Political Diary
New Delhi, 6 July 2013
Abducted, Drugged,
Shot
CBI Vs IB: WHO IS TELLING TRUTH?
By Poonam I Kaushish
In the wee hours of 15 June 2004, 19-year old Ishrat Jahan
and three others were gunned down in a joint operation by the Gujarat police
and Intelligence Bureau on the outskirts of Ahmadabad. The State Government claimed they
were members of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LeT) on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The killing made
headlines, thanks to Jahan’s tenacious mother who moved court claiming her
daughter was innocent and killed in an audacious fake encounter.
Nine years later the CBI in its explosive 1500-page
charge-sheet held it a fake hit and indicted seven top police officers along-with
a senior IB official. Concluding that all four were abducted, kept in
confinement for a month, drugged, cold bloodily murdered and evidence of a
genuine encounter planted. All to get into the good books of Gujarat’s
top leadership which had political sanction.
Predictably, all hell broke loose at two levels: The CBI and
IB slugfest and a Congress-BJP tussle with communal overtones. Lost in the raucous
tu-tu-mein-mein was the crux: Was the
teenager a terrorist? There are no clear cut answers.
While the CBI asserts that the innocent youngster was killed
merely because she was witness to her boss being taken away, the IB cites
National Investigation Agency 2010 letter of 26/11 Mumbai master mind David
Headley’s confession that Ishrat Jahan was a LeT suicide bomber. And accuses the
former of perpetrating a “witch-hunt”, demoralizing officials and compromising
national security imperatives.
Undeniably, if Jahan indeed was blameless it is a damning
case of police and IB being hand in glove, not following the letter and spirit
of the rule of law and smacks of human rights violation. As the Constitution
reiterates even a terrorist should not be killed in cold blood. Both 26/11
terrorist Ajmal Kasab and Parliament attacker Afzal Guru were prosecuted by the
Courts and then hanged.
On the flip side, security experts aver the IB is a covert
intelligence body and intelligence gathering a dangerous game requiring
opacity. Any prosecution would set a bad precedent for counter terror
operations thereby emboldening the State’s enemies.
Asserts a senior security official, “True, some individual
fault lines might be there wherein an officer might abuse his responsibility of
collecting, collating and decimating correct information. But he too is human and
could make mistakes. Does that mean we hang him?”
Either which way, it holds out dangerous portends. The
problem is not the investigative agencies but their week-kneed political
masters who will politicize anything, deride institutions if it serves their
interests.
With four Assembly and General Elections on the horizon the
Congress has made the Jahan case into a Muslim vs. Hindu issue to swell its minority votes. Sending a strong
signal that the Government will not do anything which may even remotely hurt
the Muslim sentiment, terrorism or no terrorism. Plainly, this is appeasement
at its crassest worst.
Arguably, the BJP is right when it asserts that the Centre
and its UPA rulers have adopted double standards. Fake encounters are bad and
unacceptable in Gujarat but right and much-needed in Punjab, Maharashtra,
Kashmir etc.
In Punjab, during the 80’s
Sikh militancy was snuffed out by hitting back with State terror. Today, KPS
Gill who spearheaded the State terror is lauded as a hero and his advice
eagerly sought. Between 1998-2000 Mumbai police’s special squads ‘cleaned up’
the 300-strong underworld with an average of 100 encounters a year. That is
about eight a month.
The police went by the Israeli strategy of an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth. The officers were feted as super-heroes. Bollywood
even immortalized them in various films.
In Kashmir, Indian troops
and police are known to commit atrocities day in and day out. Most Indians are
shocked by this brazen brutality but accept it as an unavoidable part of the
battle against militants.
Ditto is the case in West Bengal.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Naxalite movement threatened the
State, both the ruling CPM and the Congress colluded in crushing the Naxals by
counter State terror. In Nandigram too, the CPM has thumbed its nose at the
rule of law and described it as “morally and legally” correct.
It is an open secret that the police time and again not only
take recourse to third degree methods in order to extract truth from alleged
criminals but also kills them with impunity. They are known to abuse power to
dispense their own brand of rough and ready ‘justice’ on innocent persons,
dubbed terrorists. This is abhorrent and
unacceptable strictly from the human rights point of view and should be used
only in extreme circumstances.
At the same time State terror can be justified so long as it
for the greater common good. Former Punjab Governor, the late Dharma Vira was
ever so right when under a spell of President’s rule during the height of Sikh
militancy in the State he directed: “I have no use for live terrorists!” Indeed,
the Kandhar fiasco would never have happened if only the three hijackers,
Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar had been duly eliminated and
not jailed.
How does one draw a distinction between one fake encounter
and another fake encounter? Is, the police more sinned against than sinning in
dealing with ruthless terrorists who enjoy the advantage of choosing the
target, the place and the time?
Alas, the Centre will continue to grope in the dark about
how to deal with terrorism till it cries a halt to playing politics. The
Government needs to be clear about its fundamentals and stop playing with fire vis-à-vis the country’s security
apparatus. It has to respect the reputation of its intelligence wing and desist
from giving a communal slant to every incident.
Intelligence watchers no doubt ascribe this to India’s
multi-ethnic plurality. After all, whether Hindu or Muslim the ruler of Delhi has always viewed it in religious, castiest terms (Malegaon and Mecca Masjid
cases in point) or engineered from across the border. If the CIA was to blame
for all political debacles in the seventies and eighties, it is the ISI hand in
everything nowadays.
Clearly, instead of getting into a political-intelligence
slanging match it is vital that checks and balances are put in place to make it
impossible for policemen and intelligence officials to be trigger-happy. Along-side, the IB still has to be protected
and officers ensured immunity like in US, UK, France, Germany et al. The Bureau
also needs to frame standard operating procedures on how to conduct covert
terror operations.
However, beyond human frailties and fallibilities as we
exhaust precious national energy, time and money on the Ishrat Jahan we should not
loose sight of the larger issue of giving no quarter to terrorism, from across
the border or Naxalites. Else we will only prove Acharya Kriplani right: He
described Indians as the world’s biggest hypocrites and humbugs. What gives?
----- INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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