two fake number plates made. They are later fitted on the same Qualis that intercepted the bus.<\/span>
\n\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>Sohrabuddin, Kausar and Prajapati are picked up and brought to Ahmedabad. They are kept in a farmhouse.<\/span>
\n\u2022<\/strong>\u00a0At 4am on November 26, Parmar is asked to bring a motorcycle to the spot where DIG DG Vanzara, Pandian and Udaipur SP Dinesh MN are waiting.<\/span>
\n\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>A little later, a car carrying Deputy SP ML Parmar, Inspector Chaube and Sohrabuddin pulls up. Sohrabuddin is pulled out and shot at point blank range by the cops.<\/span>
\n\u2022<\/strong>\u00a0Kausar is shifted to another farm on the outskirts of Ahmedabad a few hours after the encounter. She is \u201cdisposed\u201d of a few days later; her body burnt near village Illol in Sabarkantha district.<\/span>
\n\u2022<\/strong>\u00a0After Sohrabuddin\u2019s encounter, the police, for the fear of an expos\u00e9, claim they arrested Prajapati in Udaipur. A few days later they killed him in a fake encounter alleging he had tried escaping from police custody.<\/span>
\nSameer Khan<\/strong>
\n\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>Sameer Khan, a small-time criminal, is arrested on September 27, 2002 for murdering a constable in 1996.<\/span>
\n\u2022<\/strong>\u00a0Khan is kept in unlawful custody for four days till the police show him as arrested, under a new FIR, on September 30. They allege he is a Jaish-e- Mohammed terrorist involved in a conspiracy to kill Narendra Modi, Praveen Togadia and LK Advani.<\/span>
\n\u2022<\/strong>\u00a0The police, as mandated legally, take no independent witnesses. He is escorted by 22 policemen.<\/span>
\n\u2022<\/strong>\u00a0Police claim that on reaching the spot Khan snatched a police revolver and shot at an inspector. Khan was killed in retaliatory firing by the police.<\/span>
\n\u2022\u00a0<\/strong>According to the inquiry, Khan was shot while he was lying down, and hence not fleeing.<\/span>
\n\u2022<\/strong>\u00a0IG, Human Rights, Tirth Raj, who conducted an inquiry into Khan\u2019s killing later revealed on the TEHELKA spycam: \u201cEverybody was involved in the cover-up \u2014 from the DGP\u2019s office to the Chief Minister\u2019s Office\u201d.<\/span>
\n\u2022<\/strong>\u00a0IK Yadav, the inquiry officer, had in his report expressly stated that Sameer Khan\u2019s shirt had traces of gunpowder \u2014 possible only when shot at close range. Vanzara had threatened to kill Yadav.<\/span>
\n\u2018The Sit Has To Consider Tamamg\u2019s Conclusions\u2019<\/span><\/strong>
\nMukul Sinha<\/strong>, lawyer and convener of the Jan Sangharsh Manch, spoke to<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Ajit Sahi<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/a>What is the significance of Metropolitan Magistrate SP Tamang\u2019s findings?<\/strong>
\nIt is a magisterial inquiry under Section 176 of the CrPC and is independent of all police investigations. Though the Gujarat High Court has stayed the report, it can still be used, as per the High Court\u2019s order, before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the High Court itself. The significance is in that Tamang has prima facie come to the conclusion that the encounter was fake and the SIT will have to consider these conclusions.<\/span>
\nDid you know of Tamang\u2019s investigation when you sought a CBI inquiry?
\n<\/strong>I hadn\u2019t even heard of Tamang until September 3, when my other client Gopinath Pillai [father of Pranesh alias Javed, who, too, was killed along with Ishrat] came to Ahmedabad to appear before Tamang.<\/span>
\nWhy was Tamang in a hurry to give his report?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t believe he was in any hurry. Such reports have to be submitted within a month. It was the state government that asked the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate for a quick end to the inquiry.<\/span>
\nWhat\u2019s the basis of your claim that the encounter was fake?<\/strong>
\nThe government\u2019s claim that two of those killed with Ishrat \u2014 Amjad and Zeeshan \u2014 were Pakistanis who had infiltrated via Kashmir, travelled to Delhi, then to Pune where Javed joined them, and then to Mumbai where Ishrat joined them. The Gujarat-Maharashtra border is 300 km from Ahmedabad. Several districts fall on the way. How come the police in any of these states or districts or even the Ahmedabad Police were not on the alert for the alleged terrorists\u2019 car? Only the Crime Branch was on alert! Why? Why were these alleged terrorists challenged only after their car entered Ahmedabad? Just 15 days earlier, Javed had travelled to Kerala in the same car with his wife and children to holiday with his father and brother\u2019s family. Is that how terrorists act just before they want to kill a chief minister?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gujarat government tried to scuttle the investigation into the Ishrat Jahan killing. Ajit Sahi goes behind the scenes to discover how the state\u2019s conspiracy boomeranged in its face<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":50942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56],"tags":[8725,8626,435,8726,2984,8727,8728,8729,8730,316,8731,8732,8733,8734,8735,8736,8737,8738],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}