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Hyping the Islamist Threat: Stenographers at Work Again: A response from JTSA

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Following is the text of the letter by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association (JTSA) sent to Indian Express in response to the story, “First Islamic State ‘Module’”. An edited version of the letter was carried by the newspaper in the letters section today.

ISIS_EXpress

Dear Editors,

We are writing in response to the front-page sensational story about the busting of the “First Islamic State ‘Module’” in India (Indian Express, 6th May 2015). Except for the names of the accused and their alleged links to IS, it is a typical agency-fed story with vague details. Such are the ‘facts’ offered by this story: the accused visited Dubai in search of employment, but remained unsuccessful; that the accused joined an Islamic proselytizing and charitable group and was frustrated by its “quietism”. Even the story admits that these details are from a disclosure made to police, which is inadmissible under law.

The rest is of course filled in with inputs from friendly security agencies. If one were to run a simple google search on the line “they were planning strikes in India, highly placed police and intelligence sources said”, it would emerge as the single most used line in terror reporting. This, combined with the same unnamed sources revealing the dark and dangerous contents of the computers seized from the accused have now become the staple of so-called investigative reporting. It will no doubt be useful for getting extended police remands on the plea that forensic investigation is going on and the accused are required to be questioned.

The story speaks about “increasing numbers” of Indians joining the ranks of IS. Really? How many? Half a dozen? Ten? It’s a typical ruse to hype a threat. One can be sure that the reporters’ assertion about “fears more [IS modules] could be forming elsewhere” will be borne out by more arrests in the near future. Breathless reporting and commentary is bound to follow. We have seen in the past narratives about ‘terror organizations’ congealing in a similar manner, where IB dossiers and news reports feed into each other.

Years down the line, when the cases come to fruition, these investigative journalists will not bother to re-visit their own news story. We have seen this being played out in scores of so-called SIMI, HUJI, LeT cases around the country. In any case, guilt or innocence is not important, what matters is that “IS in India” becomes part of our commonsense. For some reason, Indian Mujahideen seems to have gone out of favour, and SIMI remains too mofussil for an international angle.

Its just disturbing that Indian Express should offer itself up for this.

Sd/-

Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association

When poetry is held unlawful . . . JTSA in solidarity with artists and poets of Kabir Kala Manch

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Kabir Kala Manch

by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association

On April 10, 2015 Bombay High court refused bail to Sachin Mali, Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor of Kabir Kala Manch (KKM), who have remained in jail for two years without a trial. They are not charged with committing violence, or possessing weapons or contraband; it was their singing and their songs that were found unlawful. The KKM poets and artists had been forced to go into hiding in 2011 following the arrest and torture of two of their members by the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS). They were charged with collaborating with Naxalites; their art was branded ideologically Maoist. In January 2013, the two arrested members of KKM were given bail which prompted Sachin, Sagar, Ramesh and Sheetal Sathe to come out of hiding. In April 2013 the four sang in front of the Maharashtra Assembly in a peaceful, musical satyagraha and were arrested. Since then, Sheetal Sathe has got bail.

In its order, the Bombay High Court found no merit in the bail application and denied bail to the three applicants merely because ‘they are charged for offence under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act’. As if being charged of a crime is in itself the proof of guilt. Denying bail on grounds of the accusations alone amounts to a perversion of the first principle of justice — that one is innocent until proven guilty. JTSA has, in fact, documented many cases where under-trials charged with the most heinous crimes have spent years in jail, only to be acquitted later. In our view, the denial of bail in this case is in line with the way the UAPA has been unleashed by the State over people to silence any dissent and to instill fear into all of us.

The entire KKM case is a story of hounding of a group of Ambedkarite artists and poets performing for those people who the powerful think have no use of art; indeed have no claim to humanity. To be sure, it is not the first instance of its kind when poetry in defence of the powerless has been held to be illegal. Neither is it the first time when artists have been held criminal for producing art. Poets like Pablo Neruda, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Fredrico Garcia Lorca, Nazim Hikmet have been hounded by repressive regimes. In India, we appear to have reached the stage when the recital of life as it is, has become a criminal act that must be brutally silenced. The UAPA by including within its definition of an ‘unlawful activity’ as “any action taken by individual or association (whether by committing an act or by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representation or otherwise)”, institutionalizes the silencing of art that speaks of life, and every thought and idea that challenges the dominant narratives of caste and social inequality. Even though the Bombay High Court while granting bail to four members of KKM in 2013 had unequivocally held that mere membership of banned organizations cannot be grounds for incarceration, nor can speaking, writing or singing about socio-economic injustices be criminalized – it even held section 20 of UAPA to be in conflict with Article 19 of the Indian Constitution – in reality, on the ground, UAPA is invoked regularly to intimidate and jail those who dissent.

JTSA expresses solidarity with poets and artists of Kabir Kala Manch who participate in people’s struggles by writing and singing about structural and caste violence. We laud their role as the voice of the voiceless. We condemn the gagging of their art whose content is made up of the most common concerns of humanity. We assert that their role is to not just sympathise eloquently with people’s plight but that their voice is an appeal to the conscious of the wider society. To suppress this voice is the worst form of oppression.

Reign in the trigger-happy police force in Andhra and Telangana – statement by JTSA

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fake_encounter

by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association

JTSA condemns the killing of over 20 woodcutters in the Seshachalam forests and the 5 under-trials in Nalagonda (Telangana). In the first case, reports are already emerging that 7 of those killed, were taken in police custody a day before the encounter. This, along with other details such as bullet injuries on the chest, head and face, contradict the police version of the events. The scale of this violence is unprecedented and suggests how entrenched the culture of impunity is in the state police.

The photographic and video evidence emerging from the police van in which five undertrials – alleged terrorists – were killed by the police party, which was escorting them from Warangal jail to a court in Hyderabad strongly suggests this to be a case of cold-blooded execution in custody. The arms on the dead bodies of these five men – with their hands handcuffed to the seats of the police vehicle – appear to be clearly planted in order to ‘dress’ this up as an exchange of fire. Is it a mere coincidence that the judgment in the case of these five men was due to be pronounced soon?

All efforts must be made to ensure that the post mortem reports and other evidence such as ballistics and the clothes worn by the deceased in both the cases are secured and not tampered with. Time-bound high level judicial probes must be conducted into both the killings. Simultaneously, cases of unnatural death must be filed immediately and special public prosecutors appointed in consultation with the families to prosecute the policemen who participated in the massacres.

The media must follow these cases right through to their logical end in the fixing of accountability and not be satisfied with merely reporting the events as they have taken place.

However, the recent judgment on Hashimpura reveals the problems germane to doing justice to victims of encounters and custodial violence, that are near rampant. While the judgment does not deny the incident of 42 Muslim men being killed in cold blood by the PAC, there were no convictions because of the extremely weak nature of the evidence put forward by the prosecution. There is a need for a clear mechanism whereby either the prosecution or investigating agencies can themselves be held accountable. In heinous crimes such as cold-blooded massacres, how can there be no means to ensure that the investigating agencies and prosecution do their duty in fixing responsibility? Unless such a procedure or mechanism is evolved, justice will always elude the mechanical and cynical application of laws.

Not enough evidence to prosecute Amit Shah? – Statement by Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Association

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Amit-Shah

by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association, JTSA

Even by the plummeting standards set in the last few months, the decision of the special CBI court in discharging Amit Shah, (accused no. 16 in the second chargesheet; accused no. 1 in the third chargesheet) in the Sohrabuddin encounter case, seems outrageous.

The Special CBI court without waiting for even the trial to commence, without weighing the evidence at length, seems to have suddenly concurred with the defence and the ruling party’s view that Amit Shah was caught in a political trap. Why this impatience with the process of the trial? And Shah is no ordinary accused, or accessory with a side role: he is accused of being the “king pin” or the mastermind of the triple murder.

“The entire record considered in totality”, says the court does not indicate to Shah’s role, and hence discharged him. However, what is the entire record? Even a simple, cursory looks suggest that in fact it is not hearsay but solid evidence of call details records, witness statements recorded under 161 and 164 CrPC, as well evidence of systematic and direct interference by Shah in the state CID probe into the encounter.

If the call details records were totally insignificant and proved nothing, why was there such a concerted effort to suppress all such information that pointed to Shah’s role?

The state CID investigations, which first led to the arrests of the senior police offcers, had taken on record phone call details between Shah and accused police officers. However, once the Supreme Court directed the transfer of investigation to the CBI, the CID failed to hand over the CD containing these phone conversations. A total of 331 conversations had been deleted from the record.

(“Another top cop under scanner for ‘erasing’ Amit Shah reference in CD” by Neeraj Chauhan and Ujjwala Nayudu, Indian Express, 27 July 2010.

Link here: http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/another-top-cop-under-scanner-for–erasing–amit-shah-reference-in-cd/652299)

Shah attempted to sabotage CID enquiry

IGP Gita Johri, who was made in charge of the state CID investigation, recorded in Part B of her first report, how Shah attempted to sabotage the enquiry. She has recorded that though she and the Investigating Officer Solanki did not face any “hurdle” initially, “However, as soon as the statements of witnesses pertaining to confinement of Sohrabuddin and Kausarbi in the Farm House of Shri Girish Patel at Ahmedabad came to be recorded, it came to the knowledge of Shri Vanzara and Shri Rajkumar Pandian [two of the accused officers]. It is further learnt that these officers brought the above facts to the notice of Respondent No. 2, Shri Amit Shah, Minister of State for Home, Government of Gujarat.”

It further states that Shah “brought to bear pressure” on the enquiry process, resulting in the enquiry papers being taken away from her “under the guise of scrutiny”. He “directed Shri G.C. Raigar, Additional Director General of Police, CID (Crime & Railways) to provide him with the list of witnesses, both police and private, who are yet to be contacted by CID (Crime) for recording their statement in the said enquiry. Such direction of Minister of State for Home goes beyond the scope of his office, was patently illegal and apparently designed to provide the same list to accused police officers … so as to enable them to take measures in their defence.”

(See “Geetha Johri report speaks of ‘collusion of State government’”, By Neena Vyas, 5 May 2007, The Hindu. Link here: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article1838149.ece)

Creative Reading by the CBI Court:

The CBI court did not entertain a note written by Gita Johri, in which the sentence “systematic efforts on the part of the state government” was struck out. The CBI’s case had been that this sentence had been omitted under Shah’s political pressure, whereas the court interpreted it to mean that Johri was not happy with the investigation done by the investigating officer. This is a flight of fancy, if there can be one. In fact, it is a matter of record that Johri’s initial investigation, before she was removed, proved to be path breaking. However, when she was reinstated, she took a complete U-turn. So chaffed was the apex court with her that he chastised her, while praising the investigation of the IO Solanki. The Supreme Court observed the following:

“69. We have observed that from the record, it was found that Mr VL Solanki, an investigating officer, was proceeding in the right direction, but Ms Johri had not been carrying out the investigation in the right manner, in view of our discussions made here in above. It appears that Ms Johri had not made any reference to the second report of Solanki, and that though his first report was attached with one of her reports, the same was not forwarded to this Court.

  1. In the present circumstances and in view of the involvement of the police officials the State in this crime, we cannot shut our eyes and direct the State police authorities to continue with the investigation and the charge-sheet and for a proper and fair investigation, we also feel that CBI should be requested to take up the investigation and submit a report in this Court within six months from the date of handing over a copy of this judgment and the records relating to this crime to them.”

(Rubabuddin Sheikh v State of Gujarat reported in (2010) 2 SCC 200, p. 217.)

The Special CBI Court cannot act as though none of this happened. The “entire record” in fact points to Shah’s involvement. The conspiracy is that of three cold-blooded murders. By terming Shah’s implication in the triple murder fake encounter case as a political conspiracy carried out by CBI under directions from a rival political party, the special CBI court has cast aspersions on the Supreme Court which was monitoring the investigations closely at all stages.

Disregarding the statements of key witnesses:

The special CBI court also disregarded the statements of key witnesses: namely, the Patel brothers, Dashrath and Raman, proprietors of the successful Popular builders. Their statements to the CBI details how money was extorted from them and how they were being forced by Vanzara and cohorts to give a statement against Sohrabuddin. The statement describes a meeting as well telephonic conversation with Shah. This has been recorded under 164 CrPC, and yet this is not deemed evidence but hearsay?

One can only say that the pusillanimity of the CBI in first, not contesting Shah’s application of exemption from appearing before the court in encounter cases, then not challenging the bail to senior police officer N.K. Amin in the Supreme Court, then responding to Shah’s voluminous discharge application and marathon three day arguments with a perfunctory 15-20 minutes argument by a junior lawyer, had already made matters clear. The die had been cast on 16th May itself, when Amit Shah delivered the rich harvest of seats for the BJP.

But what it has exposed is the rot in our institutions: the u-turn of the CBI, the reinstatement of the accused cops on duty, some of them, such as Abhay Chudasma, being given coveted posting in the Vigilance squad. Worst of all, what it has shown is the abdication of even a modicum of judicial independence.

Book Excerpt: Kafkaland: Prejudice, Law and Counterterrorism in India

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by Manisha Sethi

Once I had to drive a Mumbai ATS inspector across the city. He chatted about his B.A. degree (he too had studied Sociology), took an interest in my Ph.D. dissertation (“poor young girls were initiated into nunhood”), recommended the SUV that zipped past us (“value for money”). But we were not out sight seeing. In the rear seat was sitting a young man whose brother had been literally plucked by the ATS from the Delhi Police Special Cell which he was helping track down some suspects. He was then charged with conspiring the July 2011 Zaveri bazar blast in Mumbai. The ATS had now come calling on this young man, to take him to Mumbai, ostensibly to ‘question’ him. But questioning often means warrantless arrests, illegal detention and torture leading to leaked stories in the media and charges of terrorism.

KafkalandThe ATS team had arrived in the middle of a press conference. This effectively frustrated their simple enough plan to carry away Nadeem (name changed)   for uninterrupted interrogation in the comforts of their police station. Slightly irritated at our presence, and shivering from the assault of the Delhi December cold, the ACP who headed the team began to enquire from this young man. The gist of his inquisition was this:

“What did your brother tell the Special Cell?”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to pose this question to the Special Cell?”, we asked.

“Protocol”.

Apparently, the protocol is to whisk away suspects, or even their brothers.

So, now, here we were discussing sociology, Jain nuns and large cars, headed to the Nadeem’s house for a search at the other end of the city.  “Why do you illegally detain suspects?”, I turned to a less pleasanter topic. “How would it hurt to send summons to those you wish to interrogate?”

The Inspector looked genuinely hurt. “Illegal detention? Never. We always take the person out for a walk after 23 hours.”

It was one of those tragi-comic moments when one isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Here was an officer of law telling us that the legal requirement of producing an arrestee before a magistrate within 24 hours could be circumvented ‘legally’.

This brief encounter was but a glimpse into the ease with which norms are institutionally subverted. It also gave us a first hand experience of the dread of being pursued. When every knock on the door, every ring of the phone makes your stomach churn; when the grey of the evening appears full of foreboding. But worst of all, the knowledge that no one may be able to help you from being taken away.  The stories in Section I bear the imprint of this terror, felt as a visceral force. Some months after the above incident, I chanced upon a letter sent out by an accused in the Mumbai train bombings of 2006. The address was marked Anda Cell, Arthur Road prison. It was a grim chronicle of Ehtesham Qutub’s 75-day-long custody in the ATS.  One name leapt out of this letter of horror. It was the name of the Inspector.

He, who had amiably offered expert comments to me on my Ph.D. thesis, sympathizing with girls “who were tortured into becoming nuns,” played a starring role in the letter as the master of ceremonies, conducting and executing a regimen of excruciating pain on the man under his power. This letter appears in “Dr. Narco and other Stories”, which recounts the centrality of torture and cavalier prejudice to the Mumbai train blasts investigations. But this affliction is not unique to the Mumbai ATS; Section I shows these to be fundamental to all terror investigations: the Uttar Pradesh STF working on the Katcheri blasts of 2006, the Special Cell of Delhi Police which abducted the IB’s informers and produced them in a dramatic press conference as Al Badr operatives; the Hyderabad Crime Branch – acting sometimes in collusion, at other times in competition, all tied tenuously by the shadowy Intelligence Bureau.

Nothing compares to the fear of the early days.  With time however, the long arm of law manages to transform this palpable terror into a dull, unending ache.

Manisha Sethi is currently Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. She teaches at the Centre for Comparative Religions and Civilizations, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She is also Associate Editor at Biblio: A Review of Books. Her book Escaping the World: Women Renouncers among Jains was published in 2012. Sethi is an activist with Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association (JTSA).

The book is published by Three Essays Collective. To order the book click here. For updates, like book’s Facebook page.

Lest we forget: The Batla House case, six years on

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Batla_House_encounter_case

– by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association

19th September marks the sixth anniversary of the Batla House ‘encounter’. Six years ago, on this day, the Special Cell of Delhi Police claimed to have hit upon the perpetrators of the serial blasts that had struck the capital city the previous week. The so-called encounter resulted in the death of Inspector Sharma, a veteran of dozens of encounters and two young men, Atif Ameen and Sajid.

Sajid was a minor at the time of his death. In contravention to the guidelines framed by the National Human Rights Commission, no enquiry was allowed into the encounter at Batla House; indeed, the then Lieutenant Governor denied permission for the same. The NHRC itself carried out an insipid formality in the name of enquiry, giving a clean chit to the police on the basis of statements by police officers of the Delhi Police.

The police story of the encounter received a severe jolt when the NHRC released copies of post mortem reports of the deceased in response to RTI application. The reports of the two boys showed the presence of non firearm injuries on their bodies, including injuries on knee cap and grazing effects in the back region of Atif; Sajid also displayed at least two injuries, “which had been caused by blunt force impact by object or surface”. Furthermore the gun shot wounds clearly suggested foul play. Almost all the entry wounds on the body of Atif Ameen are on the back region, below the shoulders and at the back of the chest, which point to the fact that he was repeatedly shot from behind.

Sajid sustained gun shot wounds in the head, neck and shoulder region. The entry points and trajectories of gun shots in his case suggest that he was held down by force while bullets were pumped down his forehead, back and head.

The injuries seriously call into question the police story that the duo was killed in cross fire (in which case, there should have been frontal injuries.

What is also puzzling is why the NHRC, which had access to these reports when it was conducting its enquiry, chose to ignore these significant facts.

Poster designed by Harsh Kapoor for JTSA

Poster designed by Harsh Kapoor for JTSA

In the days and months following the ‘encounter’, a number of arrests were made and many of those arrested were implicated in blasts cases across the country. There were two separate trials: one, a trial in the Delhi blasts; and second, trial of the killing of Inspector Sharma.

The Trial of Inspector Sharma’s death

State vs Shahzad was widely, and ignorantly titled as the Batla house encounter trial by the media. In reality, it was limited to the death of Inspector Sharma. The deaths of Atif and Sajid, have fallen into a legal black hole, with no investigation or prosecution.

The FIR filed by SI Rahul Kumar at the Jamia Nagar Police Station on 19th September 2008, stated: “The names of the escaped militants were revealed … as Junaid and Pappu”. The name “Shahzad” did not appear in any police complaint or communication to the NHRC, and yet Shahzad, arrested in February 2010 was made the main accused in the murder of Inspector Sharma.

The trial which lasted three years, with over 70 witnesses being examined, concluded in July 2013. The Additional Sessions Judge in Saket Court in Delhi pronounced Shahzad Ahmad guilty of the murder of Inspector Sharma, of attempting to murder, assaulting police officers and destruction of evidence. The Court upheld the prosecution story that Shahzad had fired upon Inspector Sharma on 19 September 2008, when he had entered the flat in Batla House to apprehend ‘terrorists’.

The only evidence that was produced in the court was circumstantial. Even a simple reading of the judgement shows that the court over-reads, and indeed even extends the prosecution story to cover inconvenient facts. Firstly, there was no evidence to establish that Shahzad had even been present in the house in which the encounter took place on that fateful day. The court nonetheless relies on:

a) Telephone call records between Atif Ameen and Shahzad’s father

b) Railway reservation from Delhi to Azamgarh by Shahzad for 24th September 2008

c) Recovery of an invalid, expired passport belonging to Shahzad from the said house.

None of this even remotely suggests that Shahzad was present in the house, especially in absence of any other item of belonging or even his fingerprints.

In trying to explain how Shahzad may have escaped from the site of the encounter even though there was no escape route, the court explained: “It was not improbable for a person to have a safe exit, posing himself as local resident.” In its rush to uphold the prosecution story, the court invented the possibility of Shahzad hiding or taking shelter in other flats of the building, forgetting even the legal maxim that the prosecution is obliged to prove the case in the manner it has been alleged.

But worst of all, the court put judicial seal on a blatantly communal plea by the Addl Public Prosecutor that their case could not be corroborated by independent witnesses, as “majority of residents of that area are followers of the religion, as was of those suspects”.

The court convicted Shahzad, and sentenced him to life. In doing so, it invoked the ever-useful “collective conscience of the entire nation”, which was shocked by the killing of Inspector Sharma. This, the court concluded, was “an aggravating factor against the convict.”

Shahzad has presently appealed against his conviction in the High Court. The police has meanwhile moved an application demanding death penalty for Shahzad in a case in which they could not even prove his presence at the site on the day of the said killing.

For detailed critique of the judgement, see JTSA’s Beyond Reasonable Doubt?

The Trial in the Delhi Blasts

Following the encounter, a number of arrests were made, including of those like Zia Ur Rehman, who had voluntarily gone to the police station to show the police a copy of the police verification report of the house in which the alleged terrorists resided; or those like Saquib Nisar, who had appeared on television shows on the night of the encounter to talk about his acquaintance with those killed.

The Role of the Media

Media reporting of the encounter and its aftermath touched new lows, with blatantly communal and jingoistic headlines and stories, with little on the ground reporting and mere regurgitation of police handouts. But the worst was perhaps the cover story in India Today, which was titled, “Inside the Mind of the Bombers” (2nd October 2008). India Today’s reporter, Mihir Srivastava claimed that he met and interviewed the accused youth on the sidelines of the press conference called by the South District Police. In his ‘exclusive’ talk with the ‘bombers’ (nowhere is the simple journalistic ethic of pre-fixing ‘alleged’ before the term terrorists before the crimes have been proven, adhered to), Srivastava presented what were obviously forced confessions under real violence or threat of violence, as ‘facts’.

The Delhi High Court on October 15th 2008, asked the police to file a response as to how a journalist was allowed access to the accused in the custody of the Special Cell even before his relatives or lawyers had a chance to meet him (Indian Express, October 17). The police counsel agreed to file a response and conceded to the court that “the confessions recorded in the story were not in good taste and they had no evidential value”. (See here for response to Srivastava’s claims, repeated over and over)

The discharge of Md. Salman

Md. Salman, arrested by the Uttar Pradesh ATS from Siddharthnagar on 6 March 2010, was accused of being a conspirator in the 2008 Delhi blasts. On 5th February 2011, additional sessions Judge Ms. Santosh Snehi Mann threw out all charges against him— at the point of charge—in all five cases in Delhi bomb blasts for lack of any evidence that could prove that he had conspired to bomb various places in Delhi in 2008.

In the final hearing held on 31st January 2011 before the announcing of the verdict on charges, the Public Prosecutor, Raju Mohan—responding to very specific questions by the Judge regarding the evidence against Salman—was unable to produce anything to substantiate the prosecution’s claim. Prosecution’s case was based on three pieces of supposed evidence:

1) A Fake Passport that the prosecution claimed was seized from Salman.

It is noteworthy that no passport was placed before the court. The police claimed to have seized from him a ‘photocopy’ of the fake passport, with a false name, which gave his age as 27 years at the time of arrest.

2) A health card from Saudi Arab, which again listed his age as 27 years.

The Judge stated that if Salman had been arrested in possession of a fake Nepali passport and a health card from Dubai, these were charges that should be dealt with separately. “How does that (this evidence) make Salman a conspirator in these cases?” she asked the prosecution.

Confronted with the absence of evidence, the PP repeatedly resorted to raising the spectre of the ‘war on terror’. Does the prosecution believe that the war on terror legitimizes vitiating the due processes of law, which demand verifiable evidence? Or that lack of evidence can be substituted by the dubious doctrine of guilt by association?

Salman’s discharge at this early stage of charge indicated the weakness of the Delhi Police’s claims.

Section 268 CrPC

Almost all the boys who were arrested in 2008, following the Delhi blasts were also implicated in the Surat blasts which had occurred earlier the same year. Almost immediately, Gujarat Government took custody of close to 60 young men arrested by various state police departments for alleged terror attacks and conspiracies in their states, on the plea that they were all accused in the Ahmedabad serial blasts. Since then, the Gujarat Government has actively impeded the trials of these men in different states invoking Sec 268 of CrPC. This section allows the state government to direct that any person or class of persons shall not be removed from the prison in which he or they may be confined or detained.

Unlike other states, in Delhi, the trial could proceed because of the availability of camera uplinking facility. However, the fact that the accused were lodged in Gujarat meant that there could be no consultations between them and their lawyers.

In July 2010, a Supreme Court Bench of justices V.S. Sirpurkar and T.S. Thakur, responding to a petition of the lawyers of one of the accused in blasts case, ruled that the State of Gujarat could not continue to cite Sec 268 and that it was duty bound to produce the accused in their trials outside the state. However, production warrants issued by the court in Delhi continued to go unheeded. Until one day, in late 2012, the key prosecution witness, an auto driver, failed to recognize Shakeel. He looked at the young men lined up in Ahmedabad on camera for about half an hour but could not identify Shakeel. In a quick reversal, the prosecution asked for the accused to be produced in Delhi! Thereafter in February 2013, most of the accused have been shifted to Delhi.

However, the pace of the trial was impeded when it was shifted, at a considerably late stage, to a special court set up for all Special Cell cases.

19th September is not simply a day to ritually mourn the dead, or to indulge in breast beating, but to commit oneself to upholding the constitutional values of rule of law, to not allow jingoism of any kind to overwhelm democratic values.

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