Alternative India Index
[Excerpts]
'THE INTRODUCTION' [TO] '13 DECEMBER: A READER,
THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ATTACK ON THE INDIAN
PARLIAMENT' (released by Penguin India books on
december 13, 2006)
by Arundhati Roy
[ . . . ]
Most people, or let's say many people, when they
encounter real facts and a logical argument, do
begin to ask the right questions. This is exactly
what has begun to happen on the Parliament attack
case. The questions have created public pressure.
The pressure has created fissures, and through
these fissures those who have come under the
scanner-shadowy individuals, counter-intelligence
and security agencies, political parties-are
beginning to surface. They wave flags, hurl
abuse, issue hot denials and cover their tracks
with more and more untruths.
Thus they reveal themselves.
Public unease continues to grow. A group of
citizens have come together as a committee
(chaired by Nirmala Deshpande) to publicly demand
a parliamentary inquiry into the episode. There
is an online petition demanding the same thing.
Thousands of people have signed on. Every day new
articles appear in the papers, on the net. At
least half-a-dozen websites are following the
developments closely. They raise questions about
how Mohammed Afzal, who never had proper legal
representation, can be sentenced to death,
without having had an opportunity to be heard,
without a fair trial. They raise questions about
fabricated evidence, procedural flaws and the
outright lies that were presented in court and
published in newspapers. They show how there is
hardly a single piece of evidence that stands up
to scrutiny.
And then, there are even more disturbing
questions that have been raised, which range
beyond the fate of Mohammed Afzal.
Here are 13 questions for December 13:
Question 1: For months before the attack on
Parliament, both the government and the police
had been saying that Parliament could be
attacked. On December 12, 2001, at an informal
meeting, prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
warned of an imminent attack on Parliament. On
December 13, Parliament was attacked. Given that
there was an 'improved security drill', how did a
car bomb packed with explosives enter the
Parliament complex?
Question 2: Within days of the attack, the
Special Cell of Delhi Police said it was a
meticulously planned joint operation of
Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba. They said
the attack was led by a man called 'Mohammad' who
was also involved in the hijacking of IC-814 in
1999. (This was later refuted by the CBI.) None
of this was ever proved in court. What evidence
did the Special Cell have for its claim?
Question 3: The entire attack was recorded live
on close circuit TV (CCTV). Congress party MP
Kapil Sibal demanded in Parliament that the CCTV
recording be shown to the members. He was
supported by the deputy chairperson of the Rajya
Sabha, Najma Heptullah, who said that there was
confusion about the details of the event. The
chief whip of the Congress party, Priyaranjan Das
Munshi, said, "I counted six men getting out of
the car. But only five were killed. The close
circuit TV camera recording clearly showed the
six men." If Das Munshi was right, why did the
police say that there were only five people in
the car? Who was the sixth person? Where is he
now? Why was the CCTV recording not produced by
the prosecution as evidence in the trial? Why was
it not released for public viewing?
Question 4: Why was Parliament adjourned after
some of these questions were raised?
Question 5: A few days after December 13, the
government declared that it had 'incontrovertible
evidence' of Pakistan's involvement in the
attack, and announced a massive mobilisation of
almost half-a-million soldiers to the
Indo-Pakistan border. The subcontinent was pushed
to the brink of nuclear war.
Apart from Afzal's 'confession', extracted under
torture (and later set aside by the Supreme
Court), what was the 'incontrovertible evidence'?
Question 6: Is it true that the military
mobilisation to the Pakistan border had begun
long before the December 13 attack?
Question 7: How much did this military standoff,
which lasted for nearly a year, cost? How many
soldiers died in the process? How many soldiers
and civilians died because of mishandled
landmines, and how many peasants lost their homes
and land because trucks and tanks were rolling
through their villages, and landmines were being
planted in their fields?
Question 8: In a criminal investigation, it is
vital for the police to show how the evidence
gathered at the scene of the attack led them to
the accused.
How did the police reach Mohammed Afzal?
The Special Cell says S.A.R. Geelani led them to
Afzal. But the message to look out for Afzal was
actually flashed to the Srinagar police before
Geelani was arrested. So how did the Special Cell
connect Afzal to the December 13 attack?
Question 9: The courts acknowledge
that Afzal was a surrendered militant who was in
regular contact with the security forces,
particularly the Special Task Force (STF) of the
Jammu & Kashmir Police. How do the security
forces explain the fact that a person under their
surveillance was able to conspire in a major
militant operation?
Question 10: Is it plausible that organisations
like Lashkar-e-Toiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed would
rely on a person who had been in and out of STF
torture chambers, and was under constant police
surveillance, as the principal link for a major
operation?
Question 11: In his statement before the court,
Afzal says that he was introduced to 'Mohammad'
and instructed to take him to Delhi by a man
called Tariq, who was working with the STF. Tariq
was named in the police chargesheet. Who is Tariq
and where is he now?
Question 12: On December 19, 2001, six days after
the Parliament attack, Police Commissioner, Thane
(Maharashtra), S.M. Shangari, identified one of
the attackers killed in the Parliament attack as
Mohammed Yasin Fateh Mohammed (alias Abu Hamza)
of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, who had been arrested in
Mumbai in November 2000, and immediately handed
over to the J&K Police. He gave detailed
descriptions to support his statement. If Police
Commissioner Shangari was right, how did Mohammed
Yasin, a man in the custody of the J&K Police,
end up participating in the Parliament attack? If
he was wrong, where is Mohammed Yasin now?
Question 13: Why is it that we still don't know
who the five dead 'terrorists' killed in the
Parliament attack are?
These questions, examined cumulatively, point to
something far more serious than incompetence. The
words that come to mind are Complicity,
Collusion, Involvement. There's no need for us to
feign shock, or shrink from thinking these
thoughts and saying them out loud. Governments
and their intelligence agencies have a hoary
tradition of using strategies like this to
further their own ends. (Look up the burning of
the Reichstag and the rise of Nazi power in
Germany, 1933; or 'Operation Gladio' in which
European intelligence agencies 'created' acts of
terrorism, especially in Italy, in order to
discredit militant groups like the Red Brigade.)
The official response to all of these questions
has been dead silence. As things stand, the
execution of Afzal has been postponed while the
President considers his clemency petition.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party announced
that it would turn 'Hang Afzal' into a national
campaign. The campaign was fuelled by the usual
stale cocktail of religious chauvinism,
nationalism and strategic falsehoods.
But it doesn't seem to have taken off. Now other
avenues are being explored. M.S. Bitta of the All
India Anti-Terrorist Front is parading around the
families of some of the security personnel who
were killed during the attack. They have
threatened to return the government's posthumous
bravery medals if Afzal is not hanged by December
13. (On balance, it might not be a bad idea for
them to turn those medals in until they really
know who the attackers were working for.)
The main strategy seems to be to create confusion
and polarise the debate on communal lines. The
editor of The Pioneer newspaper writes in his
columns that Mohammed Afzal was actually one of
the men who attacked Parliament, that he was the
first to open fire and kill at least three
security guards. The columnist Swapan Dasgupta,
in an article called 'You Can't Be Good to Evil',
suggests that if Afzal is not hanged there would
be no point in celebrating Dussehra or Durga
Puja. It's hard to believe that falsehoods like
this stem only from a poor grasp of facts.
In the business of spreading confusion, the mass
media, particularly television journalists, can
be counted on to be perfect collaborators. On
discussions, chat shows and 'special reports', we
have television anchors playing around with
crucial facts, like young children in a sandpit.
Torturers, estranged brothers, senior police
officers and politicians are emerging from the
woodwork and talking. The more they talk, the
more interesting it all becomes.
At the end of November 2006, Afzal's older
brother Aijaz made it on to a national news
channel (CNN-IBN). He was featured on hidden
camera, on what was meant to be a 'sting'
operation, making-we were asked to
believe-stunning revelations. Aijaz's story had
already been on offer to various journalists on
the streets of Delhi for weeks. People were wary
of him because his rift with his brother's wife
and family is well known. More significantly, in
Kashmir he is known to have a relationship with
the STF. More than one person has suggested an
audit of his newfound assets.
But here he was now, on the national news,
endorsing the Supreme Court decision to hang his
brother. Then, saying Afzal had never
surrendered, and that it was he (Aijaz) who
surrendered his brother's weapon to the BSF! And
since he had never surrendered, Aijaz was able to
'confirm' that Afzal was an active militant with
the Jaish-e-Mohammed, and that Ghazi Baba, chief
of operations of the Jaish, used to regularly
hold meetings in their home. (Aijaz claims that
when Ghazi Baba was killed, it was he who the
police called in to identify the body). On the
whole, it sounded as though there had been a case
of mistaken identity-and that given how much he
knew, and all he was admitting, Aijaz should have
been the one in custody instead of Afzal!
Of course we must keep in mind that behind both
Aijaz and Afzal's 'media confessions', spaced
five years apart, is the invisible hand of the
STF, the dreaded counter-insurgency outfit in
Kashmir. They can make anyone say anything at any
time. Their methods (both punitive and
remunerative) are familiar to every man, woman
and child in the Kashmir Valley. At a time like
this, for a responsible news channel to announce
that their "investigation finds that Afzal was a
Jaish militant", based on totally unreliable
testimony, is dangerous and irresponsible. (Since
when did what our brothers say about us become
admissible evidence? My brother, for instance,
will testify that I'm God's Gift to the Universe.
I could dredge up a couple of aunts who'd say I'm
a Jaish militant. For a price.) How can family
feuds be dressed up as Breaking News?
The other character who is rapidly emerging from
the shadowy periphery and wading on to
centrestage is Dy Superintendent of Police
Dravinder Singh of the STF.
He is the man who Afzal has named as the police
officer who held him in illegal detention and
tortured him in the STF camp at Humhama in
Srinagar, only a few months before the Parliament
attack. In a letter to his lawyer, Sushil Kumar,
Afzal says that several of the calls made to him
and Mohammed Yasin (the man killed in the attack)
can be traced to Dravinder. Of course, no attempt
was made to trace these calls.
Dravinder Singh was also showcased on the CNN-IBN
show, on the by-now ubiquitous low-angle shots,
camera shake and all. It seemed a bit
unnecessary, because Dravinder Singh has been
talking a lot these days. He has done recorded
interviews, on the phone as well as face-to-face,
saying exactly the same shocking things. Weeks
before the sting operation, in a recorded
interview to Parvaiz Bukhari, a freelance
journalist, he said "I did interrogate and
torture him (Afzal) at my camp for several days.
And we never recorded his arrest in the books
anywhere. His description of torture at my camp
is true. That was the procedure those days and we
did pour petrol in his ass and gave him electric
shocks. But I could not break him. He did not
reveal anything to me despite our hardest
possible interrogation. We tortured him enough
for Ghazi Baba but he did not break. He looked
like a 'bhondu' those days, what you call a
'chootiya' type. And I had a reputation for
torture, interrogation and breaking suspects. If
anybody came out of my interrogation clean,
nobody would ever touch him again. He would be
considered clean for good by the whole
department."
This is not an empty boast. Dravinder Singh has a
formidable reputation for torture in the Kashmir
Valley. On TV his boasting spiralled into
policymaking. "Torture is the only deterrent for
terrorism," he said, "I do it for the nation." He
didn't bother to explain why or how the 'bhondu'
that he tortured and subsequently released
allegedly went on to become the diabolical
mastermind of the Parliament attack. Dravinder
Singh then said that Afzal was a Jaish militant.
If this is true, why wasn't the evidence placed
before the courts? And why on earth was Afzal
released? Why wasn't he watched? There is a
definite attempt to try and dismiss this as
incompetence. But given everything we know now,
it would take all of Dravinder Singh's delicate
professional skills to make some of us believe
that.
Meanwhile right-wing commentators have
consistently taken to referring to Afzal as a
Jaish-e-Mohammed militant. It's as though
instructions have been issued that this is to be
the Party Line. They have absolutely no evidence
to back their claim, but they know that repeating
something often enough makes it the 'truth'. As
part of the campaign to portray Afzal as an
'active' militant, and not a surrendered
militant, S.M. Sahai, Inspector General, Kashmir,
J&K Police, appeared on TV to say that he had
found no evidence in his records that Afzal had
surrendered. It would have been odd if he had,
because in 1993 Afzal surrendered not to the J&K
Police, but to the BSF. But why would a TV
journalist bother with that kind of detail? And
why does a senior police officer need to become
part of this game of smoke and mirrors?
The official version of the story of the
Parliament attack is very quickly coming apart at
the seams.
Even the Supreme Court judgement, with all its
flaws of logic and leaps of faith, does not
accuse Mohammed Afzal of being the mastermind of
the attack. So who was the mastermind? If
Mohammed Afzal is hanged, we may never know. But
L.K. Advani, Leader of the Opposition, wants him
hanged at once. Even a day's delay, he says, is
against the national interest. Why? What's the
hurry? The man is locked up in a high-security
cell on death row.
He's not allowed out of his cell for even five
minutes a day. What harm can he do? Talk? Write,
perhaps? Surely, (even in L.K. Advani's own
narrow interpretation of the term) it's in the
national interest not to hang Afzal? At least not
until there is an inquiry that reveals what the
real story is, and who actually attacked
Parliament?
Among the people who have appealed against
Mohammed Afzal's death sentence are those who are
opposed to capital punishment in principle. They
have asked that his death sentence be commuted to
a life sentence. To sentence a man who has not
had a fair trial, and has not had the opportunity
to be heard, to a life sentence, is less cruel,
but just as arbitrary as sentencing him to death.
The right thing to do would be to order a
re-trial of Afzal's case, and an impartial,
transparent inquiry into the December 13
Parliament attack. It is utterly demonic to leave
a man locked up alone in a prison cell, day after
day, week after week, leaving him and his family
to guess which day will be the last day of his
life.
A genuine inquiry would have to mean far more
than just a political witch-hunt. It would have
to look into the part played by intelligence,
counter-insurgency and security agencies as well.
Offences such as the fabrication of evidence and
the blatant violation of procedural norms have
already been established in the courts, but they
look very much like just the tip of the iceberg.
We now have a police officer admitting (boasting)
on record that he was involved in the illegal
detention and torture of a fellow citizen. Is all
of this acceptable to the people, the government
and the courts of this country?
Given the track record of Indian governments
(past and present, right, left and centre) it is
naive--perhaps utopian is a better word--to hope
that it will ever have the courage to institute
an inquiry that will, once and for all, uncover
the real story. A maintenance dose of cowardice
and pusillanimity is probably encrypted in all
governments. But hope has little to do with
reason.
Therefore, this book, offered in hope.
FULL TEXT AT: http://snipurl.com/14yue
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