HINDUTVA TERROR TAPES

THE UNTURNED STONE

The Malegaon blast probe threw up 37 audiotapes in which ultra-Hindu groups plot terror attacks. These tapes expose a shocking nexus between Military Intelligence men and the outfits. Two years later, why is this still unexplored, asks RANA AYYUB

Lt Col Shrikant Purohit Military Intelligence officer The man who procured the RDX that was used for the Malegaon blast. He is the first serving officer to be arrested in a terror case PHOTOS: DEEPAK SALVI

HATE IS one of the obvious and evident yields of the Hindutva worldview. But few had imagined it could spawn a terror network until investigations into the 2008 Malegaon blast led to a series of startling arrests that included Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Lt Col Shrikant Purohit of Abhinav Bharat, an ultra-right Hindu group. Since then, the issue of ‘saffron terror’ has entered national discourse as a fractious and heated debate.

Last week, the issue erupted once again, triggering livid responses across the political spectrum. First, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh claimed that Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare — who had been investigating the Malegaon blast — had called him hours before he died on the fateful night of 26/11, saying he was being threatened by those opposed to his probes. Singh was speaking at the launch of a book by Aziz Burney, controversially titled 26/11 — A RSS Controversy? and both sections of his own party and the BJP were dismayed that his “irresponsible” remarks would play into Pakistan’s hands.

Maj (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay Military Intelligence officer He is suspected of training those who assembled the bomb that went off in Malegaon. He also headed BJP’s ex-servicemen cell PHOTOS: DEEPAK SALVI

A few days later, in its ongoing exposé, WikiLeaks released a cable in which US Ambassador Timothy Roemer claimed that Rahul Gandhi had told him that ultra-Hindu terror was probably a greater threat to national security than Islamist terror. In all the furious exchanges that have followed, a crucial issue was overlooked. With the capture of Ajmal Kasab, it is undoubtedly an absurd stretch of imagination to believe 26/11 was engineered by ultra-Hindu groups, but the truth is the ‘saffron terror’ story is indeed far from being a closed book.

TEHELKA has found that, in the two years since the Malegaon blast, investigators have left many leads unexplored. Most alarmingly, they have failed to pin down eight Indian Army officers allegedly involved with the terror network. Why haven’t they been questioned by the army or sufficiently tracked? How far has the network penetrated sections of the army? To understand the full implication of this, it is important to recall the whole story.

Sadhvi Pragya Thakur Self-styled godwoman Her cell phone call records proved to be a minefield of information about those involved in the Malegaon blast PHOTOS: DEEPAK SALVI

IT WAS a low-intensity bomb fitted in a motorbike, but its impact was powerful. It exploded in the small town of Malegaon in Nashik district, Maharashtra, on 29 September 2008, leaving six dead and several injured. The only clue was a mangled number-plate. Forensic lab officials used a 25 MP camera for a magnified view of the number-plate. They managed to get three sets of possible numbers. Then the ATS began the chase. The first combination took them to Badayun, Uttar Pradesh, where the vehicle bearing the number still existed. The second was tracked down to Gujarat. Here too the vehicle was still in use. In October 2008, the last number-plate took them to the bike owner, a self-styled godwoman called Sadhvi Pragya Thakur

Pragya’s interrogation and call information from her cell phone opened a pandora’s box. Shamlal Sahu, 42, a commerce graduate, was first to be arrested on charges of planting the bomb. Shivnarayan Kalangasara Singh, 36, a science graduate, was arrested for setting a timer device in the bomb. Another science graduate, Sameer Kulkarni, 32, was arrested for his role in procuring chemicals for the bomb.

PHOTOS: DEEPAK SALVI

But the story did not end with these arrests. Five days after Pragya’s arrest, the ATS caught a major fish: Maj (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay, 64, a resident of Pune. He had worked in the Indian Army’s Military Intelligence (MI) unit and was suspected of training those who had assembled the bombs. He had also headed the BJP’s ex-servicemen’s cell in Mumbai.

On 2 November 2008, three more arrests were made — Ajay Rahirkar, 39, for raising funds for Abhinav Bharat; Rakesh Dhawde, 35, a weapon consultant in the movie The Rising; and Jagdish Mhatre, 40, who had paid money to Dhawde for buying weapons. All these men were from either Nashik or Pune. Then came the biggest arrest. On 5 November, the first ever serving army officer, Lt Col Purohit, 37, was arrested for procuring the RDX used in the blast. The MI officer was posted at the Army Education Corps Training Centre and College in Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, where he was studying Arabic at the time of his arrest.

Terror on board The Samjhauta Express blast in 2007 killed 68 people PHOTO: SHAILENDRA PANDEY

Purohit’s role as a prime conspirator became clearer with the arrest of selfstyled seer Swami Dayanand Pandey alias Shankar Acharya alias Shukhakar Dwivedi, 40, on 14 November. Pandey had a habit of recording all his conversations with his co-conspirators on his laptop.

The ATS retrieved three videos and 37 audiotapes. These proved to be an unprecedented source of information. On 21 November, Karkare questioned Pune’s RSS leader Shyam Apte, named in the tapes.

Purohit himself wasn’t an easy case to crack. During his interrogation, he asserted that his job as an MI spy included interacting with both Hindu and Muslim extremists. At first, the army seemed to rally behind him. Soon after his arrest, the army spokesman claimed he had only been detained, not arrested. Pragya, however, disclosed that she had met Purohit in Pachmarhi, where Purohit had told her that he had executed two blasts in the past. The ATS officials suspected Purohit was hinting at the Samjhauta Express and Ajmer Sharif blasts, but this was not made public because of its diplomatic implications.

Cycle of violence The Malegaon blast in 2008 left six people dead PHOTO: REUTERS

THE AUDIOTAPES revealed a chilling landscape. A godwoman, a seer, political bigwigs and retired and serving army officers all seemed part of the conspiracy. They spilled vitriolic hate for Muslims and even Hindus who did not subscribe to their ultra right-wing communal vision. They had set up Abhinav Bharat with the intention of infiltrating and subverting every institution in the country. This, for instance, is an excerpt of what Purohit says on the tapes about the nation they dreamed of creating:

“We must aim for militarisation of the organisation (Abhinav Bharat). Every member at all levels must have a basic knowledge of weapons. We haven’t done it so far. We should indoctrinate them with our ideology. We should establish an academy for ideological indoctrination. At the end of the course, each member will be tested and only those who pass will be finally admitted to the organisation. The level of testing is when he will be tried in ‘action’. Then our organisation will propagate establishment of all-India Hindu rashtra called Abhinav Bharat. There will be a uniform code of conduct irrespective of any caste. Reporting channels like those in the armed forces will be established. This will ensure the smooth flow of information and passing of orders. An Honour Court Committee will exist at all levels. This will ensure strict adherence to moral and ethical behaviour as decided by the core group by all the members based on our Vedas.”

Ground zero Fourteen people died in the 2007 Mecca Masjid bombing PHOTO: AFP

The conversations were alarming. The then Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil was briefed by senior ATS officials. Other national agencies like the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and, later, the National Investigating Agency (NIA)were brought in. Initial investigations suggested that Purohit was an aberration. The investigators found it odd that despite their mentors in the army, the attackers behaved like novices. “They were so dumb they used their own motorcycle to plant the bomb. It took us just a month to catch all of them. The police have never taken such a short time to arrest terrorists,” says a senior home ministry official, requesting anonymity. How could anyone take them seriously? he asks.

After Purohit’s arrest, there was a lot of pressure to downplay the role of the army, reveals an ATS officer

So the sleuths deemed the Malegaon blast to be a freak incident. Over the next two years, however, a larger pattern began to emerge. First Malegaon. Then Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif. The Abhinav Bharat cell was found to have a hand in all these blasts. It obviously had deeper roots.

TEHELKA first scooped and wrote about the tapes in 2008. Subsequently, a few other media organisations accessed and published parts of the tapes. However, through all this, at no point has there been sufficient focus on the army officers who figure on the tapes. They remain the big unturned stone in the investigation.

There are a total of eight army officers, retired and serving, named in the tapes. At least four of them have an MI background. Apart from Lt Col Purohit and Maj Upadhyay, who are now in jail, topping the list is Col (retd) Hasmukh Patel. A JNU graduate, Patel was commissioned into the Infantry Jat Regiment and later detailed with the MI. After 25 years in service, he retired in 2007 and joined Reliance. His LinkedIn profile says he is a specialist in threat analysis, background checks, physical- electronic-aviation security, vigilance, investigations, disaster management, negotiation and loss prevention. The NIA is understood to have questioned him recently but let him off under surveillance.

Col Shailesh Raikar is a retired commandant. He is said to be a brilliant officer who belonged to the Maratha Regiment. According to the tapes, Raikar was commander of the Bhosla Military Academy in Nashik. He allegedly provided academy facilities to Purohit and other Abhinav Bharat members for weapons training. He too is under the NIA scanner.

Others named in the tapes are Col Aditya Bappaditya Dhar (Parachute Regiment, now retired); Brig Mathur (full name not known, but he was apparently posted at Deolali Cantonment near Nashik); Maj Nitin Joshi and Maj Prayag Modak (in both cases, regiment not known).

The NIA has reportedly established contact with Col Dhar; it is yet to initiate investigations against the rest. Apart from these men, there is a Brig Lajpat Prajwal, apparently posted with the Nepal Army. According to the tapes, Purohit and he had trained together at IMA and that Purohit was in constant touch with Prajwal for logistic support. In one of his conversations with Col Purohit on the tapes, Col Dhar asks: Did you see one of my messages?

LT COL PUROHIT: Yes... About how this country should be taken over by the army?
COL DHAR: Yes, yes. I have written three lakh letters... I distributed three lakh letters among the jawans... It is not a political stunt... And I distributed 20,000 maps of Akhand Bharat among the jawans on 26 January... It is my humble attempt to sow the seeds.

Given these alarming ambitions and self-confessed acts of sedition, why haven’t their roles been probed more seriously yet? Why has the army itself not acted on them?

Maharashtra ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi, who was accused of going slow on the Malegaon probe, says: “We acted on the basis of evidence. The case against these armymen was not watertight. We did call some of them in, including Col Dhar, for questioning but there was nothing on the basis of which we could detain or arrest them.”

‘I gave 20,000 maps of Akhand Bharat to the jawans. It is my humble bid to sow the seeds,’ says Col Dhar

Interestingly, Raghuvanshi admits to a major handicap while interrogating the officers. “A MI official was always around monitoring our questioning. In the beginning, in fact, it was difficult to get hold of Lt Col Purohit because even though we presented a dossier of evidence against him the army insisted it’s their internal matter and they’d look into it themselves,” he says.

Finally, pressure from the home ministry worked and Purohit wa arrested. The army, however, has still not initiated action against its officials and court martial proceedings against Lt Col Purohit are yet to take off. Sources say the proceedings have been postponed under Section 7 of the Indian Soldiers Litigation Act, 1925. Since Purohit was serving under ‘special conditions’, the Act says a postponement is necessary in the interests of justice.

ANOTHER ATS official says, “Most of what Purohit says on the tapes about sending people to Nepal and Israel for training wasn’t taken seriously. That is the biggest blunder. The job of a MI officer posted along the Jammu & Kashmir border is to spread his net of informers, spies and get crucial information. Imagine what damage Purohit has already done while posted there. The entire truth on Purohit is still not out.”

That seems a very disturbing probability. The armymen named on the tapes are not mentioned casually. Sample snatches of this conversation between Lt Col Purohit, Maj Ramesh Upadhyay, Col Dhar, Dayanand Pandey, BL Sharma Prem, a twotime BJP MP, and RP Singh, an endocrinologist at Apollo Hospital and president of the World Hindu Federation.

LT COL PUROHIT:We have done two operations which have been successful and I got material support for them. On 24 June 2007, Col Lajpat Prajwal, now a Brigadier, had arranged our meeting with King Gyanendra Nobody in this country will be able to figure who is doing the work. If Major Saheb (Upadhyay) has 20 people, we (read Prajwal) will train them.

Terror taint RSS’ Indresh Kumar was linked to Ajmer blast PHOTO: SHAILENDRA PANDEY

RP SINGH: King Gyanendra’s close relative sat with us in Gorakhpur... We are constantly in touch with them... Maj Prayag Modak was the one who came to our meeting. There are Col Raikar and Col Hasmukh Patel, who are helping us in the training. Prajwal is from the side of Rani Aishwarya.

Col Dhar enters the room…

LT COL PUROHIT: Namaskar Dharji… (To the others) He has been in the army since 23 years and has been with me. He’s with the Parachute Regiment. I was also posted with him. Dhar sahib, let me introduce you to the people here. We are all on the same plane, Hindu rashtra…

LT COL PUROHIT:We also have General JJ Singh, he’s from the Maratha Regiment. As you know I have also been part of the Maratha regiment…

PANDEY: Ok…

LT COL PUROHIT: Swamiji, we haven’t spoken about certain things, but two operations have been done by us. One of our own captains has visited Israel for training and meeting and there was a very positive response… We demanded four things from Israel — continuous and uninterrupted supply of arms and training, our office with a saffron flag in Tel Aviv, political asylum and support for our cause of a Hindu Nation in the UN. Israel has asked us to show something on the ground and have promised at least a supply of arms and political asylum... I have a state-wise population of Muslims in each state but I have only three AK-47s. We couldn’t buy much earlier because we didn’t have funds.

MAJ UPADHYAY: AK-47 is available at Cox Bazaar in Gorakhpur, but mostly jihadis sell the weapons…

LT COL PUROHIT: You will get very expensive AKs…

PANDEY: Arrey, you get many AK guns.

LT COL PUROHIT: The Israelis ask us to give them proof of our involvement. What more proof do they need? We have completed two successful operations.

MAJ UPADHYAY: The Hyderabad blasts were executed by our man. Colonel will tell you about that.

PANDEY: What if this organisation is banned?

APTE: We will give it an international aspect... and a covert name. We have to fight. See, if you aren’t a Hindu, you are my enemy. I will be unsafe if you are alive…

Obviously, this was not just empty bragging. Purohit goes on to talk of Khetomi Sema, a leader of the banned insurgent group, Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland. Purohit says he had saved his life and Sema has issued a letter to all his generals to support Purohit’s cause. “He has promised to give us seven years of logistic support,” Purohit tells Pandey.

Purohit’s conversations further reveal that he had been using the army machinery to serve Abhinav Bharat. He says he was in the process of indoctrinating like-minded army officers who could serve in Abhinav Bharat. He also admits to catching and killing two Maoists in cold blood in Delhi.

LT COL PUROHIT: “I bought weapons worth Rs. 4 lakh in Assam. A police officer got me the weapons. It costs a lot. I had 3 lakh and I borrowed one more. I kept one pistol with me. I sent some weapons to Nepal. Our study is on… We will soon start action. We have got a list of top 5-6 Maoist financers. We’ll kill them first…You know one Assam DIG had informed me about two Maoists who had arrived in Delhi to kill me. We caught them at the Vasant Kunj Civic Centre. We kept them in a place at Munirka through the night. You know we have encroached upon a property in Munirka that has sewer lid inside the house. We got the information out of them, then killed them and threw them in the gutter.”

PUROHIT’S CONVERSATIONS also suggest an alarming shared mindset among sections of the army. At one point he tells Pandey, “There was a captain and a major posted in Delhi. I managed to do my work with them over the phone. This work otherwise would have taken more than three months. It happened because I belong to Sangh and he was also from Sangh. I didn’t even know him. He was from UP and he did the work in one day. Tapping such people (with Sangh background) is important.”

Sample another chat between them:

PANDEY: I have to attend a programme organised by one editor of Organiser, Deepak Rath, in Orissa on 17 February. This is his personal function.

LT COL PUROHIT: Is it in Bhubaneshwar city? Let me know, I will arrange my Orissa commander to receive you…

PANDEY: Do you know Narendra Modi?

LT COL PUROHIT: I have met him once or twice, but I don’t know him well.

PANDEY:Will you be interested if I arrange your meeting with him?

LT COL PUROHIT: Why not!

PANDEY: In fact, there is one Swami Aseemanandji....
He has good relations with Narendra Modi… I can arrange your meeting through him.

(Swami Aseemanand, a Kolkata native known as Jatin Chatterjee before he donned his ochre robes, came to the Dangs district of Gujarat to start a campaign to bring Christian converts back into the Hindu fold. A RSS man, he is said to be very close to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Aseemanand was arrested recently but the police have not shared any information gleaned from his interrogation.)

Elsewhere in the tapes, Purohit elaborates on other sinister strategies the Abhinav Bharat group plans on adopting against Muslims — including shooting people under false identities to create mayhem.

“I know that the army and the BSF don’t complement each other’s action,” says Purohit. “Nor there is any coordination between the BSF, CRPF and state police. So if I buy two army vehicles from the scrap and paint them with army colours and send them along with our people in army uniform into Meerut, they can just fire and come out of the situation easily. There is so much confusion in this country.”

The conversations on these tapes demand extreme vigilance. These statements were not recorded under police custody or during interrogation. They were voluntarily recorded by Pandey. Therefore, there can be no accusation of coercion or manipulation with regard to them. So the question is, how far did Lt Col Purohit’s influence run in the army? How vast was the network he had succeeded in building? Was he only a small link in a bigger, more dangerous, chain within the army?

In the Mecca Masjid blast, which brought the Abhinav Bharat under the scanner, the accused had used a combination of TNT and RDX. An IB official based in Mumbai raises a pertinent question: “Do you think Purohit can smuggle RDX and weapons from Jammu Army depot on his own? Can he alone sponsor sending men for military training to Nepal and Israel?”

This question has even more alarming implications when one recalls that in the narco reports of Nanded blasts accused, Himanshu Panse and Sanjay Bhaurao Chaudhury, first published by TEHELKA in 2006, the men clearly talk of how an army man named Mithun Chakrabarty had trained them to make the IEDs for the blasts at the Sinhagad Fort. The identity of this army man is yet to be established.

Going slow? ATS’ Raghuvanshi says the army tried to meddle PHOTO: SHAILENDRA PANDEY

A senior ATS Official told this reporter that after Lt Col Purohit’s arrest, there was a lot of pressure on them to downplay the role of the army. “We were told we couldn’t lower the morale of officers posted in sensitive positions. It could have a backlash. But with more cases involving military intelligence officials coming out, we could be overlooking a dangerous trend.”

The MI is a small but important corps, and a relatively new addition to the army structure. It is currently headed by Gen Lumba. MI officers are tasked to track spies and other security threats and, outside the country, are mostly active in China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Japan, USA and Russia. Many MI cadre officers (Lt Col Purohit was one of them) do not wear uniforms and work in conjunction with the IB, BSF (‘G’ Force) and other intelligence agencies. MI officials work in field formations and report to their respective commanders. Nobody, except the commander, would know they are part of MI.

What makes the story of Lt Col Purohit so dark is that the Indian Army has never been suspected of any communal overtones. But as an IB official says: “There was a time when the army would not think twice about religious identity when they entered the Golden Temple to arrest the terrorists holed inside. But after the 1992 Ayodhya movement, things have changed. The political climate has affected the army too in a big way, especially among officers posted along the border. Look at Lt Col Purohit. His indoctrination happened during his posting in Kashmir.”

THE UNMAPPED SCALE of the army connection, however, is not the only missing piece in the ultra-Hindu terror puzzle. In December 2007, Sunil Joshi, an RSS man suspected of a key role in the Ajmer blast and of being a link between several ultra-right groups like Abhinav Bharat, Vande Mataram and other fringe elements was mysteriously murdered. His family said he had been bumped off by his own organisation. Sadhvi Pragya confirmed this. According to her, a man named Mayank had probably killed Joshi. Despite these clues, the MP Police closed the case.

Clued in Hemant Karkare pursued the ‘saffron terror’ angle PHOTO: DEEPAK SALVI

Earlier this week, however, the MP Police finally accepted that Joshi was murdered by his own friends in the RSS. They charged Mayank, Harshad Solanki, Mehul and Mohan from Gujarat, Anand Raj Katare from Indore and Vasudev Parmar from Dewas with Joshi’s murder. While Mehul and Mohan are still on the run, Solanki was brought before the Dewas court last week and confessed to the murder. (Solanki is also an accused in the infamous Best Bakery case, Gujarat 2002.) This development validates what TEHELKA had reported back in 2008.

However, even these arrests don’t join all the dots. The MP Police have claimed internal rivalry as the motive for the murder. The CBI though believes the real culprits in the RSS behind Joshi’s murder are also the men responsible for the blasts. Their hunch is, if Joshi were alive today, most of the masterminds would have been unmasked. Joshi was known to be close to senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar. Their question is why did the two fall out?

The MP Police, Rajasthan ATS and CBI are all looking into the Ajmer, Mecca Masjid and Samjhauta blasts. However, their investigations do not have the same conclusions.

This October, the Rajasthan ATS filed a chargesheet linking Indresh to the Ajmer blasts. They said he attended a secret meeting in Jaipur on October 25, 2005 in which the conspiracy for the Ajmer blast was drawn up. The meeting was allegedly attended by Indresh, Pragya Thakur, Sunil Joshi, Ramji Kalsangra, Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma and Sandeep Dange. The chargesheet hinted the same people were responsible for the Samjhauta blast. The chargesheet, however, did not list Indresh as an accused. And Dange and Kalsangra are still on the run.

The CBI, which is also probing the case, blames the Rajasthan ATS for not making sufficient headway in pinning down the role of the RSS. “They have helped RSS men like Indresh create an alibi by alerting them with witness statements that are not credible evidence in the court of law. This has allowed him time to concoct documents to prove he was not physically present at various places,” says an investigating official.

Confusingly, however, Lt Col Purohit and his co-conspirators on the tapes also curse Indresh as a sell-out and wish they could kill him.

Source: http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main48.asp?filename=Ne010111The_unturned.asp

Caught on tape – Gujarat minister admits influencing Ishrat probe

A key aide to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who was then a minister of state for home, had told a closed-door meeting of confidantes on 19 November 2011, that he had tried to influence a police officer investigating the encounter killing of Ishrat Jahan and three other men in 2004 to go easy on the police officers involved in it.
“I had called up (investigating police officer) Satish Verma to my house despite knowing the dangers of it,” the then Minister of State for Home Praful Patel is heard saying in an audio recording of the conversation that one of the participants, police officer GL Singhal who is now an accused in the case, had secretly made. “I had spoken to him (Verma) for more than four hours and had told him to help these 18 persons (who were involved in the encounter).”
The audio recording is now in exclusive possession with TEHELKA. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has submitted these tapes to the trial court in a sealed envelope. The high court had in 2009 made Verma a part of a Special Investigative Team it set up to investigate the encounter. Two days after the meeting where the secret audio recording was made, the SIT filed its report before the court in which it concluded that the encounter was fake.
Besides Patel and Singhal, others in that meeting included Gujarat Advocate-General Kamal Trivedi; senior IAS officer and Modi confidante GC Murmu; Singhal’s lawyer Rohit Verma; then minister of state for law Pradipsinh Jadeja, another accused police officer Tarun Barot and the then Ahmedabad Crime Branch joint commissioner AK Sharma.
In the audio recording, Singhal is heard voicing concern that if the high court accepts the SIT’s report and orders for an FIR to be filed, then many police offices who had earlier given statements supporting the claim that the encounter was genuine might wilt. “We have done tremendous damage control in the past one year. They (SIT) have taken statements of 300 people but only 2 statements went against us. The remaining 298 statements remained consistent despite the fact that they were called several times,” Singhal says. However, if a fresh FIR is registered many of them will be rattled. Their confidence is very high but they may change if the SIT gets an option.” In another conversation, Trivedi and Murmu are heard discussing the Supreme Court bench and if it can be influenced.
The then law minister Jadeja tells the others in the meeting that Amit Shah, who was the minister of state for home before Patel but had to resign after being named in another encounter, was constantly following the case and is on the phone time and again. Further Murmu and Trivedi are heard trying to reach Narendra Modi on the phone to appraise him of the situation and details of the meeting
TEHELKA had in July broken the exclusive story that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which was asked by the high court to prosecute the officers involved, would be interrogating IB director Rajinder Kumar for his role in the Ishrat Jahan encounter. The CBI filed its chargesheet in the case on 4 July.

Source: http://www.tehelka.com/tehelka-expose-validated-cbi-says-ishrat-jahan-encounter-fake/

How the dead haunt

The Gujarat government tried to scuttle the investigation into the Ishrat Jahan killing. Ajit Sahi goes behind the scenes to discover how the state’s conspiracy boomeranged in its face

 

 

See how a innocent Software Engineer Taj-ul Kazi Siddiqui has been arrested of false & fabricated charges by the communal police force and after he lost everything, police says they have no evidence against him

Ten months after being arrested as a ‘terrorist’ for his alleged role in the 2002 bomb blast case in Mumbai, a techie from Hyderabad has been cleared of all charges. The Mumbai police have admitted to the special court here that they found ‘no evidence’ against him.

Much before his arrest, for 10 years, the police had been claiming that Taj-ul Kazi Siddiqui, 40, was the main conspirator of the 2002 Ghatkopar bus blast case.

In a charge sheet filed in 2003, he was named one of the 29 accused and was shown as wanted.

On November, 2012, a team of Mumbai police arrested him from Hyderabad and booked him under stringent sections of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and various sections of the Indian Penal Code. He was later released on bail in April, 2013.

Settled in Hyderabad for almost a decade, Mr. Siddiqui was a senior employee with HCL. He was immediately terminated from his job, for being ‘allegedly’ involved in ‘terror’ activities. For 10 months, his family repeatedly claimed that he was innocent.

No evidence

On August 1, Mumbai police informed the special POTA court that they found ‘no evidence’ against Mr. Siddiqui.

“He was not found involved in the case after investigation of related papers. After studying the mirror image of his laptop’s hard disk, no evidence of his involvement in the case or objectionable matter was found,” said the application submitted by the police. It also said that his e-mail accounts were checked and no evidence linking him to the blast case was found.

“Since no evidence against the accused has been found, it will be appropriate to discharge him from the case,” said the application.

Following the submission by the Mumbai police, special judge P.K. Chavan discharged him on August 8.

“He lost his job and reputation after the arrest. The police thought he was the prime accused, but could not gather a single piece of evidence against him. After causing such damage to his life, they finally admit that there is no evidence against him,” said Rebecca Gonsalves, Mr. Siddiqui’s lawyer.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/hyderabad-techie-cleared-of-terror-charges-10-months-after-arrest/article5017380.ece

10 Gujarat Muslim traders forced out of business take their plight to NCM.

At a time when western diplomats and investors are making a beeline to seek favours from Gujarat chief minister Narindra Modi, atleast 10 Gujarati Muslim traders have alleged having been forced to close down businesses over past one month.

At a time when western diplomats and investors are making a beeline to seek favours from Gujarat chief minister Narindra Modi, atleast 10 Gujarati Muslim traders have alleged having been forced to close down businesses over past one month. The latest complaint was been filed on Thursday by hotelier Mustafa Patel, who claims to have  shut down his Jyoti Hotel on Viramgam highway, 90 minute drive from Ahmedabad, after receiving threats.

According to Patel, local politicians forced him to close down his business on February 9.
His petition says that despite court orders police has refused to provide him protection.
Confirming that the Commission has received complaints related to preventing people to operate their businesses, chairman Wajahat Habibullah said he has sought reports form Gujarat government.

Earlier the Commission had received complaints from nine traders of Chhota Udepur, alleging their businesses have been ruined. The complaint says, that sarpanch of village Baroj, Jayanti Rathwa engineered a riot in the area to take away the luxury transport business from his competitor Irfan Abdul Ghani. The region witnessed communal clashes on February 12 following a minor altercation between Adivasis and Muslims. 

“On February 12, many minority industries were attacked, set to fire. SP, DIG went there, FIRs were lodged but till today no one has been arrested,” adds the complaint.

According to a report earlier released by an NGO Anhad, the miscreants in the area, burnt down plastic godown. Despite being named in the FIR, they  have not been arrested owing to their allegiance to a local don with strong  political backing, the report alleged. When the trader from minority community had attempted to restart his business, the godown was set to fire once again on March 8. Three days after fields belonging to Muslims caught fire and a person responsible was caught red handed.

“He had come with 3-4 people. His initial statement indicated that someone had asked him to do this but the local police told him to record on video that he dropped a beedi by mistake and it caught fire,” said the complaint filed before the NCM. The traders say,
Muslims and Advisasi have lived together in the area for centuries and smell a conspiracy to create bad blood by forcing minority community out of business in the region.

Those who have been forced to close down their business are Kasim Ahmed (scrap dealer), Ahmed Airf (minerals), Farooq Bhai (power production unit), Yakub Mohammad (mineral production), Saifudin Ali (power production), Ahmed Khoka (power), Shabir Bhai (mineral production), Majid Khan (power) and Harun Abdul Malajher (mines).

Reacting strongly to the complaints to the NCM, Gujarat government spokesperson and state finance minister Nitin Patel refuted all the claims. “There are thousands of minority traders and merchants prospering in Gujarat. Hundreds are doing their business in the walled city areas of Ahmedabad.

No such incidents have happened in the state, where traders or any other person has been forced to shut down their business just because they belong to minority community.

This is Gujarat and traders of all the communities and religions have flourished here without any bias of discrimination. This is an effort to malign Gujarat’s image,” said Patel.

Source:http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1817054/report-10-gujarat-muslim-traders-forced-out-of-business-take-their-plight-to-ncm

Freedom fighter, 87, called an ISI agent by Gujarat police

Cops barge into Santosh Saha�s home; he sends legal notice to government.

An 87-year-old freedom fighter has accused the Sabarmati police of harassing him by alleging falsely that he belongs to Bangladesh and has links with the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI.

The octogenarian, Santosh Kumar Saha, has sent a legal notice to the state�s home secretary, the director general of police (DGP) and the Ahmedabad police commissioner, about the alleged police harassment. Saha has alleged that he was called to the Sabarmati police station for questioning.

Saha is a freedom fighter who participated in the Quit India movement in 1942 on the call of Mahatma Gandhi. Even the state government pays him a freedom fighters� pension, after an order was passed by the Gujarat high court in this regard in 2007.

He now lives alone in the Sabarmati area of the city, as his wife died some years back. His son, who was an engineer with the Ahmedabad Electricity Company (AEC), died while still young. In the legal notice, Saha�s lawyer, SH Iyer, has called the behaviour of the police worse than that of British rulers. The notice alleges that, on November 10 evening, two policemen barged into Saha�s house.

Before he could understand what was going on, they started questioning Saha, claiming that they had received some �information� about his being a Bangladeshi�. The policemen asked him to present himself before the police inspector of the Sabarmati police station. 

Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1311491/report-freedom-fighter-87-called-an-isi-agent-by-gujarat-police

The Muslim Question: Stories of false terror. (A Compilation of cases by Tahelka)

On March 25, 2013, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde promised fast-track courts to try Muslim citizens accused of terrorist activities. Even as a stated intent, this is a watershed moment in the battle to secure justice for hundreds of innocent Muslims rotting in prisons despite a complete lack of evidence. Since 2001, when SIMI, a radical Muslim students’ outfit, was banned, young Muslim boys have been arrested as a cynical default mode, prejudged and condemned by the media, public and security establishment even before trials could begin. The poisonous idea that “Every Muslim is not a terrorist but every terrorist is a Muslim” had seeped into the country’s consciousness. No one was interested in the facts.
This began to change substantially in August 2008, when Tehelka began to publish a series of in-depth investigations into such cases. The colossal scale of abuse and injustice was brought into the public domain for the first time. Over the last five years, Tehelka’s reporters, Ashish Khetan, Ajit Sahi, Rana Ayyub, Harinder Baweja, Baba Umar, Imran Khan, Brijesh Pandey, G. Vishnu and Zahid Rafiq have exposed hundreds of such cases. Here is a compendium of this reportage. Tehelka’s pathbreaking coverage on the subject has undoubtedly changed the discourse on counterterrorism in India. But the battle for justice will remain unfinished until all the accused who are innocent are absolved of false charges, rehabilitated and compensated for their terrible suffering. And the guilty get punished.

 

 

The fight for Muslims is fundamental for the survival of our democracy

SOME YEARS ago, at a TEHELKA press conference, a young Muslim man walked up to TEHELKA Editor Tarun Tejpal and held his hand in deep gratitude. “If it had not been for your journalists, we would long have picked up the gun. Your work gives us hope, Sir,” he said. “You help us believe we belong to this country.”
It was one of those rare moments of vindication journalists live for. The young man’s father, a respected maulvi, was falsely incarcerated then. We had just written his story. He would be acquitted a few years later.  Read More>

~Tehelka Coverage~

EXPOSÉ: The SIMI Fictions
In a crucial investigation over three months, Editor-at-Large Ajit Sahi tracked the SIMI fictions across 11 cities —Trivandrum, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Udaipur, Bhopal, Mumbai, Delhi, Aurangabad, Ahmedabad and Gorakhpur. His findings are alarming and distressing. They demand urgent introspection and corrective action.  Read More>
In The Words Of A Zealot…
ON 18 DECEMBER 2010, a team of CBI sleuths escorted an elderly Bengali man Naba Kumar Sarkar, 59 — popularly known as Swami Aseemanand — from Tihar jail to the Tis Hazari court in Delhi, where he was produced before metropolitan magistrate Deepak Dabas. Aseemanand is the key accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast that killed nine people. This was his second court appearance in a span of little over 48 hours. On 16 December, Aseemanand had requested the magistrate to record his confession about his involvement in a string of terror attacks. He stated that he was making the confession without any fear, force, coercion or inducement. Read More>
An Angry Hall Of Fall Guys. And Unfair Arrests
A dangerous prejudice had slipped into the Indian criminal justice system: if there was a blast, a Muslim was behind it. For this, these 32 Muslims had to pay for blasts done by Hindutva extremists. Ashish Khetan reports.
Read More >

Chilling Confession

The Gujarat Police took quick credit for arresting the masterminds behind the July 2008 blasts in Ahmedabad. Rana Ayyub tracks the police’s star witness to find he has been tortured into falsely implicating the ‘masterminds’. An exclusive report
Read More >

Malegaon Files

The blasts chargesheet is silent on the role of other right-wing groups, says Rana Ayyub
Read More >

Deceptive Piety

Is Goa blast accused Sanatan Sanstha merely a harmless religious organisation or a dangerous cult that will stop at nothing? Rana Ayyub finds out.
Read More >

Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah Called Cops Arrested For Killing Tulsi Prajapati

Rana Ayyub gets hold of crucial call records on which the CBI is building its case.
Read More >

BREAKTHROUGH EXPOSÉ: So Why Is Narendra Modi Protecting Amit Shah?

‘The calls made by the minister are not part of official decorum. Their frequency is unnatural and uncommon in nature.’ — Gujarat CID report on Amit Shah’s calls to encounter cops  Read More >

First On Tehelka: Amit Shah In The Dock

Former Home Minister Amit Shah will be questioned by the CBI between July 28 and July 30 in Sabarmati Jail. The CBI has obtained permission for the interrogation to be recorded on camera – to guard against future retractions. Tehelka first retrieved the call records that implicated Shah in the encounter killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Kauser Bi.  Read More >

Malegaon. Mecca Masjid. Ajmer Sharif. Why Are Tapes Implicating Ultra Hindutva Outfits In Terror Blasts Gathering Dust?

 Tehelka has accessed 37 audio tapes, two videos and several witness statements that cast further light on the Malegaon blasts case of 2008  Read More >

Together, They Ran The Home Ministry. If Amit Shah Is In The Dock, Modi Cannot Remain Unscathed

SINCE THE sensational arrest of Gujarat junior Home Minister Amit Shah last week, the BJP has been crying hoarse about a Congress conspiracy; about the CBI being a “Congress bureau of investigation”; and of how the case against Shah is built on legally flimsy grounds.  Read More >

The Unturned Stone

The Malegaon blast probe threw up 37 audiotapes in which ultra-Hindu groups plot terror attacks. These tapes expose a shocking nexus between Military Intelligence men and the outfits. Two years later, why is this still unexplored, asks Rana Ayyub  Read More >

The Terror. The Threat. The Twist

Rana Ayyub examines the phenomenon of the Indian Mujahideen.
Read More >

Hoisting An Old Trick

The BJP in Karnataka is fanning communal fears to consolidate the Hindu vote, reports Imran Khan
Read More >

Who Will Pay For Injustice Done To These Nine Men?

ASHISH KHETAN exposes the elaborate and cynical charade of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad to implicate a bunch of Muslim men in terrorist strikes aimed at members of their own community
Read More >

Not Just A Confession. Forensic Evidence Piles Up Against Hindutva Terror

Over the past three years the evidence gathered by the agencies against a team of RSS pracharaks and lunatic Hindutva groups like Abhinav Bharat and Jai Vande Matram is compelling
Read More >

Ghost Of Fake Encounters Comes Back To Haunt Gujarat

A CBI progress report on the four fake encounters of 2004-2007 in Gujarat establishes what TEHELKA has been saying all along. Now, senior policemen and IB officials face arrests in these cases, says Rana Ayyub
Read More >

Dead Man Talking

It’s not just Ishrat Jahan. Rana Ayyub accesses exclusive intelligence inputs and pieces together a damning trail on another encounter in Gujarat. The story of Sadiq Jamal’s death raises uncomfortable questions the government might find difficult to answer.
Read More >

More Questions No Answers
IN MORE placid times, Motilal Nagar, No. 2 would be just another by lane in one just another one of Mumbai’s suburbs — one with a predominantly Muslim population. However, it has been attracting continuous media attention for the last couple of months ever since one of its residents — 37-yearold Faheem Ansari — was taken into custody by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch for his role in the terror attacks of 26/11.
Read More>

How Do You Keep The Faith?
TEHELKA BEGAN 2011 with the publication of Swami Asimananda’s stunning confession (In the words of a zealot, by Ashish Khetan, 15 January), which not only changed the terror discourse in the country but also the lives of seven Muslim men who were arrested after the 2006 blasts that took 37 lives in Malegaon, Maharashtra. Last week, six of them, hailing from different strata of Muslim society, returned home to a rousing welcome after getting bail. But the family of Mohammad Zahid, the poorest of the lot, will perhaps have to wait longer.
Read More >

 ‘I’m Jobless. I Can’t Start A Business Also Because Friends Refuse Me Loans’
SYED WASIF HAIDER, a resident of Kanpur, UP, was jailed for eight years, before the courts finally acquitted him of all charges on 14 August 2009. As a part of the delegation meeting the president on 18 November, he had only one thing to say: “Please stop the media from defaming me. I was declared innocent in 2009. Yet, the local media drags my name in whenever there’s a blast. I’m facing a social boycott. Children in the locality don’t play with a ‘terrorist’s’ daughters. Relatives feel police will hound them for visiting me.”
Read More >
From Death To Acquittal, A Journey Of Two Men
THEY HAD been handed out the harshest sentence the penal code allows — death. But on 22 November, 16 years after they were charged, the Delhi High Court set aside their death sentences, acquitting Mahmud Ali Bhat, 43, and Mirza Nissar Hussain, 32, of any involvement in the 1996 Lajpat Nagar bomb blasts.
Read More >

‘My Family Saw A Disorder In Me, But That Had Become My Order’
SYED MAQBOOL SHAH of Kashmir has a similar story of injustice and wrongful incarceration. In the bylanes of Srinagar’s Lal Bazaar, Shah’s two-storey decrepit house in Jan Mohalla has become a wellknown structure. Those looking for direction to this house are guided till the gate.
Read More >

‘Justice Made Me Realise That I Was Guilty Until Proven Innocent’
FOURTEEN YEARS is a long time. Wiping away the tears streaming down his cheeks, Mohammad Aamir recounts his experience of when he stepped out of the Rohtak Jail on 9 January 2012.
Read  More >

Terror That Wasn’t
THE SPECIAL CELL of the Delhi Police was formed in 1986 as a counter-terrorism force. It shot into prominence in the late 1990s, claiming to have killed many terrorists and to have solved several cases. In time, some of its officers began to figure in extortion cases and dubious encounters. Tellingly, over the last four months, lower courts in Delhi have acquitted nine “terrorists” arrested by the Special Cell. Four such “terrorists” were arrested after an encounter in southwest Delhi in March 2005. Police claimed they had averted a major terrorist attack on the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun. Five years later, all four men were acquitted. Brijesh Pandey profiles the four terrorists who never were.
Read More >

The Storyteller Becomes The Story
ON 13 FEBRUARY, Syed Ahmed Kazmi was sitting in television news studios as an expert on Iran soon after the bombing of the car carrying the Israel Defence Attaché’s wife in New Delhi. Kazmi, who had widely reported on West Asia, fearlessly spoke his mind, rubbishing Israel’s claim that the attack was masterminded by Iran.
Read  More >

‘I Was Picked Up Because I Lived In The Same House As The Other Accused’
Muthi-Ur-Rahman Siddique, a journalist with the Deccan Herald in Bengaluru, was arrested last year, along with 14 others, in an alleged plot to assassinate prominent Right-leaning journalists and politicians in Karnataka. The National Investigating Agency (NIA) took over the case from the Karnataka police two months ago and dropped charges against Siddique and a co-accused, Yusuf Nalband. Siddique was released on 25 February. In a conversation with Imran Khan, Siddique shares his six-month ordeal behind the bars, and how the tag of a ‘mastermind’ affected his life and family.
Read More>

Tihar jail has 53 Kashmiris. Like Dar, most were framed
GHULAM MOHIDEEN Dar suffered for no cause, no idea, no movement — just for being a Kashmiri. A thought that haunts him as he adjusts to new realities of life after being freed from a long incarceration. Dar contested the 2004 Parliamentary election from the Pulwama-Islamabad constituency as an independent candidate and later joined the Congress. He was also a dealer in Gulnar tea, and frequently came to Delhi on business. On one such trip on 15 June 2005, Dar met the then minister of state for defence and also sought an appointment with the President.
Read More >

‘I Was Forbidden From Receiving Religious Books In Jail’
Forty-nine-year-old Anjum Zamarud Habib, founding member of the Hurriyat Conference, was falsely implicated under POTA. Habib’s memoir Prisoner No 100 is a rare and shocking account of a tortured five years in Tihar jail and a critique of the judicial system. She talks to Yamini Deenadayalan on a visit to Delhi (a place she “never feels free in and fears”). Edited excerpts.
Read More >

How Police Hid The Truth For 15 Years

In 1996, four people were bundled into a police van. One escaped, while there’s still no news of the other three. Baba Umar travels to Bhaderwah to expose the cover-up
Read More >

‘I Don’t Feel Any Purpose In Life Now’

Mirza Iftikhar Hussain, 40
Namchebal, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir by Baba Umar
 Read More >

Came For Work, Got Sentenced Instead

Shakeel Ahmad Khan, 50
Hazratbal, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir by Baba Umar 
Read More >

Life In Jail Was Hell, It Is No Better Outside

Syed Maqbool Shah, 32
Lal Bazaar, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir by Baba Umar 
Read More >

Grounded For 5 Years, Will He Ever Fly Again?

Imran Ahmad Kirmani, 29
Nelipora hamlet, Handwara Jammu & Kashmir by Baba Umar 
Read More >

‘I Was Forbidden From Receiving Religious Books In Jail’

Forty-nine-year-old Anjum Zamarud Habib, founding member of the Hurriyat Conference, was falsely implicated under POTA. Habib’s memoir Prisoner No 100 is a rare and shocking account of a tortured five years in Tihar jail and a critique of the judicial system. She talks to Yamini Deenadayalan on a visit to Delhi (a place she “never feels free in and fears”). Edited excerpts.  Read More >

The War On Terror & Its Collateral Damage

Over 10 years in jail. For a crime they did not commit. Baba Umar on the Muslims whose lives became hell in false terror cases 
Read More >

‘I’m Jobless. I Can’t Start A Business Also Because Friends Refuse Me Loans’

Syed Wasif Haider
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh by Baba Umar  
Read More >

‘My Family Saw A Disorder In Me, But That Had Become My Order’

Syed Maqbool Shah
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh by Baba Umar  
Read More >

From Death To Acquittal, A Journey Of Two Men

The acquittal of two men on death row raises questions on the process of terror probes in India, says Baba Umar  
 Read More >

 

 

The war on terror & its collateral damage 

Tehelka Exposé helped in nailing Amit Shah 

  The CBI is now saying what Tehelka said then 

  ‘They just want Muslim boys to always be in jail’