Chickens are coming home to roost, as the old adage goes. Even if a bit too
late.It was June 15 2004 when these cold-blooded cruel murders were
committed (ref. the article, 'Encounter or Murder, June 29 2004, at sl. III.
below). Despite official complicity at all levels, the skeletons are now
tumbling out of the overstuffed cupboard, one after another. So to say.
But we have got to take up the issues with all seriousness. Justice must be
done. The guilty - those directly involved and those by willing association
- must be brought to book. There is also a very legitimate case for payment
of compensations to the families of the victims. Just not for the monetary
loss and the mental agonies
they have suffered. Though these are quite huge. But also to make the state
pay for its criminal conduct.
We all must play our roles. Otherwise we become complicit through our
silence and inactions.
Shabnam Hashmi's open letter to the Prime Minister is a commendable step in
that direction. We must devise and act upon some comprehensive response.
I/III.
An Open Letter to Hon'ble Prime Minister
Dr. Manmohan Singh
Hon’ble Prime Minister of India
*September 8, 2009, 1.02am*
Dear Dr Manmohan Singh.
I had written a small article in The
Hindustan Times in June 2004. It was called ‘Come Shoot Me: I am a
Terrorist’. It was to express my anguish on Ishrat Jahan’s killing in
Gujarat.
The Magisterial Enquiry, which is mandatory in every encounter case (and
which was never done in the Batla House encounter) has finally termed it
Ishrat jahan’s killing as a fake encounter yesterday in a metropolitan
court. It is not a matter of surprise for us as we knew that she was killed
in cold blood. Perhaps you will also agree that such things are happening
and happened in Gujarat under Modi. But I am not writing to talk about how
bad Modi is.
I am writing this to ask you a small favour.
I know you have absolutely hectic schedules and thousands of issues to
handle so I am putting down here the facts, gathered from various media
reports.
On June 15, 2003, the Ahmedabad city crime branch, then headed by the now
jailed IPS officer D G Vanzara, shot four young people –Ishrat Jahan, Javed
Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Jisan Johar. It was
propagated that these four young people were alleged Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)
operatives who were allegedly on mission to kill chief minister Narendra
Modi.
Ishrat, was a 19-year old student of Khalsa College in Mumbra, a Mumbai
suburb.
Ishrat's mother filed a petition in the high court in 2004 demanding death
compensation and a CBI probe. Ishrat Jahan’s mother’s Petition alleged that
it was a fake encounter as one of the many that the present government
regime in Gujarat headed by Narendra Modi had done to achieve Political
Mileage to publicly create panic and sympathy that the Chief Minister was
sought to be assassinated.
The crime branch carried out the operation and the same agency conducted
investigation.
When the petition was heard by Justice KS Jhaveri , he immediately proposed,
almost on line taken by the Supreme Court in the infamous Sohrabuddin fake
encounter case, for which Vanzara was jailed along with other policemen,
that a five-member team - all of the rank of additional DGP - should probe
this case.
The encounter was done by the infamous D. G. Vanzara and his team who are
presently arrested under Orders of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the case of
fake encounter of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausarbi. Sohrabuddin’s encounter
has been admitted by the state to be fake and recently on 11/08/2008, they
have agreed to deposit an amount of Rs. 10.00 Lakhs as interim ex-gratia
compensation for being paid to the Kith and Kin of the two.
There are allegedly 28 encounters which were fake and have been covered up.
In Ishrat Jahan’s matter the CBI was impleaded as a Party and it took a
stand that if the Court so orders they are willing to carry out fresh
investigations and unearth the truth. Such stand triggered panic with the
State Government and it seems even with some Officers of Central Home
Ministry. After UPA came to power some tainted CBI officers placed in
Gujarat during the NDA with questionable track record were removed after a
lot of pressure and almost two years but they soon found plush positions in
Delhi under UPA regime.
To our dismay we realized last month through the media reports that the
Ministry of Home Affairs in an affidavit stated that Ishrat, Javed and two
others Jisan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana were all operatives of Pakistan-based
terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Maintaining that the four were terrorists, the Union government told the
high court, "No proposal for CBI investigation is under consideration of the
Centre nor does it consider the present case fit for CBI probe."
Moreover, the Centre claimed that there is no question of independent
inquiry, as an additional DGP (CID & Intelligence) had carried out an
independent probe into the incident and the officer is neither working with
crime branch nor is he a subordinate to the crime branch, which carried out
the operation and later investigated the case itself."
If you remember Hon’ble prime Minister when I met you regarding the Package
for the Gujarat 2002 victims along with other activists from Gujarat I had
jokingly said, “The news that UPA has replaced NDA at the centre has not
reached your Home Ministry as yet’. I had said this precisely in the
connection of how the tainted officers promoted by the BJP were still being
pampered under the UPA.
The reason behind filing of the Affidavit by the Central Government was to
dissuade the Court from appointing a strong S I T and give a message that
even the Central Government had approved the act of fake encounter*. But for
the magisterial enquiry the Central Home Ministry had left no stone unturned
to prove that Ishrat deserved to be killed.*
The logic used always is what will happen to the morale of the officers. My
question is what happens to the morale of the officers when they torture
innocent young people, when they kill them, when they illegally detain them,
beat them. What happens to their morale then? Do they just go home and
sleep?
Why don’t we as nation stop playing the farce of being a secular nation and
why don’t we remove the article from the constitution which says all
citizens are equal?
The affidavit filed by the Home Ministry is a proof of the fact that in
Ishrat Jahan’s fake encounter case UPA has connived with the Gujarat
government in a blatantly communal manner. With 3 days to go before assembly
bye election in 7 seats in Gujarat 5 more innocent boys have been picked up
in Baroda and declared' terrorists'.
I do not know if this letter will be also lost on the way and find itself in
a dustbin as I have never received any acknowledgment from your office, so I
will be forced to circulate it to others to lodge a strong protest against
this blatant connivance of the Home Ministry with the Gujarat government.
My request to you is that if your government has any political will then
please ask your home ministry to tender a public apology for filing the
affidavit against the innocent girl who was so brutally murdered. It
requires some courage and conviction.
You are fond of poetry.
Faiz ke chand lines apki nazar kar rahi hoon:
Tujh ko kitnon ka lahoo chahiye ae arz-i-watan, Jo tiray arz-i-berang ko
gulnaar karein
Kitni aahon se kaleja tira thanda hoga, Kitne aansoo tiray sehraon ko
gulzaar karein
(The blood of how many do you need O motherland;That which will brighten
your colourless earth;
How many sighs will soothe your heart; How many tears will cause your
deserts to bloom.)
Sincerely Yours
Shabnam Hashmi
Member, National Integration Council
Cc: Media & fellow human rights activists
II.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Ishrat-encounter-fake-Probe/articleshow/4984450.cms
Ishrat encounter fake: ProbeSaeed Khan, TNN 8 September 2009, 05:09am IST
AHMEDABAD: Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year old student of Khalsa College, Mumbai,
and three others who were proclaimed Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives out to kill
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, were actually killed a day before they
were officially shown as having died in a police encounter.
An inquiry into the Ishrat Jahan encounter case of June 15, 2004 by a city
magisterial court has revealed that the four killings were staged by the
then Ahmedabad police commissioner KR Kaushik, crime branch chief PP Pandey,
DIG DG Vanzara and his men.
The report names 21 cops, including retired DGP Kaushik, as party to the
fake encounter.
Just like the Sohrabuddin Shaikh fake encounter, where the couple was
abducted and brought to Ahmedabad and Sohrabuddin’s wife Kauserbi killed
because she was witness to the murder, the crime branch “kidnappedâ€
Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Shaikh and Ishrat from Mumbai and kept them in
illegal custody, the report says.
It claims that IPS officer DG Vanzara’s men killed Javed between 8.30pm
and 9pm on June 14, then killed the ‘Pakistanis’ Jisan Johar and
Amjadali Rana. Finally, Ishrat was killed that night, between 11pm and
midnight, because ‘‘she was witness to the killings’’. Vanzara told
the media the next morning that the four were killed after a dramatic police
chase around 4.30am on June 15.
Based on food remains in the stomach and the state of the bodies , the
inquiry concluded that the deaths occurred several hours before the official
claim.
The report says after the three men were killed, Ishrat was forcibly
positioned in the front seat of the car and shot from close range. A pistol
was then placed in her hand. The police then put her college identity card
around her neck and her purse was put in the boot of the car. It also
declares that Johar and Rana were Indians.
It says the car was either towed or driven to Kotarpur water works at 4.30am
on June 15. The policemen had also dragged Amjad’s body to the divider
alongside the car and placed a 9mm gun in his hand.
III.
http://www.countercurrents.org/guj-sen290604.htm
*Encounter or Murder?*
*By Sukla Sen*
29 June 2004
*SACW*
*F*our bodies, four blood stained motionless bodies - fully stretched, lying
side by side on their backs close to the central divider of the road, only
part of which is visible, perhaps wide enough to allow the traffic to flow,
perhaps with speed somewhat lowered down. In the foreground lies a girl,
with hands on her sides, calm and serene - even if looking a bit helpless,
clad in a striped matching kurta-pyjama - in soft orange. While one foot is
clad, the other one is bare - the helplessness is somewhat accentuated. An
Indica in contrasting blue forms the backdrop. The number plate is clearly
visible : MH-02-JA-4786.
This is a visual that has assaulted us too many times over the last three
weeks. Thanks to the electronic, and print, media. No, itís not a shot from
a promo for a soon-to-be-released Bollywood film. It's real.
On 15th June, the Ahmedabd police claimed to have killed the four terrorists
in Indica car, at a desolate location near Kotarpur on the outskirts of
Ahmedabad, on their way to the city, after a thrilling chase in a pre-dawn
ëencounterí, on a deadly mission to assassinate Narendra Modi, the Chief
Minister of Gujarat. The bullet ridden bodies were neatly arranged on the
road on display before the clicking and roving cameras for the benefit of
millions of (voyeuristic?) viewers. The terrorists, it has been claimed, are
from the Pakistan based Lashkar-e Toiba. Two are from Pakistan, and the
other two, including the nineteen year girl, are Indians. The lifeless
bodies were prized trophies, on display, won in a hardly fought battle in an
ongoing war - war against ëterrorismí, led by the ubiquitous enemy.
But the expected applaud got severely marred. Cynics and sceptics raised
uncomfortable questions, found serious flaws with the script. How come in an
ëencounterí - fire having been exchanged between the police force and the
terrorists carrying AK-56, no one from the police suffered even a minor
scratch? While the bullets killing the ëterroristsí pierced through
the rear glass, why there was no sign of the car coming to a sudden halt
(with punctured tyres) or having gone out of control?
Then the timing was evidently suspect. Modi was facing perhaps the most
serious crisis in his political career having been under attack from the
foremost national leader of his own party, and also rebels from the state
party unit. And no proof whatsoever, except for the claim of an
advance tip off, was provided to substantiate the story that the deceased
were out to kill Modi. Amarsinh Chaudhary, the opposition leader from the
Congress - and an ex-CM himself, openly alleged that the ëencounterí was
fake and the story was concocted to generate sympathy and support for the
cornered Modi.
Till date the Gujarat, and Maharashtra, police have failed to produce any
evidence that the nineteen year old girl, Ishrat Jahan Shaikh - a resident
of Mumbra, some 35 km north of Mumbai, and second year BSc student in a city
college, had any criminal antecedents. Faced with a barrage of criticism,
particularly on account the perceived innocence of Ishrat, Ahmedabad police
belatedly produced a hand-written diary, purportedly of hers, showing
receipts and transactions of large sums of money. Not only the diary remains
to be checked by handwriting expert(s) to verify the claim as regards its
authorship, the fact that the rent for the meagre single room flat, where
her rather largish family resides, remains to be paid for the last seven
months flies in the face of such hypothesis.
The other one identified as Indian is Javed Gulam Mohammed Shaikh, who had
earlier been Pranesh Kumar Pillai, is a married man of 32 years - a
Malayalee and a resident of Pune. Javed, the father of three, appears to be
a shady character. But nothing goes to show that he was a terrorist - at
least as yet.
The other two were identified as Pakistanis. The Ahmedabad police claimed to
have full details of their names and residences in Pakistan. But when the
external affairs ministry was approached for handing over their bodies to
the Pakistan high commission, the ministry asked for further clarification
and confirmation.
Many questions remain unanswered. There is also a report that the deceased
had been in the custody of Surat police, in Gujarat, before the incident.
The post mortem reports, if honestly done, can throw some light on how these
four were killed. But there is no word in the media as yet on
these. What is of central importance here is to find the precise nature of
the ëencounterí. It is even more important than verifying the veracity of
the seemingly fantastic claim that the deceased were out to kill Modi. In a
civilised society even the proven criminals are treated as per the
provisions of law. In fact that is a principal marker how civilised a state
and society is. Unbridled state terrorism is definitely no answer to
non-state terrorism. Innocent citizens, most often, have to pay the price in
terms of their lives as the victims of the both varieties of terrorism.
The National Human Rights Commission, three days after the incident, sought
a report from Gujarat police. Taking suo moto cognisance of media reports,
the NHRC has directed the Gujarat Director General of Police and Ahmedabad
Senior Superintendent of Police to ensure the probe is
undertaken as per the guidelines of the Commission and furnish a report
within six weeks.
But given the seriousness of the allegations and counter-allegations made,
and grave implications of either, a full-scale judicial enquiry headed by a
serving supreme court judge, assisted by a team of dedicated professional
investigators, is very much the need of the hour. The government of
India must move in that direction without any further loss of time.
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