Wasn’t it? Yesterday I mean. Spring announced itself in Delhi. The sun
was out, and the Law took its Course. Just before breakfast, Afzal Guru,
prime accused in the 2001 Parliament Attack was secretly hanged, and
his body was interred in Tihar Jail. Was he buried next to Maqbool Butt?
(The other Kashmiri who was hanged in Tihar in 1984. Kashmiris will
mark that anniversary tomorrow.) Afzal’s wife and son were not informed.
“The Authorities intimated the family through Speed Post and Registered
Post,” the Home Secretary told the press, “the Director General of
J&K Police has been told to check whether they got it or not.” No
big deal, they’re only the family of a Kashmiri terrorist.
On the 13th of December 2001 five armed men drove through the gates of
the Parliament House in a white Ambassador fitted out with an Improvised
Explosive Device. When they were challenged they jumped out of the car
and opened fire. They killed eight security personnel and a gardener. In
the gun battle that followed, all five attackers were killed. In one of
the many versions of confessions he made in police custody, Afzal Guru
identified the men as Mohammed, Rana, Raja, Hamza and Haider. That’s all
we know about them even today. L.K. Advani, the then Home Minister,
said they ‘looked like Pakistanis.’ (He should know what Pakistanis look
like right? Being a Sindhi himself.) Based only on Afzal’s confession
(which the Supreme Court subsequently set aside citing ‘lapses’ and
‘violations of procedural safeguards’) the Government of India recalled
its Ambassador from Pakistan and mobilised half a million soldiers to
the Pakistan border. There was talk of nuclear war. Foreign embassies
issued Travel Advisories and evacuated their staff from Delhi. The
standoff lasted for months and cost India thousands of crores.
Contrary to the lies that have been put about by some senior journalists
who would have known better, Afzal Guru was not one of “the terrorists
who stormed Parliament House on December 13th 2001” nor was he among
those who “opened fire on security personnel, apparently killing three
of the six who died.” (That was the BJP Rajya Sabha MP, Chandan Mitra,
in The Pioneer, October 7th 2006). Even the police charge sheet does not
accuse him of that. The Supreme Court judgment says the evidence is
circumstantial: “As is the case with most conspiracies, there is and
could be no direct evidence amounting to criminal conspiracy.” But then
it goes on to say: “The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties had
shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of society will
only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.”
There are those who will argue that the very fact that the courts
acquitted S.A.R Geelani and convicted Afzal proves that the trial was
free and fair. Was it?
The trial in the fast-track court began in May 2002. The world was still
convulsed by post 9/11 frenzy. The US government was gloating
prematurely over its ‘victory’ in Afghanistan. The Gujarat pogrom was
ongoing. And in the Parliament Attack case, the Law was indeed taking
its own course. At the most crucial stage of a criminal case, when
evidence is presented, when witnesses are cross-examined, when the
foundations of the argument are laid — in the High Court and the Supreme
Court you can only argue points of law, you cannot introduce new
evidence — Afzal Guru, locked in a high security solitary cell, had no
lawyer. The court-appointed junior lawyer did not visit his client even
once in jail, he did not summon any witnesses in Afzal’s defence and did
not cross examine the prosecution witnesses. The judge expressed his
inability to do anything about the situation.
Even still, from the word go, the case fell apart. A few examples out of many:
The two most incriminating pieces of evidence against Afzal were a
cellphone and a laptop confiscated at the time of arrest. The Arrest
Memos were signed by Bismillah, Geelani’s brother, in Delhi. The Seizure
Memos were signed by two men of the J&K Police, one of them an old
tormentor from Afzal’s past as a surrendered ‘militant’. The computer
and cellphone were not sealed, as evidence is required to be. During the
trial it emerged that the hard disc of the laptop had been accessed
after the arrest. It only contained the fake home ministry passes and
the fake identity cards that the terrorists used to access Parliament.
And a Zee TV video clip of Parliament House. So according to the police,
Afzal had deleted all the information except the most incriminating
bits, and he was speeding off to hand it over to Ghazi Baba, who the
charge sheet described as the Chief of Operations.
A witness for the prosecution, Kamal Kishore, identified Afzal and told
the court he had sold him the crucial SIM card that connected all the
accused in the case to each other on the 4th of December 2001. But the
prosecution’s own call records showed that the SIM was actually
operational from November 6th 2001.
Then there’s the back story. Like most surrendered militants Afzal was
easy meat in Kashmir — a victim of torture, blackmail, extortion. In the
larger scheme of things he was a nobody. Anyone who was really
interested in solving the mystery of the Parliament Attack would have
followed the dense trail of evidence that was on offer. No one did,
thereby ensuring that the real authors of conspiracy will remain
unidentified and uninvestigated.
But now that Afzal Guru has been hanged, I hope our collective
conscience has been satisfied. Or is our cup of blood still only half
full?
-------An earlier article with details of the case by Ms. Roy
'And His Life Should Become Extinct' - The Very Strange Story of the Attack on the Indian Parliament
We know this much: On
December 13, 2001,
the Indian Parliament was in its winter session. (The NDA government
was under attack for yet another corruption scandal.) At 11.30 in the
morning, five armed men in a white Ambassador car fitted out with an
Improvised Explosive Device drove through the gates of Parliament House.
When they were challenged, they jumped out of the car and opened fire.
In the gun battle that followed, all the attackers were killed. Eight
security personnel and a gardener were killed too. The dead terrorists,
the police said, had enough explosives to blow up the Parliament
building, and enough ammunition to take on a whole battalion of
soldiers. Unlike most terrorists, these five left behind a thick trail
of evidence—weapons, mobile phones, phone numbers, ID cards,
photographs, packets of dry fruit, and even a love letter.
Not surprisingly, PM A.B. Vajpayee seized the opportunity to compare the
assault to the September 11 attacks in the US that had happened only
three months previously.
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its August 4, 2005, judgement the Supreme Court clearly says that there
was no evidence that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group or
organisation. |
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On
December 14, 2001, the day after the attack on Parliament, the Special
Cell of the Delhi Police claimed it had tracked down several people
suspected to have been involved in the conspiracy. A day later, on
December 15, it announced that it had "cracked the case": the attack,
the police said, was a joint operation carried out by two
Pakistan-based terrorist groups,
Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Twelve people were named as being
part of the conspiracy. Ghazi Baba of the Jaish (Usual Suspect I),
Maulana Masood Azhar also of the Jaish (Usual Suspect II); Tariq Ahmed
(a "Pakistani"); five deceased "Pakistani terrorists" (we still don't
know who they are). And three Kashmiri men,
S.A.R. Geelani, Shaukat Hussain Guru, and Mohammed Afzal; and Shaukat's wife Afsan Guru. These were the only four to be arrested.
In the tense days that followed, Parliament was adjourned. On
December 21,
India recalled its high commissioner from Pakistan, suspended air, rail
and bus communications and banned over-flights. It put into motion a
massive mobilisation of its war machinery, and moved more than
half-a-million troops to the Pakistan border. Foreign embassies
evacuated their staff and citizens, and tourists travelling to India
were issued cautionary travel advisories. The world watched with bated
breath as the subcontinent was taken to the brink of
nuclear war. (All this
cost India an estimated Rs 10,000 crore of public money. A few hundred soldiers died just in the panicky process of mobilisation.)
Almost three-and-a-half years later, on August 4, 2005, the Supreme Court delivered its
final judgement
in the case. It endorsed the view that the Parliament attack be looked
upon as an act of war. It said, "The attempted attack on Parliament is
an undoubted invasion of the sovereign attribute of the State including
the Government of India which is its alter ego...the deceased terrorists
were roused and impelled to action by a strong anti-Indian feeling as
the writing on the fake home ministry sticker found on the car (Ex
PW1/8) reveals." It went on to say "the modus operandi adopted by the
hardcore 'fidayeens' are all demonstrative of launching a war against
the Government of India".
The text on the fake home ministry sticker read as follows:
"INDIA IS A VERY BAD COUNTRY AND WE HATE INDIA WE WANT TO
DESTROY INDIA AND WITH THE GRACE OF GOD WE WILL DO IT GOD IS WITH US
AND WE WILL TRY OUR BEST. THIS EDIET WAJPAI AND ADVANI WE WILL KILL
THEM. THEY HAVE KILLED MANY INNOCENT PEOPLE AND THEY ARE VERY BAD
PERSONS THERE BROTHER BUSH IS ALSO A VERY BAD PERSON HE WILL BE NEXT
TARGET HE IS ALSO THE KILLER OF INNOCENT PEOPLE HE HAVE TO DIE AND WE
WILL DO IT."
This subtly worded sticker-manifesto
was displayed on the windscreen of the car bomb as it drove into
Parliament. (Given the amount of text, it's a wonder the driver could
see anything at all. Maybe that's why he collided with the
Vice-President's cavalcade?)
The police chargesheet was filed in a special fast-track trial court
designated for cases under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). The
trial court sentenced Geelani, Shaukat and Afzal to death. Afsan Guru
was sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment. The high court
subsequently acquitted Geelani and Afsan, but it upheld Shaukat's and
Afzal's death sentence. Eventually, the Supreme Court upheld the
acquittals, and reduced Shaukat's punishment to 10 years of rigorous
imprisonment. However it not just confirmed, but enhanced Mohammed
Afzal's sentence. He has been given three life sentences and a double
death sentence.
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SC goes on to say, "The incident... had shaken the entire nation, and
the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if
capital punishment is awarded to the offender." |
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In
its August 4, 2005, judgement, the Supreme Court clearly says that
there was no evidence that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist
group or organisation. But it also says, "As is the case with most of
the conspiracies, there is and could be no direct evidence of the
agreement amounting to criminal conspiracy. However, the circumstances,
cumulatively weighed, would unerringly point to the collaboration of the
accused Afzal with the slain 'fidayeen' terrorists."
So: No direct evidence, but yes, circumstantial evidence.
A controversial paragraph in the judgement goes on to say, "The
incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire
nation, and the collective conscience of the society will only be
satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender. The
challenge to the unity, integrity and sovereignty of India by these acts
of terrorists and conspirators can only be compensated by giving
maximum punishment to the person who is
proved to be the conspirator in this treacherous act" (emphasis mine).
To invoke the 'collective conscience of society' to validate ritual
murder, which is what the death penalty is, skates precariously close to
valorising lynch law. It's chilling to think that this has been laid
upon us not by predatory politicians or sensation-seeking journalists
(though they too have done that), but as an edict from the highest court
in the land.
Spelling out the reasons for awarding Afzal the death penalty, the
judgement goes on to say, "The appellant, who is a surrendered militant
and who was bent upon repeating the acts of treason against the nation,
is a menace to the society and his life should become extinct."
This paragraph combines flawed logic with absolute ignorance of what it means to be a 'surrendered militant' in Kashmir today.
So: Should Mohammed Afzal's life become extinct?
A small, but influential minority of intellectuals, activists, editors,
lawyers and public figures have objected to the Death Sentence as a
matter of moral principle. They also argue that there is no empirical
evidence to suggest that the Death Sentence works as a deterrent to
terrorists. (How can it, when, in this age of fidayeen and suicide
bombers, death seems to be the main attraction?)
If opinion polls, letters-to-the-editor and the reactions of live
audiences in TV studios are a correct gauge of public opinion in India,
then the lynch mob is expanding by the hour. It looks as though an
overwhelming majority of Indian citizens would like to see Mohammed
Afzal hanged every day, weekends included, for the next few years. L.K.
Advani, leader of the Opposition, displaying an unseemly sense of
urgency, wants him to be hanged as soon as possible, without a moment's
delay.
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police knew their cold-blooded fabrication of a profile for these
'terrorists' would mould public opinion, create a climate for trial. But
there will not be any legal scrutiny. |
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Meanwhile
in Kashmir, public opinion is equally overwhelming. Huge angry protests
make it increasingly obvious that if Afzal is hanged, the consequences
will be political. Some protest what they see as a miscarriage of
justice, but even as they protest, they do not expect justice from
Indian courts. They have lived through too much brutality to believe in
courts, affidavits and justice any more. Others would like to see
Mohammed Afzal march to the gallows like Maqbool Butt, a proud martyr to
the cause of Kashmir's freedom struggle. On the whole, most Kashmiris
see Mohammed Afzal as a sort of prisoner-of-war being tried in the
courts of an occupying power. (Which it undoubtedly is). Naturally,
political parties, in India as well as in Kashmir, have sniffed the
breeze and are cynically closing in for the kill.
Sadly, in the midst of the frenzy, Afzal seems to have forfeited the
right to be an individual, a real person any more. He's become a vehicle
for everybody's fantasies—nationalists, separatists, and anti-capital
punishment activists. He has become India's great villain and Kashmir's
great hero—proving only that whatever our pundits, policymakers and
peace gurus say, all these years later, the war in Kashmir has by no
means ended.
In a situation as fraught and politicised as this, it's tempting to
believe that the time to intervene has come and gone. After all, the
judicial process lasted 40 months, and the Supreme Court has examined
the evidence before it. It has convicted two of the accused and
acquitted the other two. Surely this in itself is proof of judicial
objectivity? What more remains to be said? There's another way of
looking at it. Isn't it odd that the prosecution's case, proved to be so
egregiously wrong in one half, has been so gloriously vindicated in the
other?
The story of Mohammed Afzal is fascinating precisely because he is
not
Maqbool Butt. Yet his story too is inextricably entwined with the story
of the Kashmir Valley. It's a story whose coordinates range far beyond
the confines of courtrooms and the limited imagination of people who
live in the secure heart of a self-declared 'superpower'. Mohammed
Afzal's story has its origins in a war zone whose laws are beyond the
pale of the fine arguments and delicate sensibilities of normal
jurisprudence.
For all these reasons it is critical that we consider carefully the
strange, sad, and utterly sinister story of the December 13 Parliament
attack. It tells us a great deal about the way the world's largest
'democracy' really works. It connects the biggest things to the
smallest. It traces the pathways that connect what happens in the
shadowy grottos of our police stations to what goes on in the cold,
snowy streets of Paradise Valley; from there to the impersonal malign
furies that bring nations to the brink of nuclear war. It raises
specific questions that deserve specific, and not ideological or
rhetorical answers. What hangs in the balance is far more than the fate
of one man.
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course, judicial objectivity exists. But it's a shy beast that lives
deep in the labyrinth of our legal system. It takes whole teams of top
lawyers to coax it out of its lair. |
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On
October 4 this year, I was one amongst a very small group of people who
had gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to protest against Mohammed
Afzal's death sentence. I was there because I believe Mohammed Afzal is
only a pawn in a very sinister game. He's not the Dragon he's being made
out to be, he's only the Dragon's footprint. And if the footprint is
made to 'become extinct', we'll never know who the Dragon was. Is.
Not surprisingly, that afternoon there were more journalists and TV
crews than there were protesters. Most of the attention was on Ghalib,
Afzal's angelic looking little son. Kind-hearted people, not sure of
what to do with a young boy whose father was going to the gallows, were
plying him with ice-creams and cold drinks. As I looked around at the
people gathered there, I noted a sad little fact. The convener of the
protest, the small, stocky man who was nervously introducing the
speakers and making the announcements, was S.A.R. Geelani, a young
lecturer in Arabic Literature at Delhi University. Accused Number Three
in the Parliament Attack case. He was arrested on December 14, 2001, a
day after the attack, by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police. Though
Geelani was brutally tortured in custody, though his family—his wife,
young children and brother—were illegally detained, he refused to
confess to a crime he hadn't committed. Of course you wouldn't know this
if you read newspapers in the days following his arrest. They carried
detailed descriptions of an entirely imaginary, non-existent confession.
The Delhi Police portrayed Geelani as the evil mastermind of the Indian
end of the conspiracy. Its scriptwriters orchestrated a hateful
propaganda campaign against him, which was eagerly amplified and
embellished by a hyper-nationalistic, thrill-seeking media. The police
knew perfectly well that in criminal trials, judges are not supposed to
take cognisance of media reports. So they knew that their entirely
cold-blooded fabrication of a profile for these 'terrorists' would mould
public opinion, and create a climate for the trial. But it would not
come in for any legal scrutiny.
Here are some of the malicious, outright lies that appeared in the mainstream press:
'Case Cracked: Jaish behind Attack'
The Hindustan Times, Dec 16, 2001: Neeta Sharma and Arun Joshi
"In Delhi, the Special Cell detectives detained a Lecturer in Arabic,
who teaches at Zakir Hussain College (Evening)...after it was
established that he had received a call made by militants on his mobile
phone." Another column in the same paper said: "Terrorists spoke to him
before the attack and the lecturer made a phone call to Pakistan after
the strike."
'DU Lecturer was terror plan hub'
The Times of India, Dec 17, 2001
"The attack on Parliament on December 13 was a joint operation of the
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist groups in
which a Delhi University lecturer, Syed A.R. Gilani, was one of the key
facilitators in Delhi, Police Commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma said on
Sunday."
'Varsity don guided fidayeen'
The Hindu, Dec 17, 2001: Devesh K. Pandey
"During interrogation Geelani disclosed that he was in the know of the
conspiracy since the day the 'fidayeen' attack was planned."
'Don lectured on terror in free time'
The Hindustan Times, Dec 17, 2001: Sutirtho Patranobis
"Investigations have revealed that by evening he was at the college
teaching Arabic literature. In his free time, behind closed doors,
either at his house or at Shaukat Hussain's, another suspect to be
arrested, he took and gave lessons on terrorism..."
'Professor's proceeds'
The Hindustan Times, Dec 17, 2001
"Geelani recently purchased a house for 22 lakhs in West Delhi. Delhi
Police are investigating how he came upon such a windfall...".
'Aligarh se England tak chaatron mein aatankwaad ke beej bo raha tha Geelani (From Aligarh to England Geelani sowed the seeds of terrorism)
Rashtriya Sahara, Dec 18, 2001: Sujit Thakur
Trans: "...According to sources and information collected by
investigation agencies, Geelani has made a statement to the police that
he was an agent of Jaish-e-Mohammed for a long time.... It was because
of Geelani's articulation, style of working and sound planning that in
2000 Jaish-e-Mohammed gave him the responsibility of spreading
intellectual terrorism."
'Terror suspect frequent visitor to Pak mission'
The Hindustan Times, Dec 21, 2001: Swati Chaturvedi
"During interrogation, Geelani has admitted that he had made frequent
calls to Pakistan and was in touch with militants belonging to
Jaish-e-Mohammed...Geelani said that he had been provided with funds by
some members of the Jaish and told to buy two flats that could be used
in militant operations."
'Person of the Week'
Sunday Times of India, Dec 23, 2001:
"A cellphone proved his undoing. Delhi University's Syed A.R. Geelani
was the first to be arrested in the December 13 case—a shocking reminder
that the roots of terrorism go far and deep..."
Zee TV trumped them all. It produced a film called
December 13th,
a 'docudrama' that claimed to be the 'truth based on the police
chargesheet'. (A contradiction in terms, wouldn't you say?) The film was
privately screened for Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee and Home Minister
L.K. Advani. Both men applauded the film. Their approbation was widely
reported by the media.
TV grab of one of the terrorists of the December 13, 2001, Parliament attack
The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal to stay the broadcast of the
film on the grounds that judges are not influenced by the media. (Would
the Supreme Court concede that even if judges are beyond being
influenced by media reports, the 'collective conscience of the society'
might not be?)
December 13th was broadcast on Zee TV's national
network a few days before the fast-track trial court sentenced Geelani,
Afzal and Shaukat to death. Geelani eventually spent 18 months in jail,
many of them in solitary confinement on death row.
He was released when the high court acquitted him and Afsan Guru.
(Afsan, who was pregnant when she was arrested, had her baby in prison.
Her experience broke her. She now suffers from a serious psychotic
condition.) The Supreme Court upheld the acquittal. It found absolutely
no evidence to link Geelani with the Parliament attack or with any
terrorist organisation.
Not a single newspaper or journalist or TV channel has seen fit to apologise to Geelani for their lies. But S.A.R.
Geelani's troubles didn't end there. His acquittal left the Special
Cell with a plot, but no 'mastermind'. This, as we shall see, becomes
something of a problem. More importantly, Geelani was a free man
now—free to meet the press, talk to lawyers, clear his name. On the
evening of February 8, 2005, during the course of the final hearings at
the Supreme Court, Geelani was making his way to his lawyer's house. A
mysterious gunman appeared from the shadows and fired five bullets into
his body. Miraculously, he survived. It was an unbelievable new twist to
the story. Clearly somebody was worried about what he knew, what he
would say.... One would imagine that the police would give this
investigation top priority, hoping it would throw up some vital new
leads into the Parliament attack case. Instead, the Special Cell treated
Geelani as though he was the prime suspect in his own assassination.
They confiscated his computer and took away his car. Hundreds of
activists gathered outside the hospital and called for an enquiry into
the assassination attempt, which would include an investigation into the
Special Cell itself. (Of course that never happened. More than a year
has passed, nobody shows any interest in pursuing the matter. Odd.)
So here he was now, S.A.R. Geelani,
having survived this terrible ordeal, standing up in public at Jantar
Mantar, saying that Mohammed Afzal didn't deserve a death sentence. How
much easier it would be for him to keep his head down, stay at home. I
was profoundly moved, humbled, by this quiet display of courage.
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about it. On the basis of illegal confessions extracted under torture,
hundreds of thousands of soldiers were moved to the Pakistan border at
huge cost to the exchequer. |
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Across
the line from S.A.R. Geelani, in the jostling crowd of journalists and
photographers, trying his best to look inconspicuous in a lemon T-shirt
and gaberdine pants, holding a little tape-recorder, was another Gilani.
Iftikhar Gilani. He had been in prison too. He was arrested and taken
into police custody on June 9, 2002. At the time he was a reporter for
the Jammu-based
Kashmir Times. He was charged under the Official
Secrets Act. His 'crime' was that he possessed obsolete information on
Indian troop deployment in 'Indian-held Kashmir'. (This 'information',
it turns out, was a published monograph by a Pakistani research
institute, and was freely available on the Internet for anybody who
wished to download it. )
Iftikhar Gilani's
computer was seized. IB officials tampered with his hard drive, meddled
with the downloaded file, changed the words 'Indian-held Kashmir' to
'Jammu and Kashmir' to make it sound like an Indian document, and added
the words 'Only for Reference. Strictly Not For Circulation', to make it
seem like a secret document smuggled out of the home ministry. The
directorate general of military intelligence—though it had been given a
photocopy of the monograph—ignored repeated appeals from Iftikhar
Gilani's counsel, kept quiet, and refused to clarify the matter for a
whole six months.
Ghalib, 7, Afzal’s son, with Yasin Malik and S.A.R. Geelani in Delhi on Oct ’06
Once again the malicious lies put out by the Special Cell were
obediently reproduced in the newspapers. Here are a few of the lies they
told:
"Iftikhar Gilani, 35-year-old son-in-law of Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali
Shah Geelani, is believed to have admitted in a city court that he was
an agent of Pakistan's spy agency." --
The Hindustan Times, June, 11, 2002: Neeta Sharma
"Iftikhar Gilani was the pin-point man of Syed Salahuddin of Hizbul
Mujahideen. Investigations have revealed that Iftikhar used to pass
information to Salahuddin about the moves of Indian security agencies.
He had camouflaged his real motives behind his journalist's facade so
well that it took years to unmask him, well-placed sources said." --
The Pioneer, Pramod Kumar Singh
"
Geelani ke damaad ke ghar aaykar chhaapon mein behisaab sampati wa samwaidansheil dastaweiz baramad" (Enormous wealth and sensitive documents recovered from the house of Geelani's son-in-law during income tax raids) --
Hindustan, June 10, 2002
Never mind that the police chargesheet recorded a recovery of only Rs 3,450 from his house.
Meanwhile, other media reports said that he had a three-bedroom flat, an
undisclosed income of Rs 22 lakh, had evaded income tax of Rs 79 lakh,
that he and his wife were absconding to evade arrest.
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people and falsely identifying them as 'foreign terrorists', or falsely
identifying dead people as 'foreign terrorists' is not uncommon among
security forces. |
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But arrested he was. In jail, Iftikhar Gilani was beaten, abjectly humiliated. In his book
My Days In Prison
he tells of how, among other things, he was made to clean the toilet
with his shirt and then wear the same shirt for days. After six months
of court arguments and lobbying by his colleagues, when it became
obvious that if the case against him continued it would lead to serious
embarrassment, he was released.
Here he was now. A free man, a reporter come to Jantar Mantar to cover a
story. It occurred to me that S.A.R. Geelani, Iftikhar Gilani and
Mohammed Afzal would have been in Tihar jail at the same time. (Along
with scores of other less well known Kashmiris whose stories we may
never learn.)
It can and will be argued that the cases of both S.A.R. Geelani and
Iftikhar Gilani serve only to demonstrate the objectivity of the Indian
judicial system and its capacity for self-correction, they do not
discredit it. That's only partly true. Both Iftikhar Gilani and S.A.R.
Geelani are fortunate to be Delhi-based Kashmiris with a community of
articulate, middle-class peers; journalists and university teachers, who
knew them well and rallied around them in their time of need. S.A.R.
Geelani's lawyer Nandita Haksar put together an All India Defence
Committee for S.A.R. Geelani (of which I was a member). There was a
coordinated campaign by activists, lawyers and journalists to rally
behind Geelani. Well-known lawyers Ram Jethmalani, K.G. Kannabiran,
Vrinda Grover represented him. They showed up the case for what it was—a
pack of absurd assumptions, suppositions, and outright lies, bolstered
by fabricated evidence. So
of course judicial objectivity exists.
But it's a shy beast that lives somewhere deep in the labyrinth of our
legal system. It shows itself rarely. It takes whole teams of top
lawyers to coax it out of its lair and make it come out and play. It's
what in newspaper-speak would be called a Herculean task. Mohammed Afzal
did not have Hercules on his side.
For five months, from the time he was arrested to the day the police
charge-sheet was filed, Mohammed Afzal, lodged in a high-security
prison, had no legal defence, no legal advice. No top lawyers, no
defence committee (in India or Kashmir), and no campaign. Of all the
four accused, he was the most vulnerable. His case was far more
complicated than Geelani's. Significantly, during much of this time,
Afzal's younger brother Hilal was illegally detained by the Special
Operations Group (SOG) in Kashmir. He was released after the chargesheet
was filed. (This is a piece of the puzzle that will only fall into
place as the story unfolds.)
In a serious lapse of procedure, on December 20, 2001, the investigating
officer, Asst Commissioner of Police (ACP) Rajbir Singh (affectionately
known as Delhi's 'encounter specialist' for the number of 'terrorists'
he has killed in 'encounters'), called a press conference at the Special
Cell. Mohammed Afzal was made to 'confess' before the media. Deputy
commissioner of police (DCP) Ashok Chand told the press that Afzal had
already confessed to the police. This turned out to be untrue. Afzal's
formal confession to the police took place only the next day (after
which he continued to remain in police custody and vulnerable to
torture, another serious procedural lapse). In his media 'confession'
Afzal incriminated himself in the Parliament attack completely.
From left; Shaukat Guru, S.A.R. Geelani and Mohammed Afzal in Delhi, 2001
During the course of this 'media confession' a curious thing
happened. In an answer to a direct question, Afzal clearly said that
Geelani had nothing to do with the attack and was completely innocent.
At this point, ACP Rajbir Singh shouted at him and forced him to shut
up, and requested the media not to carry this part of Afzal's
'confession'.
And they obeyed! The story came out only three
months later when the television channel Aaj Tak re-broadcast the
'confession' in a programme called
Hamle Ke Sau Din (Hundred Days
of the Attack) and somehow kept this part in. Meanwhile in the eyes of
the general public—who know little about the law and criminal
procedure—Afzal's public 'confession' only confirmed his guilt. The
verdict of the 'collective conscience of society' would not have been
hard to second guess.
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lawyer did not once visit his client in jail to take instructions. He
did not summon a single witness in Afzal's defence, barely
cross-examined the prosecution's witnesses. |
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The
day after this 'media' confession, Afzal's 'official' confession was
extracted from him. The flawlessly structured, perfectly fluent
narrative dictated in articulate English to DCP Ashok Chand (in the
DCP's words, "he kept on narrating and I kept on writing") was delivered
in a sealed envelope to a judicial magistrate. In this confession,
Afzal, now the sheet-anchor of the prosecution's case, weaves a
masterful tale that connected Ghazi Baba, Maulana Masood Azhar, a man
called Tariq, and the five dead terrorists; their equipment, arms and
ammunition, home ministry passes, a laptop, and fake ID cards; detailed
lists of exactly how many kilos of what chemical he bought from where,
the exact ratio in which they were mixed to make explosives; and the
exact times at which he made and received calls on which mobile number.
(For some reason, by then Afzal had also changed his mind about Geelani
and implicated him completely in the conspiracy.)
Each point of the 'confession' corresponded perfectly with the evidence
that the police had already gathered. In other words, Afzal's
confessional statement slipped perfectly into the version that the
police had already offered the press days ago, like Cinderella's foot
into the glass slipper. (If it were a film, you could say it was a
screenplay, which came with its own box of props. Actually, as we know
now, it was made into a film. Zee TV owes Afzal some royalty payments. )
Eventually, both the high court and the Supreme Court set aside Afzal's
confession citing 'lapses and violations of procedural safeguards'. But
Afzal's confession somehow survives, the phantom keystone in the
prosecution's case. And before it was technically and legally set aside,
the confessional document had already served a major extra-legal
purpose: On December 21, 2001, when the Government of India launched its
war effort against Pakistan it said it had 'incontrovertible evidence'
of Pakistan's involvement. Afzal's confession was the only 'proof' of
Pakistan's involvement that the government had! Afzal's confession. And
the sticker-manifesto. Think about it. On the basis of this illegal
confession extracted under torture, hundreds of thousands of soldiers
were moved to the Pakistan border at huge cost to the public exchequer,
and the subcontinent devolved into a game of nuclear brinkmanship in
which the whole world was held hostage.
Big Whispered Question: Could it have been the other way around? Did the
confession precipitate the war, or did the need for a war precipitate
the need for the confession?
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callousness with which the investigations were carried out demonstrate a
worrying belief that they wouldn't be 'found out', and if they were, it
wouldn't matter very much. |
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Later,
when Afzal's confession was set aside by the higher courts, all talk of
Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba ceased. The only other link to
Pakistan was the identity of the five dead fidayeen. Mohammed Afzal,
still in police custody, identified them as Mohammed, Rana, Raja, Hamza
and Haider. The home minister said they "looked like Pakistanis", the
police said they were Pakistanis, the trial court judge said they were
Pakistanis. And there the matter rests. Had we been told that their
names were Happy, Bouncy, Lucky, Jolly and Kidingamani from Scandinavia,
we would have had to accept that too. We still don't know who they
really are, or where they're from. Is anyone curious? Doesn't look like
it. The high court said the "identity of the five deceased thus stands
established. Even otherwise it makes no difference. What is relevant is
the association of the accused with the said five persons and not their
names."
In his Statement of the Accused (which, unlike the confession, is made
in court and not police custody) Afzal says: "I had not identified any
terrorist. Police told me the names of terrorists and forced me to
identify them." But by then it was too late for him. On the first day of
the trial, the lawyer appointed by the trial court judge
agreed to accept Afzal's identification of the bodies and the postmortem reports as undisputed evidence without formal proof! This baffling move was to have serious consequences for Afzal. To quote from the Supreme Court judgement, "The
first circumstance
against the accused Afzal is that Afzal knew who the deceased
terrorists were. He identified the dead bodies of the deceased
terrorists. On this aspect the evidence remains unshattered."
Of course it's possible that the dead terrorists were foreign militants.
But it is just as possible that they were not. Killing people and
falsely identifying them as 'foreign terrorists', or falsely identifying
dead people as 'foreign terrorists', or falsely identifying living
people as terrorists, is not uncommon among the police or security
forces either in Kashmir or even on the streets of Delhi.
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Bodies of the Chhittisinghpura ‘terrorists’ being exhumed
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The best known among the many well-documented cases in Kashmir, one that
went on to become an international scandal, is the killing that took
place after the Chhittisinghpura massacre. On the night of April 20,
2000, just before the US President Bill Clinton arrived in New Delhi, 35
Sikhs were killed in the village of Chhittisinghpura by 'unidentified
gunmen' wearing Indian Army uniforms. (In Kashmir many people suspected
that Indian security forces were behind the massacre.) Five days later
the SOG and the 7th Rashtriya Rifles, a counter-insurgency unit of the
army, killed five people in a joint operation outside a village called
Pathribal. The next morning they announced that the men were the
Pakistan-based foreign militants who had killed the Sikhs in
Chhittisinghpura. The bodies were found burned and disfigured. Under
their (unburned) army uniforms, they were in ordinary civilian clothes.
It turned out that they were all local people, rounded up from Anantnag
district and brutally killed in cold blood.
There are others:
On October 20, 2003, the Srinagar newspaper
Al-safa
printed a picture of a 'Pakistani militant' who the 18 Rashtriya Rifles
claimed they had killed while he was trying to storm an army camp. A
baker in Kupwara, Wali Khan, saw the picture and recognised it as his
son, Farooq Ahmed Khan, who had been picked up by soldiers in a Gypsy
two months earlier. His body was finally exhumed more than a year later.
On April 20, 2004, the 18 Rashtriya Rifles posted in the Lolab valley
claimed it had killed four foreign militants in a fierce encounter. It
later turned out that all four were ordinary labourers from Jammu, hired
by the army and taken to Kupwara. An anonymous letter tipped off the
labourers' families who travelled to Kupwara and eventually had the
bodies exhumed.
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was a chilling moment in court. Akbar, the J&K cop who'd signed
Afzal's Seizure Memo, told him in Kashmiri that "his family was
alright". Afzal knew this was a veiled threat. |
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On
November 9, 2004, the army showcased 47 surrendered 'militants' to the
press at Nagrota, Jammu, in the presence of the General Officer
Commanding XVI, Corps and the Director General of Police, J&K. The
J&K police later found that 27 of them were just unemployed men who
had been given fake names and fake aliases and promised government jobs
in return for playing their part in the charade.
These are just a few quick examples to illustrate the fact that in the absence of any other evidence, the police's word is
just not good enough.
The hearings in the fast-track trial court began in May 2002. Let's not
forget the climate in which the trial took place. The frenzy over the
9/11 attacks was still in the air. The US was gloating over its victory
in Afghanistan. Gujarat was convulsed by communal frenzy. A few months
previously, coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express had been set on fire and
58 Hindu pilgrims had been burned alive inside. As 'revenge' in an
orchestrated pogrom, more than 2,000 Muslims were publicly butchered and
more than 1,50,000 driven from their homes.
For Afzal, everything that could go wrong went wrong. He was
incarcerated in a high-security prison, with no access to the outside
world, and no money to hire a lawyer professionally. Three weeks into
the trial the lawyer appointed by the court asked to be discharged from
the case because she had now been professionally hired to be on the team
of lawyers for S.A.R. Geelani's defence. The court appointed her
junior, a lawyer with very little experience, to represent Afzal. He did
not once visit his client in jail to take instructions. He did not
summon a single witness for Afzal's defence and barely cross-questioned
any of the prosecution witnesses. Five days after he was appointed, on
July 8, Afzal asked the court for another lawyer and gave the court a
list of lawyers whom he hoped the court might hire for him. Each of them
refused. (Given the frenzy of propaganda in the media, it was hardly
surprising. At a later stage of the trial, when senior advocate Ram
Jethmalani agreed to represent Geelani, Shiv Sena mobs ransacked his
Bombay office.) The judge expressed his inability to do anything about
this, and gave Afzal the right to cross-examine witnesses. It's
astonishing for the judge to expect a layperson to be able cross-examine
witnesses in a criminal trial. It's a virtually impossible task for
someone who does not have a sophisticated understanding of criminal law,
including new laws that had just been passed, like POTA, and the
amendments to the Evidence Act and the Telegraph Act. Even experienced
lawyers were having to work overtime to bring themselves up to date.
The case against Afzal was built up in the trial court on the strength
of the testimonies of almost 80 prosecution witnesses: landlords,
shopkeepers, technicians from cell-phone companies, the police
themselves.
This was a crucial period of the trial, when the legal foundation of
the case was being laid. It required meticulous back-breaking legal work
in which evidence needed to be amassed and put on record, witnesses for
the defence summoned and testimonies from prosecution witnesses
cross-questioned. Even if the verdict of the trial court went against
the accused (trial courts are notoriously conservative), the evidence
could then be worked upon by lawyers in the higher courts. Through this
absolutely critical period, Afzal went virtually undefended. It was at
this stage that the bottom fell out of his case, and the noose tightened
around his neck.
Even still, during the trial, the skeletons began to clatter out of the
Special Cell's cupboard in an embarrassing heap. It became clear that
the accumulation of lies, fabrications, forged documents and serious
lapses in procedure began from the very first day of the investigation.
While the high court and Supreme Court judgements have pointed these
things out, they have just wagged an admonitory finger at the police, or
occasionally called it a 'disturbing feature', which is a disturbing
feature in itself. At no point in the trial has the police been
seriously reprimanded, leave alone penalised. In fact, almost every step
of the way, the Special Cell displayed an egregious disregard for
procedural norms. The shoddy callousness with which the investigations
were carried out demonstrate a worrying belief that they wouldn't be
'found out,' and if they were, it wouldn't matter very much. Their
confidence does not seem to have been misplaced.
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is it that when there is this whole murky universe begging to be
revealed, our TV channels are busy staging hollow debates between
uninformed people and grasping politicians. |
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There is fudging in almost every part of the investigation.
Consider the
Time and Place of the Arrests and Seizures: The
Delhi Police said that Afzal and Shaukat were arrested in Srinagar based
on information given to them by Geelani following his arrest. The court
records show that the message to look out for Shaukat and Afzal was
flashed to the Srinagar police on December 15 at 5.45 am. But according
to the Delhi Police's records Geelani was only arrested in Delhi on
December 15 at 10 am—four hours
after they had started looking
for Afzal and Shaukat in Srinagar. They haven't been able to explain
this discrepancy. The high court judgement puts it on record that the
police version contains a 'material contradiction' and cannot be true.
It goes down as a 'disturbing feature.' Why the Delhi Police needed to
lie remains unasked, and unanswered.
When the police arrest somebody, procedure requires them to have public
witnesses for the arrest who sign an Arrest Memo and a Seizure Memo for
what they may have 'seized' from those who have been arrested—goods,
cash, documents, whatever. The police claim they arrested Afzal and
Shaukat together on December 15 at 11 am in Srinagar. They say they
'seized' the truck the two men were fleeing in (it was registered in the
name of Shaukat's wife). They also say they seized a Nokia mobile
phone, a laptop and Rs 10 lakh from Afzal. In his Statement of the
Accused, Afzal says he was arrested at a bus stop in Srinagar and that
no laptop, mobile phone or money was 'seized' from him.
Scandalously, the Arrest Memos for both Afzal and Shaukat have been signed in
Delhi,
by Bismillah, Geelani's younger brother, who was at the time being held
in illegal confinement at the Lodhi Road Police Station. Meanwhile, the
two witnesses who signed the seizure memo for the phone, the laptop and
the Rs 10 lakh are both from the J&K Police. One of them is Head
Constable Mohammed Akbar (Prosecution Witness 62) who, as we shall see
later, is no stranger to Mohammad Afzal, and is not just any old
policeman who happened to be passing by. Even by the J&K Police's
own admission they first located Afzal and Shaukat in Parimpura Fruit
Mandi. For reasons they don't state, the police didn't arrest them
there. They say they followed them to a less public place—where there
were no public witnesses.
So here's another serious inconsistency in the prosecution's case. Of
this the high court judgement says 'the time of arrest of accused
persons has been seriously dented'. Shockingly, it is
at this
contested time and place of arrest that the police claim to have
recovered the most vital evidence that implicates Afzal in the
conspiracy: the mobile phone and the laptop. Once again, in the
matter of the date and time of the arrests, and in the alleged seizure
of the incriminating laptop and the Rs 10 lakh, we have only the word of
the police, against the word of a 'terrorist'.
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yourself conceptually, if only for a moment, from the 'Police is
Good/Terrorists are Evil' ideology. The evidence, minus its ideological
trappings, opens up terrifying possibilities. |
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The
Seizures Continued:
The seized laptop, the police said, contained the files that created
the fake home ministry pass and the fake identity cards. It contained no
other useful information. They claimed that Afzal was carrying it to
Srinagar in order to return it to Ghazi Baba. The Investigating Officer,
ACP Rajbir Singh, said that the hard disk of the computer had been
sealed on January 16, 2002 (a whole month after the seizure). But the
computer shows that it was accessed even after that date. The courts
have considered this but taken no cognisance of it. (On a speculative
note, isn't it strange that the only incriminating information found on
the computer were the files used to make the fake passes and ID cards?
And a Zee TV film clip showing the Parliament Building. If other
incriminating information had been deleted, why wasn't this? And why did
Ghazi Baba, Chief of Operations of an international terrorist
organisation, need a laptop—with bad artwork on it— so urgently?)
Consider the
Mobile phone call records: Stared at for long
enough, a lot of the 'hard evidence' produced by the Special Cell begins
to look dubious. The backbone of the prosecution's case has to do with
the recovery of mobile phones, SIM cards, computerised call records, and
the testimonies of officials from cellphone companies and shopkeepers
who sold the phones and SIM cards to Afzal and his accomplices. The call
records that were produced to show that Shaukat, Afzal , Geelani and
Mohammad (one of the dead militants) had all been in touch with each
other very close to the time of the attack were uncertified computer
printouts, not even copies of primary documents. They were outputs of
the billing system stored as text files that could have been easily
doctored and at any time. For example, the call records that were
produced show that two calls had been made at exactly the same time from
the same SIM card, but from
separate handsets with
separate IMEI numbers. This means that either the SIM card had been cloned or the call records were doctored.
Consider the
SIM card: To prop up its version of the story, the
prosecution relies heavily on one particular mobile phone
number—9811489429. The police say it was Afzal's number—the number that
connected Afzal to Mohammad, Afzal to Shaukat, and Shaukat to Geelani.
The police also say that this number was written on the back of the
identity tags found on the dead terrorists. Pretty convenient.
Lost Kitten! Call Mom at 9811489429.
(It's worth mentioning that normal procedure requires evidence gathered
at the scene of a crime to be sealed. The ID cards were never sealed
and remained in the custody of the police and could have been tampered
with at any time.)
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A suspected ‘militant’ gunned down by the police in Ansal Plaza, Delhi, 2002
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The only evidence the police have that 9811489429 was indeed Afzal's
number is Afzal's confession, which as we have seen is no evidence at
all. The SIM card has never been found. The police produced a
prosecution witness, Kamal Kishore, who identified Afzal and said that
he had sold him a Motorola phone and a SIM card on December 4, 2001.
However, the call records the prosecution relied on show that that
particular SIM card was already in use on the November 6,
a whole month before Afzal is supposed to have bought it!
So either the witness is lying, or the call records are false. The high
court glosses over this discrepancy by saying that Kamal Kishore had
only said that he sold Afzal a SIM card, not
this particular SIM
card. The Supreme Court judgement loftily says "The SIM card should
necessarily have been sold to Afzal prior to 4.12.2001." And that, my
friends, is that.
Consider the
Identification of the Accused: A series of
prosecution witnesses, most of them shopkeepers, identified Afzal as the
man to whom they had sold various things: ammonium nitrate, aluminum
powder, sulphur, a Sujata mixer-grinder, packets of dry fruit and so on.
Normal procedure would require these shopkeepers to pick Afzal out from
a number of people in a test identification parade. This didn't happen.
Instead Afzal was identified by them when he 'led' the police to these
shops while he was in police custody and introduced to the witnesses as
an Accused in the Parliament Attack. (Are we allowed to speculate about
whether he led the police or the police led
him to the shops?
After all he was still in their custody, still vulnerable to torture. If
his confession under these circumstances is legally suspect, then why
not all of this?)
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if we don't believe Afzal, given what we do know about the trial and
the role of the Special Cell, it is inexcusable not to look in the
direction he's pointing. |
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The
judges have pondered the violation of these procedural norms but have
not taken them very seriously. They said that they did not see why
ordinary members of the public would have reason to falsely implicate an
innocent person. But does this hold true, given the orgy of media
propaganda that ordinary members of the public were subjected to,
particularly in this case? Does this hold true, if you take into account
the fact that ordinary shopkeepers, particularly those who sell
electronic goods without receipts in the 'grey market', are completely
beholden to the Delhi Police?
None of the inconsistencies that I have written about so far are the
result of spectacular detective work on my part. A lot of them are
documented in an excellent book called
December 13th: Terror Over Democracy by Nirmalangshu Mukherji; in two reports (
Trial of Errors and
Balancing Act)
published by the Peoples' Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi; and most
important of all, in the three thick volumes of judgements of the trial
court, the high court and the Supreme Court. All these are public
documents, lying on my desk. Why is it that when there is this whole
murky universe begging to be revealed, our TV channels are busy staging
hollow debates between uninformed people and grasping politicians? Why
is it that apart from a few sporadic independent commentators, our
newspapers carry front-page stories about who the hangman is going to
be, and macabre details about the length (60 metres) and weight (3.75
kg) of the rope that will be used to hang Mohammed Afzal (
Indian Express, October 16, 2006). Shall we pause for a moment to say a few hosannas for the Free Press?
It's not an easy thing for most people to do, but if you can, unmoor
yourself conceptually, if only for a moment, from the "Police is
Good/Terrorists are Evil" ideology. The evidence on offer
minus its ideological trappings opens up a chasm of terrifying possibilities. It points in directions which most of us would prefer not to look.
The prize for the Most Ignored Legal Document in the entire case goes to the
Statement of the Accused Mohammed Afzal under Section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
In this document, the evidence against him is put to him by the court
in the form of questions. He can either accept the evidence or dispute
it, and has the opportunity to put down his version of his story in his
own words. In Afzal's case, given that he has never had any real
opportunity to be heard, this document tells his story in his voice.
In this document, Afzal accepts
certain charges made against him by the prosecution. He accepts that he
met a man called Tariq. He accepts that Tariq introduced him to a man
called Mohammad. He accepts that he helped Mohammad come to Delhi and
helped him to buy a second-hand white Ambassador car. He accepts that
Mohammad was one of the five fidayeen who was killed in the Attack. The
important thing about Afzal's Statement of the Accused is that he makes
no effort to completely absolve himself or claim innocence. But he puts
his actions in a context that is devastating. Afzal's statement explains
the peripheral part he played in the Parliament attack. But it also
ushers us towards an understanding of some possible reasons for why the
investigation was so shoddy, why it pulls up short at the most crucial
junctures and why it is vital that we do not dismiss this as just
incompetence and shoddiness. Even if we don't believe Afzal, given what
we do know about the trial and the role of the Special Cell, it is
inexcusable not to look in the direction he's pointing. He gives
specific information—names, places, dates. (This could not have been
easy, given that his family, his brothers, his wife and young son live
in Kashmir and are easy meat for the people he mentions in his
deposition.)
In Afzal's words:
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"I
live in Sopre J&K and in the year 2000 when I was there Army used
to harass me almost daily, then said once a week. One Raja Mohan Rai
used to tell me that I should give information to him about militants. I
was a surrendered militant and all militants have to mark Attendance at
Army Camp every Sunday. I was not being physically torture by me. He
used to only just threatened me. I used to give him small information
which I used to gather from newspaper, in order to save myself. In June/
July 2000 I migrated from my village and went to town Baramullah. I was
having a shop of distribution of Surgical instruments which I was
running on commission basis. One day when I was going on my scooter
S.T.F (State Task Force) people came and picked me up and they
continuously tortured me for five days. Somebody had given information
to S.T.F that I was again indulging in militant activities. That person
was confronted with me and released in my presence. Then I was kept by
them in custody for about 25 days and I got myself released by paying Rs
1 lakh. Special Cell People had confirmed this incident. Thereafter I
was given a certificate by the S.T.F and they made me a Special Police
Officer for six months. They were knowing I will not work for them.
Tariq met me in Palhalan S.T.F camp where I was in custody of S.T.F.
Tariq met me later on in Sri Nagar and told me he was basically working
for S.T.F. I told him I was also working for S.T.F. Mohammad who was
killed in Attack on Parliament was along with Tariq. Tariq told me he
was from Keran sector of Kashmir and he told me that I should take
Mohammad to Delhi as Mohammad has to go out of country from Delhi after
some time. I don't know why I was caught by the police of Sri Nagar on
15.12.2001. I was boarding bus at Sri Nagar bus stop, for going home
when police caught me. Witness Akbar who had deposed in the court that
he had apprehended Shaukat and me in Sri Nagar had conducted a raid at
my shop about a year prior to December 2001 and told me that I was
selling fake surgical instruments and he took Rs 5000/- from me. I was
tortured at Special Cell and one Bhoop Singh even compelled me to take
urine and I saw family of S. A.R. Geelani also there, Geelani was in
miserable condition. He was not in a position to stand. We were taken to
Doctor for examination but instructions used to be issued that we have
to tell Doctor that everything was alright with a threat that if we do
not do so we be again tortured."
He then asks the court's permission to add some more information.
"Mohammad the slain terrorist of Parliament attack had come along with
me from Kashmir. The person who handed him over to me is Tariq. Tariq is
working with Security Force and S.T.F JK Police. Tariq told me that if I
face any problem due to Mohammad he will help me as he knew the
security forces and S.T.F very well... Tariq had told me that I just
have to drop Mohammad at Delhi and do nothing else. And if I would not
take Mohammad with me to Delhi I would be implicated in some other case.
I under these circumstances brought Mohammad to Delhi under a
compulsion without knowing he was a terrorist."
So now we have a picture emerging of someone who could be a key player.
'Witness Akbar' (PW 62), Mohd Akbar, Head Constable, Parimpora Police
Station, the J&K policeman who signed the Seizure Memo at the time
of Afzal's arrest. In
a letter to Sushil Kumar,
his Supreme Court lawyer, Afzal describes a chilling moment at one
point in the trial. In the court, Witness Akbar, who had come from
Srinagar to testify about the Seizure Memo, reassured Afzal in Kashmiri
that "his family was alright". Afzal immediately recognised that this
was a veiled threat. Afzal also says that after he was arrested in
Srinagar he was taken to the Parimpora police station and beaten, and
plainly told that his wife and family would suffer dire consequences if
he did not co-operate. (We already know that Afzal's brother Hilal had
been held in illegal detention by the SOG during some crucial months.)
In this letter, Afzal describes how he was tortured in the STF camp—with
electrodes on his genitals and chillies and petrol in his anus. He
mentions the name of Dy Superintendent of Police Dravinder Singh who
said he needed him to do a 'small job' for him in Delhi. He also says
that some of the phone numbers mentioned in the chargesheet can be
traced to an STF camp in Kashmir.
Protests against Afzal’s hanging in Srinagar
It is Afzal's story that gives us a glimpse into what life is really
like in the Kashmir Valley. It's only in the Noddy Book version we read
about in our newspapers that Security Forces battle Militants and
innocent Kashmiris are caught in the cross-fire. In the adult version,
Kashmir is a valley awash with militants, renegades, security forces,
double-crossers, informers, spooks, blackmailers, blackmailees,
extortionists, spies, both Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies,
human rights activists, NGOs and unimaginable amounts of unaccounted-for
money and weapons.
There are not always clear lines that demarcate the boundaries
between all these things and people, it's not easy to tell who is
working for whom.
Truth, in Kashmir, is probably more dangerous than anything else. The
deeper you dig, the worse it gets. At the bottom of the pit is the SOG
and STF that Afzal talks about. These are the most ruthless,
indisciplined and dreaded elements of the Indian security apparatus in
Kashmir. Unlike the more formal forces, they operate in a twilight zone
where policemen, surrendered militants, renegades and common criminals
do business. They prey upon the local population, particularly in rural
Kashmir. Their primary victims are the thousands of young Kashmiri men
who rose up in revolt in the anarchic uprising of the early '90s and
have since surrendered and are trying to live normal lives.
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| Afzal's
surrender was treated as a crime and his life became a hell. Can
Kashmiri youth be blamed if the lesson they draw from his story is that
it would be insane to surrender? |
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In
1989, when Afzal crossed the border to be trained as a militant, he was
only 20 years old. He returned with no training, disillusioned with his
experience. He put down his gun and enrolled himself in Delhi
University. In 1993 without ever having been a practising militant, he
voluntarily
surrendered to the Border Security Force (BSF). Illogically enough, it
was at this point that his nightmares began. His surrender was treated
as a crime and his life became a hell. Can young Kashmiri men be blamed
if the lesson they draw from Afzal's story is that it would be not just
stupid, but insane to surrender their weapons and submit to the vast
range of myriad cruelties the Indian State has on offer for them?
The story of Mohammed Afzal has enraged Kashmiris because his story is
their story too. What has happened to him could have happened, is
happening and has happened to thousands of young Kashmiri men and their
families. The only difference is that their stories are played out in
the dingy bowels of joint interrogation centres, army camps and police
stations where they have been burned, beaten, electrocuted, blackmailed
and killed, their bodies thrown out of the backs of trucks for
passers-by to find. Whereas Afzal's story is being performed like a
piece of medieval theatre on the national stage, in the clear light of
day, with the legal sanction of a 'fair trial', the hollow benefits of a
'free press' and all the pomp and ceremony of a so-called democracy.
If Afzal is hanged, we'll never know the answer to the real question:
Who attacked the Indian Parliament? Was it the Lashkar-e-Toiba? The
Jaish-e-Mohammed? Or does the answer lie somewhere deep in the secret
heart of this country that we all live in and love and hate in our own
beautiful, intricate, various, and thorny ways?
There ought to be a Parliamentary Inquiry into the December 13 attack on
Parliament. While the inquiry is pending, Afzal's family in Sopore must
be protected because they are vulnerable hostages in this bizarre
story.
To hang Mohammed Afzal without knowing what really happened is a misdeed
that will not easily be forgotten. Or forgiven. Nor should it be.
Notwithstanding the 10% Growth Rate.
-------A Rebuttal
The vanity of 13/12 ‘truth-telling’
Praveen Swami in The Hindu 
