*"Indeed, so thoroughly alarmed are the Bjp, Modi, and others implicated in
the Muslim massacres and the encounter killings, that there is a clear
last-ditch attempt at preventing the CBI from establishing the truth"*
*From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 22, Dated June 05, 2010* *CURRENT
AFFAIRS*
*gujarat encounters *
*All’s Not Well With Your Home, Minister*
*NARENDRA MODI HAD ONCE BRAZENLY UPHELD SOHRABUDDIN’S FAKE KILLING. NOW, AS
THE CBI THE ARRESTS TOP COPS,THE DIRT BEGINS TO UNRAVEL IN GUJARAT, SAYS **RANA
AYYUB*
**
[image: image] [image: image] *Present continuous* TEHELKA has
persistently tracked the unraveling of the ‘encounter’ killings by Gujarat
Police
IS THE noose tightening around Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi over his
administration’s alleged complicity in the 2002 massacre of Muslims? Is
nemesis, as the cliché goes, finally catching up with him for a string of
allegedly fake encounter killings of “terrorists” by his police? It may be
too early to call curtains for arguably India’s craftiest politician that
Modi has turned out to be over the last eight years. Yet, the arrest of a
top police officer in Gujarat by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
may well begin to unravel the Modi era.
Indeed, so thoroughly alarmed are the Bjp, Modi, and others implicated in
the Muslim massacres and the encounter killings, that there is a clear
last-ditch attempt at preventing the CBI from establishing the truth. The
latest round started on january 12 this year when the supreme Court ordered
the CBI to reinvestigate the 2005 encounter killing of Gujarat businessman
sohrabuddin shaikh, his wife Kauser*bi*, and an associate of his, tulsi
prajapati. sohrabuddin, a small time extortionist, was killed in a joint
encounter by the Gujarat and Rajasthan police in November 2005 when he was
travelling with his wife Kauserbi, on charges of being a Lashkar-e-tayyeba
member on his way to Gujarat to assassinate Modi. A similar theory was given
at the time of the Ishrat jahan encounter a year before and later proved as
fake by the justice tamang Committee.
Sohrabuddin’s brother, Rubabuddin, had earlier moved the supreme Court,
virtually accusing Modi’s police of killing his brother in cold blood.
Modi’s administration has been accused of attempting to derail the trial of
the several police officers who have been jailed on charges of killing
sohrabuddin, his wife and others over nearly three years since 2002.
In its january order, the Supreme Court (sC) slammed the Gujarat police, its
CId and its officer-in-charge, Geeta johri, for bungling the investigation.
It was found that the Gujarat government was misleading the court by filing
dubious Action taken Reports (ATRs)— as many as eight of them — in the case.
What alarmed the Bjp most is that the sC directed the CBI to also
investigate “the possibility of a larger conspiracy”. evidently, this has
opened a pandora’s box, leading to the arrest, on April 29, of DCP (Crime)
Abhay Chudasama who, as acting joint Commissioner of police (JCP) controlled
criminal investigations in the state. Chudasama is the same cop whose
corrupt practices TEHELKA had first exposed in its investigation of Gujarat
last year, when a key witness used by Chudasama to implicate innocents
arrested in the Gujarat blasts had revealed in an exhaustive interview to
TEHELKA, that he had been forced by the dCp to make those confessions. he
had also confirmed that those arrested in the Gujarat blasts were innocent.
With his arrest, the CBI may well be on its way to uncovering a series of
cover-ups.
Chudasama was one of the most well connected police officers in Gujarat’s
home Ministry, under which the police department falls. Right after his
arrest, Modi flew down to delhi to meet Bjp party president and confidant
Nitin Gadkari and LK Advani at his residence. subsequently, Modi travelled
to Nagpur to discuss the developments with Rss head Mohan Bhagwat. The
effect showed in the form of LK Advani alongwith Bjp party Mp’s sitting on a
dharna outside parliament to protest against the mishandling of CBI by the
upA government. subsequently, Gadkari also issued a three-and-a-half page
statement on this, of which two pages were devoted to defending the Modi
government’s record.
*Sohrabuddin was branded an Let terrorist. In reality, he was an
extortionist killed for money*
On the day of Modi’s visit, however, it was clear that all was not well in
his kingdom. At a government celebration of Gujarat’s 50th founding day on
May 1, home Minister Amit shah, long Modi’s second-in-command, was
conspicuous by his absence. It soon became evident why shah, who had planned
the mega event, had gone missing. two BJP leaders held a press conference
the day after to express fears that the CBI “may also implicate some
political leaders wrongly, and arrest them in connection with the case”.
Few have risen to be as powerful under Modi as Shah has, especially since
Modi’s confidant-turned-foe, Haren Pandya, was murdered in 2003. After
Chudasama’s arrest, hoardings ?appeared across Ahmedabad overnight, slamming
the Congress party for trying to project “Sohrabuddin, the terrorist” as a
hero. They suggested that the cbi’s arrests were an attack on the Gujarati
nation. The bjp promised a state-wise agitation if the arrests did not stop.
The very next day, the Gujarat Police cid arrested two police ?officers that
the cbi was about to arrest, prompting the speculation that Modi ?didn’t
want cbi to get hold of them.
[image: image] *Domino effect* DCP Abhay Chudasama, arrested recently by
the CBI, is accused of covering up on false cases [image: image] *In
hiding*Narendra Modi with Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah (left) who
went missing
The CBI claims that Chudasama was arrested after he was found tapping
telephone calls of witnesses and CBI officers connected with the Sohrabuddin
case. It claims that witnesses in the case had been speaking on the phone
with Chudasama before showing up at the cbi offices for questioning. The cbi
also says that police officers arrested earlier have provided it with
evidence of Chudasama’s illegal wealth. The cbi has no less than 197
complaints of extortion and harassment against Chudasama, filed within days
of his arrest. A fact that also went against him is that on the very day of
his arrest, Rs 1.5 crore was deposited into the accounts of three family
members of Chudasama, accounts which Chudasama thought won’t be checked by
the cbi. On the day he was produced in the court, bjp workers turned up to
shower petals on him and hail him a hero.
Indeed, Chudasama’s arrest also puts a question mark on the claim that he
had “solved” the July 2008 serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad. (More than 60
Muslims accused of the bombings are currently being tried.) In fact, the cbi
claims that Chudasama knew Sohrabuddin, a gangster-for-hire, and ran an
extortion racket through him, allegedly collecting Rs 40 lakh in 2001 alone.
The cbi says Chudasama also ordered Sohrabuddin to ?organise a shootout in
Gujarat.
CBI officers from Mumbai have travelled to Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra
Pradesh and Rajasthan on this trail. ?Refusing to speak on record because
the investigation is still continuing, a top CBI officer told Tehelka that
Chudasama planned Sohrabuddin’s killing at the ?behest of a lobby of
Rajasthan’s marble traders whom Sohrabuddin had begun to extort while he was
still in jail.
The CBI says it now has recordings of phone calls between Chudasama and a
few high-profile names in the Gujarat government, including a key minister,
proving their involvement. The CBI ?believes that the DCP was also involved
in two other extra-judicial killings. According to the cbi source, the
marble lobby first approached a Rajasthan bjp leader, who in turn asked a
minister in Rajasthan to organise Sohrabuddin’s killing. When that minister
backed out, the marble lobby reportedly approached a minister in Modi’s
government in Gujarat, who ?assigned Chudasama the task, says the cbi. The
CBI claims Chudasama recorded his telephone chat with the minister, which
the cbi has now sent for a forensic test.
So why hasn’t the CBI yet arrested this Gujarat minister? Because, says the
CBI?officer, the Gujarat CID is obstructing its path. “The cid is
stonewalling, despite the Supreme Court’s order that it [the CID] give us
all evidence that it has collected,” he says. The CID has held the documents
back on the pretext that it is still investigating the killing of Tulsi
Prajapati, ? Another small-time outlaw, who was killed by the police in an
encounter in Banas Kantha in December 2006, a year after Sohrabuddin’s
killing. “The CID doesn’t want us to reveal the real names behind the
encounters,” the CBI officer says.
Meanwhile, the CBI has moved the sc to access telephonic conversations of
various police officers on the night they were involved in Sohrabuddin’s
killing. It is said that these same police officers could also be behind the
murder of Prajapati. The CBI officials say that the CID, in its report, had
submitted that the third person who was travelling with Sohrabuddin and his
wife was Kalimuddin, who dig Vanzara had taken to the spot were they were
killed. However the cbi investigation has found out that the person
travelling with Sohrabuddin was not Kalimuddin but Prajapati — killed a year
later, most likely because he was the sole witness to the Sohrabuddin
encounter.
[image: image] *Truth uncovered* Ishrat Jahan, whose killing in June 2004
was nailed as a fake encounter by the Tamang Committee [image: image] *
Murdered?* Sohrabuddin, killed in a joint encounter by the Gujarat and
Rajasthan cops in November 2005
HOWEVER, KALIMUDDIN’S identity too now has been revealed. A CBI officer told
TEHELKA that Kalimuddin, who hails from Andhra Pradesh and had been a police
informer in that state is, hold your breath, also an underground Maoist, who
had been used by the Gujarat Police as an informer in several other cases.
He is said to be alive and absconding. The CBI is now likely to produce the
Andhra Pradesh police as witness to prove that the Gujarat cid had hidden
Kalimuddin’s identity as a police informer, which would make him ineligible
as a witness in the Sohrabuddin case.
Till now, the CBI has questioned at least 12 IPS officers in Gujarat. Its
investigation team is entirely made of non-Gujarat ? Police officers. All
the accused who have been arrested have been produced, not in a Gujarat
court, but in a Mumbai court. Indeed, when the cbi sought the custody of two
key police officers that were already in CID custody — Narendra Amin and VA
Rathod — it refused to given any evidence to the Gujarat court except for a
gist.
The CBI is also investigating if Geeta Johri, the then cid head, had
deliberately modified records of telephone calls made to each other by the
policemen the night of Sohrabuddin’s killing. Johri had handed over these
allegedly doctored call records to Rajnish Rai, who took over the probe from
her. The CBI now believes that the records were doctored to protect two
ministers — in the Gujarat and Rajasthan governments — and other state-level
leaders who might have been involved.
CBI officers claim they have evidence that Chudasama and one of the two
above-mentioned ministers had illegal bank accounts and shareholding in two
real estate projects in Dubai and elsewhere in the Middle East. This
minister was in the news recently after an independent audit claimed that Rs
80 crore was siphoned off from cooperatives which he was involved in. The
CBI could soon arrest another BJP leader, a confidant of this minister, who
is also linked with the cooperatives. Another BJP leader from Rajasthan
could be summoned as a witness, or even an accused, in the next few weeks.
Possibly with a view to slowing down the CBI charge, Gujarat Chief Secretary
AK Joti and DGP SS Khandwawala met CBI director Ashwini Kumar in New Delhi
last week. But will Modi rush to save his minister? According to a BJP
insider, the answer is no. Many in the bjp and the RSS family are upset that
Modi has failed to save Maya Kodnani, another minister, who stands accused
of participating in the Muslim massacre of 2002 and who was arrested by the
CBI earlier this year.
This minister also happens to be an arch rival of the Gujarat Revenue
Minister Anandiben Patel, who is looking to become Modi’s number two. Patel
controls numerous educational institutes and trusts in Gujarat. Modi has
been grooming her as a possible successor in Gujarat, if he manages to
propel himself to the national stage. A cbi officer said people claiming to
be close to Patel have already approached the cbi and offered ‘help’ against
the minister. The cracks in Modi’s house, it seems, are starting to open up.
With top cops and ministers under the scanner, few expect Modi to do much
to save them
According to the opposition Congress party in Gujarat, the cid is complicit
in Modi’s agenda to protect the police officers. Congress leader Siddharth
Patel, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly,
thinks the state government is on a witch-hunt against the CBI. “When the
Gujarat cid arrested 19 officers last year, they didn’t bat an eyelid. But
when the cbi arrested one IPS, they started crying foul, from Delhi to
Ahmedabad about CBI being corrupt,” he says.
The CBI should, in fact, broaden its scope and investigate the role of more
policemen, according to retired IPS officer RB Sreekumar. The former DGP of
Gujarat has gone on record claiming to have witnessed the role of Modi’s
administration in allowing the killing of Muslims in the 2002 riots, and who
claims that Modi’s officers killed innocents in encounters and passed them
off as terrorists. “Many such officers superseded others and are today at
the top,” Sreekumar says. “The cbi should investigate them.”
If the line of investigation and the forensic tests are taken into
cognisance, then some of the big names in the Gujarat and Rajasthan BJP
could soon be arrested. “We have evidence against the Gujarat police, in
this case and others, details of which shall be provided to the respective
agencies. We are just waiting for the forensic reports and new details which
officers from five states are sending us,” added the CBI source, signing
off. So is Sohrabuddin’s brother, Rubabuddin.
*WRITER’S EMAIL *
[email protected]<http://us.mc583.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]>
*From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 22, Dated June 05, 2010*
*With Regards
Abi*
“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and
justice he is the worst”
*- Aristotle*
--
You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a
nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the
foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.
-AMBEDKAR
http://venukm.blogspot.com
http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur
http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com
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