People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No.
13
March 28, 2010
|
Vol. XXXIV
No.
13 March 28, 2010 |
GUJARAT
SC Focus on Functioning of
SIT:
Hope Blossoms for Carnage
Victims
Teesta Setalvad
WHEN the Supreme Court
established the
Special Investigating Team on March 26, 2008, the victim survivors and
legal
rights groups felt that maybe, finally justice would emerge after the
interminable delay. Trials of the critical nine cases, the worst of the
carnage
of 2002, had been stayed by an order of the apex court five years
earlier, on
November 21, 2003. It was affidavits filed by victim survivors pointing
out the
farcical investigations by the Gujarat police, the hasty and irregular
granting
of bail to powerful accused, and the dropping the names of accused
close to the
police or political establishment that had led the court to take this
historic
step of constituting the SIT. In its judgement appointing SIT, the
Supreme
Court had held that �Communal harmony is the hallmark of democracy� If
in the
name of religion, people are killed, that is a slur and blot on
democracy.�
In January 2008 even the centre
had backed
the demand of the petitioners for a transfer of the investigation to
the CBI.
Instead of the central investigating agency, the apex court hand picked
the
chairperson for a specially constituted SIT, the former director, CBI
Dr R K
Raghavan and retired, senior officer, Satpathy for this historic task.
On the
issue of who should constitute the rest of the team, a hasty agreement
by the
apex court to suggestions made by the state of Gujarat (itself accused
of grave
interference in the investigations) and the amicus curiae Harish
Salve
has, two years later proved to have been a serious mistake.
With the March 15, 2010 decision
of the
apex court to seriously investigate the allegations into SIT�s
professional
functioning, hope has again blossomed for the beleaguered victims of
the
FAULTY
COMPOSITION
Survivors and citizens groups
had, on March
26, 2008 objected to the appointment of Shivanand Jha, a senior officer
who had
not only been in Ahmedabad at the time
and therefore responsible for the breakdown of law and order in that
city but
who also, in subsequent years was chosen by the Narendra Modi
administration to
be Home Secretary during which period he had actively opposed any
transfer of
investigation in these cases. Jha is also one of those accused in the
Zakia
Ahsan Jafri and CJP criminal complaint of mass murder and conspiracy
against
Modi and 61 other accused. The supreme court had directed SIT to
interrogate
this complaint by an order dated April 27, 2009. A K Malhotra, an
official
retired from the CBI is handling this high profile investigation. The
second
officer, Geeta Johri, recommended by the state of Gujarat and Salve had
proven
herself wanting in the Sohrabuddin murder investigation (the extra
judicial
killing of Sohrabuddin, his wife Kauser and eye-witness to the murder,
Tulsiram
Prajapati has led to another historic verdict by the apex court dated
January
12, 2010. Johri has been indicted for concealing evidence and not
investigating
phone records of the accused). It was only the raw courage of her
junior
colleague, Rajnish Rai that had led to the arrest of DIG Vanzara in
April 2007.
Ashish Bhatia who has been put in charge of both the Gulberg and Naroda
Patia
and Gaam investigations has been responsible for filing incomplete
chargesheets, and worst of all pressurising the special public
prosecutor to
function unprofessionally against the interests of the prosecution.
Two years after the SIT was
appointed
raising hopes of the survivors, the apex court has been compelled to
look again
at its composition after serious allegations of deliberately weak and
unprofessional investigations made by CJP and victim survivors were
found to
have substantial merit. In early April 2010, the apex court will hear
an
application for the reconstitution of the SIT due to the complete
failure of
this specially created body to do any justice to the complex and
challenging
investigations. Gopal Subramaniam along with Harish Salve has been
asked by the
court to assist it in arriving at a just decision.
UNPROFESSIONAL
AND WANTING
There are six broad areas that
the
investigations by the SIT are unprofessional and wanting. Firstly its
investigations into the involvement of police officers, especially
seniors or
those who are the favourites of the politicians, civil servants,
ministers and
politically influential individuals in these grave offences (both by
way of
active involvement and by way of complicity, i.e deliberate inaction)
are
absent.
For example there is documentary
evidence
about the actively conniving role of former joint commissioner of
police M K
Tandon. SIT has simply left this aspect uninvestigated. Witnesses,
including
police witnesses, have deposed on his visit to Gulberg society around
10.30
a.m. on February 28, 2002 accompanied by a fully equipped striking
force that
is capable and armed to deal with a violent mob. Though he sees a
gathering and
restive mob, he leaves and his juniors
have wondered why he left without leaving the force behind. He moves to
Naroda
area where also a full scale attack is underway but vanishes from there
too
without leaving the armed force behind. Why? At least four
eye-witnesses from
Gulberg have testified to Tandon�s callous role in destroying evidence.
The
evening of the brute attack, around 5.30 p.m. when they were being
rescued by a
police van, survivors Saeed Khan Pathan and Imtiyaz Khan Pathan
requested to
take the bodies of their near and dear ones who had been raped and
killed with
them. �You look after yourself, we�ll take care of the dead.� Tandon
told them.
The bodies of the 69 killed, naked and butchered were still
recognisable. When
they buried their relatives on March 3, 2002 at the Kalandari Masjid
Kabrastan
however these bodies had been reduced to charred ashes. Is Tandon not
culpable
of allowing this to happen after 5.30 p.m. on that day?
Tandon� s actions on that day
have not been
questioned by the SIT. Worse still the special public prosecutor (PP)
Shah�s
resignation letter reveals that his evidence in court was also rushed
through
without documents being supplied to the PP. Tandon, the records of his
mobile
show, visited Naroda Patiya after speaking to the then police
commissioner
Pandey. Once there, he found the crowd restive and so was compelled to
order a
curfew, at 12.29 p.m. (it is a mystery why no curfew was ordered till
so far
into the afternoon) Yet he left the area at 12.33 p.m. without ensuring
that it
was implemented. Naroda went up in flames soon after. Similarly former
mayor of
Ahmedabad and an influential lawyer Jagrupsingh Rajput named by
witnesses in
their statements and in court as also Manish Patel, the son of a BJP
corporator
have escaped the SIT net.
In the Naroda Patia massacre,
although
numerous witnesses have referred to the active involvement of Inspector
K K
Mysorewala (now a Superintendent of Police) in ordering police firing
on
Muslims after discussions with former minister Mayaben Kodnani (then
local
MLA), but he has not been arraigned as accused.
Incidentally, Maya Kodnani was arrested following investigations
by the
SIT in the early phases. According to witnesses, Mysorewala is said to
have
told those seeking protection that there were instructions/orders from
higher
authorities not to protect you. �There is no order to save Muslims, you
have to
die today.� The SIT has also ignored several other witness statements
that have
referred to the actual involvement of SRP personnel especially SRP
officer, K P
Parekh in firing on fleeing Muslim victims, in encouraging the mob to
attack
Muslims and in categorically refusing to protect Muslims. Parekh had
informed
hapless victims that, � Today you have to die. No one can save you. We
will
never save you. We have orders from higher authorities to kill you.�
Despite
the statements of the SIT that record this indicting comment of Parekh,
he has
not been made an accused.
NOT INVESTIGATING
BUILD UP TO GODHRA
Secondly, SIT has deliberately and
consciously failed to
investigate the carefully planned build up of arsenal, men and arms in
the lead
up to the Godhra tragedy of February 27, 2002. This build-up of bombs,
swords,
gas cylinders and chemical powders in preparation for the carnage that
followed
Godhra has been exposed both in Tehelka�s Operation Kalank and
the
affidavits filed by former ADGP R B Sreekumar before the Nanavati Shah
Commission. Now, eight months after the trials have begun, this ominous
build
up is being corroborated by testimonies of eye-witnesses leading to the
inevitable question whether the omission
by SIT is part of a planned effort not to probe the sinister
build up in
The SIT has failed miserably by
its
deliberate reluctance to investigate thoroughly documentary evidence,
including
phone call records, mobile van records, control room registers and fire
brigade
registers, a scrutiny of which would have indicated the levels of and
extent of
pre-planning and conspiracy that went into the post Godhra violence.
In spite of cries for help, as
is evident
from the hours and hours of recorded phone records, no help came to the
Gulberg
Society, where 69 Muslims were burnt or hacked to death over a period
of 11
hours. Congress party's former member of parliament, Ahsan Jaffri, was
one of
them. SIT had failed totally to inquire/investigate into the
circumstances in
which repeated calls for police assistance went unheeded. In this case
the SIT
has arraigned 25 persons, including Inspector K G Erda of the
Meghaninagar
police station, who was in the area at the time of the carnage. Erda�s
phone
records show that during the hours of the carnage on February 27 and
28, 2002,
he made several calls to the police control room, Police Commissioner P
C
Pandey, Joint Commissioner M K Tandon and Deputy Commissioner of Police
P B
Gondia. While the SIT has interrogated Tandon, it has taken little
action, say
the petitioners. In fact, Tandon admitted to the Nanavati Commission
that he
was informed that Ahsan Jaffri was in danger. Pandey, the records show,
had
even visited Jaffri and told him that police protection would be
provided.
Phone records prove that both Tandon and Pandey were in touch with the
police
officers in the riot-hit areas. Yet, Jaffri was killed. The petitions
point out
that there were records to show that Jaffri made nearly 200 calls for
assistance. Some of these were to the police control room. At the time,
state
cabinet ministers Ashok Bhatt and I K Jadeja were in the control room,
but no
one helped Jaffri.
CHILLING
REVELATIONS
An analysis of phone calls from
Police
Inspector K K Mysorewala�s phone (who
has mysteriously not been made an accused) shows that he received a
call from
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Jaideep Patel, who is accused in the
Naroda
Patiya and Naroda Gam cases. The timing of the call, as recorded, was
when the
massacre was at its worst. The SIT has not obtained mobile phone call
records
of calls made by senior and local officials in the Sardarpura and Odh
massacrtes either.
One of the most chilling
revelations that
has come to light after Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) conducted
a
Citizen�s Investigation into five lakh phone call records and submitted
them to
the SIT was the locational details of police officials and key men
from
chief minister Narendra Modi�s coteries at Meghaninagar where Gulberg
society
is located and Narol where Naroda is located a day before the carnage,
on
February 27, 2002. The reason why it is noteworthy that DCP P B
Gondia, O P
Singh and some key members close to Modi
and some police officers were present at Naroda and Meghaninagar is because they have been blithely claiming
in all official statements that the reason for in adequate force
deployment in
Meghaninagar and Naroda is because these were not traditionally
communally
sensitive areas. Why then were key members of the Modi coterie in the
very
localities where mass carnage was allowed the next day?
The locational details of the
politically
powerful and accused analysed by the CJP make for chilling reading. On
the day
of the Godhra incident, while the chief minister was in Godhra,
planning to
bring the charred bodies to Ahmedabad (itself a controversial decision)
at the
unearthly hour of 5.10 a.m. then cabinet minister for health, Ashok
Bhatt was
at Nartoda-Narol. Why? The next day, before sitting in the control room
at 9.55
a.m. (he is accused of sitting in the Ahmedabad city control room with
the
specific task of preventing police from doing their duty) on February
28, 2002
his mobile phone location shows Bhatt to be at Barol Naroda. This was
around
the time the massacre began. While there, he receives three crucial
calls. One
from
(To be continued)
[Courtesy: Communalism Combat, March
2010 issue]
