http://www.epw.in/commentary/importance-zakia-jafris-protest-petition.html
The Importance of Zakia Jafri's Protest Petition
The
protest petition filed by Zakia Jafri against the Supreme Court
appointed Special Investigation Team report, which absolved Narendra
Modi of all responsibility for the 2002 killings in Gujarat, is an
important step towards justice for all the victims. This article
recapitulates the long and diffi cult battle for justice through the
courts and exposes the complicity of the SIT in protecting Modi from his
crimes.
It is not often that the battle against
aggressive communalism, the sustained mobilization that precedes brute and
targeted violence and includes hate speech and hate writing, the deliberate
debilitation and paralysis of preventive and pro active measures of law and
order that minimize the spread of reprisal violence and protect lives and
properties, gets sustained and validated through courts of law. In the south
Asian context, majoritarian communalism fed in an insidious manner by its
minority prototype has the unique characteristic to deteriorate into authoritarianism,
even fascism. Be it Sri Lanka, Pakistan or India events past and present are
testimony to this. In the cases of all countries of the region, communalists of
the majority find ready partners with fundamentalists of the minority.
For over four decades now, aggressive
communalism has made deep inroads into the pillars of the Indian republic,
executive, legislature and even the judiciary. The calculated, and bloody
mobilization of an ostensibly religious kind by India’s main opposition party
from the late 1980s was purely political; it consolidated a rigid vote-bank of
middle and upper class Hindus while demonizing the minority vote bank as the raison d’être for its existence. This
section of Indians, fortuitously a numerical minority still substantial number
at 27-30 per cent of the overall vote, have aggressively celebrated the bloody
attacks on minorities and its critics even as the this rath yatra led by LK Advani had a bloody trail en route (Hubli, Karnataka, Jaipur, Rajasthan, Surat, Gujarat among
others). Writers and commentators have analysed this phenomenon as the
republic’s descent into proto-fascism, with forces of the Hindu right, the
Bharatiya Janata Party –the parliamentary wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh and its more modern avatars, the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal (BD) manipulating institutions
of democratic governance. Our administration, our police, even our Courts barely
withstood the systematic onslaught.
It is in this unique context that the
battle for acknowledgement, justice and accountability for the
well-orchestrated state directed and executed crimes of 2002 in Gujarat needs
to be understood. For over 11 years now, a steely band of survivors, backed by
groups of civil and legal rights groups and activists have extracted, for the
first time a degree of acknowledgement, transparency and accountability from an
indifferent system. One hundred and sixteen life imprisonments pronounced to,
among others, policemen, powerful politicians (one former minister) and
strongmen of outfits of the VHP and BD, is a success story in its own right.
What the
Zakia Jafri protest petition filed on April 15, 2013 attempts is to take
this battle for accountability several steps further, and deeper. In carving
out a substantial case of criminal conspiracy planned and executed by the
state’s chief minister who is also its home minister, this unique and historic
legal intervention, apart from the individual cases of the 59 accused involved
raises serious questions about a) the systemic build up of communal
mobilization and inaction by state agencies and actors; b) the lacunae in monitoring and check
on hate speech, hate writing, pamphleteering; c) the state and government’s
specific response to a tragedy like Godhra on February 27, 2002; d) contemporaneous
records that reveal government’s intent to contain the impact and spread of violence; e) transparency
in summoning assistance from the military /paramilitary forces; f) comparative analysis
of districts & commissionerates worst affected by violence (15) and those
that held their own (SPs/DMs refused to bow down to political masters); g) role
of whistleblowers in pinning down accountability from political masters; h) the
role of survivors/activists/ legal and civil rights groups; i) the role of the
media in covering the build up and fall out of mass crimes.
Gujarat in early 2002 was sitting on a
communal cauldron, carefully stoked since October-November of 2001. Records of the State Intelligence Bureau
(SIB) that are well-documented parts of the protest petition (annexures to the affidavit of former SIB
Gujarat chief, RB Sreekumar) as well as responses received from the office
of the chief minister during the course of the investigation clearly establish
that sustained efforts to keep districts and cities of Gujarat on the boil were
afoot (reference pgs 178, Paras 426-442 of the protest petition).
Significantly the newly sworn in chief minister, Narendra Modi who had been
brought in by the party’s national leadership after a series of bye-election
losses in September 2001, is at the helm of the law and order machinery as the
state’s home minister but does little to act against this communal
mobilization. SIB warnings include detailed notings of the aggressive
anti-minority speeches being made by BJP party leaders as also persons
belonging to the VHP and BD. One such comment recorded would prove to be
prescient, “Yeh andar ki baat hai, police
hamaari saath hai.” (stated by one Prahlad Patel on his way upstate to
Faizabad-Ayodhya). Despite this climate and warnings, Godhra with a poor
record, is left unguarded and unprepared. Despite platoons of the military and
paramilitary being not far away (at Vadodara), they are not galvanized. When
the Sabarmati Express arrives five hours late at the Godhra station on the
fateful day, February 27, 2002, Godhra and many parts of Gujarat were already
sitting on a communal tinderbox.
It is how the Godhra tragedy is
deliberately manipulated that requires a careful and dispassionate study for
all those concerned with non-partisan governance. The first information on
Godhra received by the chief minister, home and revenue department from the
district magistrate, Jayanti Ravi details the sequence of events – aggressive
and provocative sloganeering by kar
sevaks that caused a mob of Muslims to gather and pelt stones. This
reasoning that explains, partially at least how and why a crowd gathered when
the train stopped after it had left and the chain was pulled, is thereafter
deliberately and consciously obliterated by the government in official
statements and releases. The chief minister in the assembly around 1 p.m that
afternoon hints at a sinister and Machiavellian conspiracy. ( paras 50-54 at pages 37-39 of the protest
petition and paras 127-174, pages 71-92 of the protest petition ).
But it is other jigsaws in the puzzle
that have fallen into place during the analysis of investigation papers and
preparation of the protest petition that point to the chilling manoevres by men
and women in positions of governance to abdicate their oath to the Indian
Constitution and consciously allow a chain of criminal actions to spiral out of
control, that bear careful understanding and discussion. Between 9 a.m. when
news of the tragedy at Godhra has been received and 10.30 a.m. when an official
meeting of home department officials is called by the chief minister, phone
call records (that were deliberately ignored by the Special Investigation Team,
SIT) show that the chief minister was in close touch
with Jaideep Patel (accused number 21 in the criminal complaint). Jaideep
Patel, far from being a man from officialdom, is actually a strongman of the
VHP, the state’s general secretary. Despatched to Godhra soon after these
telephone conversations it is the same Jaideep Patel who thereafter attends an
official meeting at the Collectorate at Godhra (para 69, page 45 of the protest petition) and to whom the chief
minister orders the 54 dead bodies of Godhra victims to be handed over. It is a
VHP man who is given the responsibility of transporting these bodies to
Ahmedabad in a motor cavalcade that causes violence in its wake (paras 73-81 at pages 47-50 of the protest
petition) and Jaideep Patel who hands them over to the authorities at Sola Civil
Hospital, Ahmedabad. Jaideep Patel thereafter is also charged with being an
instigator of mobs to violence at Naroda Gaam, the next day, February 28, 2002. This close contact between the chief
minister and Jaideep Patel, both accused in the Zakia Jafri criminal complaint
dated 8.6.2006 continues right through till February 28, 2002 when the
massacres at Naroda and Gulberg are being executed. At 15:26:06 hours, Jaideep
Patel calls the chief minister at his official number and has a conversation
lasting 141 seconds. Jaideep Patel’s is one of just three calls on this number.
Incidentally all the official office and residential numbers of the chief
minister for both days show a shockingly low number of calls, raising more
questions than they answer. The mobile number of the chief minister has been
left deliberately uninvestigated by the SIT (para
106, page 61 of the protest petition)
After this surreptitious indications of the
criminal conspiracy that was to unfold, the chief minister, then health
minister, Ashok Bhatt, minister of state for home, Gordhan Zadaphiya and
Jaideep Patel are in touch and a controversial decision to conduct postmortems
on the bodies of the unfortunate Godhra victims, in the open at the railway
yard, in full public view of an aggressive crowd of VHP persons, baying for
blood, is taken. Chief minister who is accused number 1 in this protest
petition is present at Godhra at the railway yard while these illegal post
mortems are allowed. (paras 473-477, pages 211-212 of the protest
petition)
Law and procedure are exacting about whom bodies of
such calamities are to be given; they require to be in the safe keeping of the
police authorities (in this case the Godhra police where the case was
registered) until claimed by relatives to whom they need to be handed over with
due procedure. Photographs of gruesome/gory are strictly prohibited from being
displayed or published. (para 480, page
214 of the protest petition). Not only were the gory charred remains
displayed but they were allowed to be widely publicized in violation of Section
233, 4 (vi), Volume III of the Gujarat Police Manual.
The narrative behind this legal journey is in
itself an exploration into systemic efficacy and response. Zakia Jafri, widow
of quarterised, burned and slain former parliamentarian Ahsan Jafri first filed
this criminal complaint before the Director General of Police, Gujarat. The man
to hold this position by 8.6.2006, the date of the complaint, was none less than
many times promoted despite being indicted Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad PC
Pande. When the Gujarat police failed to register an FIR, she along with the Citizens for Justice and Peace,
approached the High Court and later, when relief was denied further, the
Supreme of India. On April 27, 2009 the Supreme Court, seeing merit in the
issues raised by the complaint handed it over to the already appointed Special
Investigation Team (SIT) under former CBI director, RK Raghavan. The investigations by the SIT resulted in
four reports, three before the Supreme Court. While the SIT, despite
contradictory findings concluded there was no evidence against any of the
accused, the amicus curiae (friend of the court) senior counsel Raju
Ramachandran said to the contrary. His report dated July 25, 2011 told the
Supreme Court that there was a clear case for the prosecution of Modi and three
others, at least. Based on this contrary advice, the Supreme Court on September
12, 2011 told the SIT to file its final report after considering the amicus’
contrary view and, in the event of this being no different from its conclusions
before the Supreme Court, specifically entitled Zakia Jafri to a complete set
of the investigation papers to file a competent protest petition. After a
battle of five years, the complaint that began with a plea for registration of
an FIR had now proceeded to the stage of a charge sheet being filed against the
accused.
SIT did not change its conclusions and filed yet
another report stating that no criminal charges were made out. As questionable,
was its adamant refusal to comply with the Supreme Court’s order dated
September 12, 2011 and give all the investigation papers to Zakia Jafri. The
514 page protest petition is an elaborate testimony to the reasons behind the
SIT’s refusal to comply. Its own investigation papers have provided a wealth of
further evidence of the callous complicity at the very highest levels in the
state administration to paralyse the administration into inaction, deliberately
refuse preventive arrests or the declaration of curfew, allow funeral
processions to be the launching pads of attacks and rioting, neutralize any
action on hate speech etc. By 2013 it is clear that the SIT has not simply
performed an onerous job in a desultory and unprofessional fashion. It is today
through its partisan conclusions completely obfuscating the dividing line
between being an independent investigating agency that it was bound to be,
given its appointment by the Supreme Court, to becoming a spokesperson for the
Modi administration.
Raghavan, Malhotra and Shukla the three main
spokespersons for the SIT have cynically misled the Supreme court when they
stated that the funeral processions of the Godhra victims in Godhra and at
least five-eight other locations (Khedbrahma, Vadodara, Modasa, Dahod, Anand)
were peaceful. The evidence from Police
Control Room (PCR) records submitted by PC Pande to the SIT after 15.3.2011
reveal a cold-blooded mobilization of RSS workers and VHP men at the Sola
Civil hospital from 4 a.m. onwards on 28.2.2002 in aggressive anticipation for
the arrival of the dead bodies. Repeated PCR messages, that the home department
under Modi (A-1, who held the home portfolio) and PC Pande (A-21) were trying
to conceal, show that both in Ahmedabad and in several locations all over
Gujarat, crowds were mobilized to aggressively parade bodies with bloodthirsty
sloganeering, inciting mobs to attack innocent Muslims. The then joint police
commissioner, Ahmedabad, Shivanand Jha, also an accused in the complaint
(A-38), was jurisdictionally in charge of Sola Civil Hospital in Zone 1. As the
messages extracted show, repeated PCR messages desperately ask for more bandobast;
they speak of the staff and doctors of the hospital being under threat; of a 5,000-6,000
strong mob accompanying the bodies and finally one message also says that
“riots have broken out.” (paras 559-560 at pages 244-247 of the
protest petition) These records also reveal what the SIT was trying hard to
conceal -- that while the Ahmedabad police under PC Pande and the home department
under Modi and then MOS, home Gordhan Zadaphiya (A-5 ) had enough forces to
escort a VHP leader known for his incendiary slogans, Giriraj Kishore, from the
airport to the Sola Civil hospital to accompany the processionists, --- they
did not have enough forces to send to Naroda Patiya where 96 persons were
massacred in broad daylight (charge-sheet figures in the Naroda Patiya case,
though more deaths have been recorded) and 69 persons at Gulberg society the
same day and around the same time aggressive processions were being allowed.
Sustained warnings from the SIB, even after the
Godhra tragedy on February 27, 2002 show that large sections of the police were
aware and knew of what should be expected all over the state now that the
Godhra tragedy had happened. As early as 12:30 pm on the
27th February: An SIB officer through fax no 525 communicated to the
headquarters that there were reports that some dead bodies would be brought to
Kalupur Hospital station in Ahmedabad city. The same message said that kar
sevaks had given explosive interviews to a TV station at Godhra and had
threatened to unleash violence against the Muslims.
But it is the panic messages from 1.51 a.m. onwards on February 28, 2002
from police wireless vans positioned at Sola Hospital demanding immediate
protection from Special Reserve Police platoons and the presence of DCP Zone 1
that are grave testimony to the planned gory scenario that was to unfold. The message
at 2:44 hours on 28.2.2002: the motor cavalcade has reached Sola Civil
Hospital. Page No. 5790 of Annexure IV,
File XIV reveals that at 04:00 am a mob comprising of 3,000
swayamsevaks, that is the members of the RSS, had already gathered at the Civil
Sola Hospital. Again, another message three minutes later at 7:17 a.m. (Page 5797 of Annexure IV, File XIV of the documents) says that a mob of 500 people was holding
up the traffic. By 11:55 am a PCR message is sent out saying that the Hindu mob had become
violent and had set a vehicle on fire and was indulging in arson on the
highway. Message at 11.55 a.m. on 28.2.2002 (Page
No. 6162 Annexure IV File XV) saying that “Sayyed Saheb, the
Protocol Officer had informed Sola-1 that riots have started at Sola civil
hospital at the High Court where the dead bodies were brought. Again, there is
another message with no indication of time (Page No.6172 of
28.2.2002) that states that the officers and employees of the hospital had
been surrounded by a 500 strong mob and they could not come out”. The message
also made a demand for more security for the civil hospital at Sola. In a
cynical disregard of this hard documentary evidence, the SIT in its first
investigation report dated May 12, 2010, the chairman’s comments, May 14, 2010
and its final report dated February 8, 2012 say the funeral processions were
peaceful.
On the morning of 28.2.2002, another SIB message says that a funeral
procession was allowed to take place at Khedbrahma, a town in Sabarkantha
district and adds that soon after the funeral procession 2 Muslims on their way
to Khedbrahma were stabbed and the situation had become very tense. All this and more has been ignored by the SIT
completely.
Other documentary evidence of deliberate acts of
provocation by persons like Jaideep Patel Kaushik Mehta (also both accused) and
Dileep Trivedi are recorded by the SIB that states that deliberately
inflammatory and false statements of “women being molested at Godhra” are being
propagated by these persons; other meetings at Vapi, Khedbrahma, Bhavnagar etc
are being held by RSS, VHP, BD to whip up sentiments (paras 631-637, pages 274-276 of the protest petition). One message
at Annexure
III, File XVIII (D-160) at Page No. 19 Message No. 531 from SIB Police to KR
Singh at 1810 hours on 27.2.2002, actually records that “on 27.2.2002 at
4.30 p.m. when the train arrived at the Ahmedabad Railway station, the kar
sevaks were armed with ‘dandas’ and shouting murderous slogans ‘khoon ka badla
khoon’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’.”
While the
chief minister has travelled 300 kilometres to Godhra and returned the same
night, he does not visit any of the refugee camps where in brute reprisal
killings, women, children and men of the minority have been lodged until well
after the visit of the chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission
(NHRC), former chief justice JS Verma on May 21-22, 2002. He also announces a
discriminatory compensation package for those killed at Godhra and those
thereafter. The crucial and sensational meeting at his residence on the night of
February 27, 2002, is where direct evidence of the conspiracy in operation has
been alleged. Officers and others who were present have over the past eleven
years indicated the directly illegal orders conveyed by the accused chief
minister. Unlike crucial law and order meetings at times of crises this meeting
has not been minuted. What transpired at this meeting was first publicly
revealed through the report of the Concerned
Citizens Tribunal—Crimes Against Humanity headed by Justices VR Krishna
Iyer, PB Sawant and Hosbet Suresh.
Thereafter in the course of the SIT investigations, a serving officer of
the Gujarat police, Sanjiv Bhatt testified directly and corroborated this. The
protest petition makes a strong case for testing this evidence in court. Amicus
curiae Raju Ramachandran in his report to the Supreme Court has also clearly
opined that it is not for the investigating agency to pre-judge the evidence
but place it to be tested during trial.
Despite
the evidence of intense communal mobilization, bloodthirsty speeches and actual
attacks on innocent citizens of the minority, on the day of the Godhra tragedy,
there is no appeal for peace and calm by the state’s chief minister and home
minister; no preventive arrests are made despite 19 attacks on minorities in
Ahmedabad on February 27, 2002 itself; no prohibitory orders are issued and
there is no clarity from the investigation papers as to when the army was
actually called and deployed. SIT has not bothered to record the statement of
Major Zameeruddin Shah in charge of the army operations in Gujarat neither that
of KPS Gill sent in by the erstwhile NDA
government in May 2002 simply because the violence continued and refused to
stop. Hence the protest petition apart from praying for the charge sheeting of all
the accused also makes a strong case for a transfer of the further
investigation to an independent agency
The failure of the SIT was to examine
the evidence objectively, evaluate the motive behind the government supporting
a bandh called by the VHP and RSS and its impact, tested officers of the ground
who were sending warnings against the claims of their accused superiors who
have collaborated in partisan mis-governance. An honest and robust
investigation would have made a strong comparative analysis between those
districts of Gujarat that burned and those that withstood the illegal
instructions from above while succumbing to rampaging militias of the
RSS-VHP-BD combine from below. Bhavnagar and Panchmahals are interesting
studies. SP Rahul Sharma despite all attempts to unleash bloodshed, held his
own, even though re-enforcements and troops were deliberately delayed by his
seniors in Gandhinagar.Annoyed at his non partisan conduct he was transferred
out by March 26, 2002. Brought to the crime branch where he again, made
significant points about non partisan charge sheets in both the Gulberg and
Naroda Patiya investigations, he was transferred yet again. The narrative of
the conspiracy of partisan governance and subversion of the justice process
runs in parallel to a cynical policy of punishments of those officers and
administrators who refused to bow down to a cynical leadership and rewards for
those who succumbed and became collaborators.
Unfashionable as it is to quote from Jawaharlal
Nehru when he said that "The [real] danger to India, is from Hindu
right-wing communalism", it seems more than appropriate given the
continued attempts by the government in power in Gujarat and the party in power
to belittle what has been an onerous and exacting battle, fought at great risk,
within the courts.
Ends
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.