People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

FAKE ENCOUNTER KILLINGS

Probe Gujarat Govt’s Complicity

THE series of fake encounters in Gujarat culminating in the damning admission by the Gujarat government that the wife of Sohrabuddin Sheikh (who was killed in a fake encounter on November 26, 2005), Kauser Bi, was killed and burnt by the police two days after her husband was murdered, is, indeed, a shocking revelation of how the constitutional rule of law is being criminally broken by the very agency mandated to uphold law.

Since October 2002, there have been at least six instances of fake encounters in Gujarat. In all these cases, the Gujarat police had advanced theories that those killed were dreaded criminals and terrorists who had come with the agenda of murdering Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, and other leaders of RSS/BJP/VHP.

The sordid details of such encounters have finally come into the open following a directive from the Supreme Court on a petition filed by Sohrabuddin’s brother. Kauser Bi was missing since Sohrabuddin was murdered. Since then, the family residing in Madhya Pradesh made relentless but futile efforts to trace Kauser Bi. The Madhya Pradesh DGP informed on February 2, 2006 that the Ujjain SP had enquired and found that the matter concerned Gujarat. Rajasthan police forwarded it to the Gujarat DGP. The MP Human Rights Commission claimed that the matter was outside its jurisdiction. The Rajasthan Human Rights Commission, likewise, referred the matter to the Gujarat Human Rights Commission, which, in turn, referred it to the National Human Rights Commission. The president of India, the prime minister’s office, the National Commission for Women –– had all failed to elicit any information. The truth, albeit not the whole truth, came out only on April 30, 2007, when the Gujarat government finally confessed before the Supreme Court.

All the three state governments involved have BJP governments! Clearly, individually and together, their complicity in violating the law of the land, with impunity, through the police needs to be investigated and culpability fixed. Even hardened criminals chargesheeted by the courts have, according to the law of the land, legal rights. Eliminating people through such encounters, on the basis of allegations, constitutes a criminal violation of the law of the land.

Finally, three police officers, D G Vanzara, chief of the anti-terrorist squad of Gujarat at that point of time, a fellow Gujarat police officer, Pandian, and a Rajasthan officer, Dinesh, have been arrested. The fact that the Gujarat government has finally admitted to the cold-blooded murder of Kauser Bi and these fake encounters raises important suspicions on whether political bigwigs are being protected by such an admission? Only a CBI probe can investigate this angle as well.

In the Gujarat media, reports have appeared of the involvement of Gujarat police in Supari (contract) killings. A senior reporter of the Gujarat daily, Divya Bhaskar, who broke the story in November 2006 has recently claimed having information to this effect. If this is true, then the malaise afflicting our police administration runs dangerously deep. This angle also needs to be thoroughly investigated.

The BJP’s complicity in contributing to such a degeneration of our law enforcing agency – police – is not surprising. Given its pre-occupation to communalise every aspect of our social life and administration to serve its political agenda, the BJP has unscrupulously used the police force to further its communal agenda as seen most nakedly and aggressively in the 2002 communal genocide in Gujarat. The objectivity and impartiality of the force is consciously destroyed when they are deployed to advance the political objective of the RSS/BJP by violating that very rule of law that the police should be upholding to begin with. Its pernicious ideology of “Hindu Rashtra” pitted, as it is, in complete antagonism with the constitutional rule of the modern secular democratic Indian republic continuously pushes the RSS/BJP to assault all constitutional authorities and instruments of administration. It is this viciousness of communalism that eats into the very vitals of our constitutional rule of law. These gory instances of fake encounters only proves this, once again.

The CBI when entrusted with these investigations must not only expeditiously move to have the guilty punished but must also probe the complicity of the concerned state governments. In order to restore the faith of our people in our parliamentary democracy and its administrative apparatus, the sooner this is done, the better. By ordering its own CID probe, the Gujarat government is seeking to pre-empt the CBI investigation. The centre must guard against this ploy and ensure that CBI investigates this ghastly affair.