IMC-USA Weekly News Digest - September 14th, 2009
Less than a month after the Gujarat High Court formed a three-member committee under an Additional Director General of Police to probe the 2004 killing of Ishrat Jahan and three others in an encounter by Gujarat police, a magisterial report into the incident has claimed that the four were gunned down in cold blood, allegedly by police officers eager to get promotions and the appreciation of Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The 240-page report by metropolitan magistrate S P Tamang was released to the media today by advocate Mukul Sinha who is appearing on behalf of Ishrat's mother Shamima in the Gujarat High Court. It was on Shamima's petition that Justice Kalpesh Jhaveri on August 13 formed a committee under ADGP Pramod Kumar and sought a report on or before November 30. Ishrat Jahan, from Mumbra near Mumbai, was killed in an encounter along with three others in June 2004. The then DCP D G Vanzara, who later became a prime accused in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, had claimed that all four had links with the Lashkar-e-Toiba and were on a mission to kill Chief Minister Modi. A month after the encounter, a report published in Lahore-based Ghazwa Times, the Lashkar mouthpiece, had described Ishrat as a "a woman activist of LeT". The probe into the killings was started by the sub-divisional magistrate of Ahmedabad in 2004 but amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code saw the chief metropolitan magistrate handing it to Tamang since the killings took place in an area under his court's jurisdiction. Tamang's inquiry report has called the encounter a fake. Apart from Ishrat, those killed near the Kotarpur waterworks were Javed alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Akbar Ali Rana alias Salim alias Chandu alias Rajkumar and Abdul Gani alias Jishant Johar alias Janbaaz s/o Kalu. The police had claimed the two men with Ishrat and Javed were Pakistanis. The probe report states that the four were kidnapped from Mumbai on June 12, 2004 and killed on the night of June 14 by the police. Mentioning names of all the officers involved, Tamang said they all conspired to get promotions and appreciation. He said there were no Pakistanis among the four. According to the report, Javed was killed by the DCB on June 14 between 8.30 pm and 9 pm while the other three were killed the same day between 11 pm and 12 midnight. The report said police officials had either towed or driven the car of the victims to the 'encounter' spot. Mukul Sinha said they would demand immediate arrest of all police officers named in the report - then Police Commissioner K R Kaushik, DCB Joint Commissioner of Police P P Pandey, then DCP D G Vanzara, ACP Narendra Amin, ACP G L Singhal and other junior DCB officials. http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/514340/ SEE ALSO: Amid the din created by Judicial Magistrate S P Tamang's report holding 21 police personnel responsible for the extra-judicial killing of Ishrat Jahan and three others, relatives of two others - Mahendra Jadav and Jaffer Qasim - came here from Mumbai on Wednesday and demanded a judicial inquiry into their killing by the Gujarat Police. Sumitra Jadhav, Mahendra's mother and Mariam, widow of Jaffer, both residents of Mumbai, have already moved the Supreme Court through Mumbai-based NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), with the same request. The two have also asked the apex court for direct action, including initiation of criminal proceedings against officers of the state for unconstitutional act and ask the state to pay compensation for what they say were extra judicial killings. They also demanded that the Gujarat Police personnel, some of whom are involved in illegal action, should not be involved in any inquiry ordered by the apex court. Speaking to mediapersons in the presence of Teesta Setalvad of CJP and former Director General of Police R B Sreekumar, they said Mahendra and Jaffer were brutally murdered by the state police just to promote the image of Chief Minister Narendra Modi and get some personal benefits for themselves. The duo added they will not accept a probe by the state police, as they themselves were the killers and a probe by them would not be fair. Denying that Mahendra had any links with terrorists or underworld, Sumitra said her son had come to Gujarat in search of a job offered to him through one Fatima in Mumbai. She said her son was held by the crime branch sleuths at Ahmedabad railway station, was kept in custody for three days and then shot dead on June 22, 2004, near Panchkuwa in the Kalupur area.… Mariam said her husband Jaffer was among 18 people on a religious visit to Hussain Tekra in Mehsana district. Jaffer and others had stayed in Hotel Royal in Sarkhej on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on April 13, 2006. She said a police team comprising 17 persons descended on the hotel and took away Jaffer forcibly after a scuffle. "We were not informed about Jaffer's whereabouts for three days," she said. Mariam added she was initially told that Jaffer had escaped from police custody. But on April 17, she was told that he had died in a road accident and the body was kept in the Civil Hospital. She further said there was no accidental injury anywhere on Jaffer's body, except a bullet wound on the head and blood flowing from one side of the mouth, along with beating marks on the chest and shoulders. However, crime branch official Ashish Bhatia wrote on December 14, 2006, to her that her husband was killed in a road accident and it was not a murder case. Quoting information culled through an RTI application in April 2007, she said that Bhatia had written to the Mumbai police seeking to know if some Irani gang was operating in Mumbai ostensibly to cover up their misdeeds. Jaffer belongs to a small group of Irani Mulsims living in Mumbai. Regarding the post-mortem report, she said she was given the report seven months after the incident and it did not mention the cause of death. Sreekumar who was present along with the kin of the victims said the state government spokesperson Jay Narayan Vyas's remarks about the judicial magistrate S P Tamang's report "amounted to contempt of court". Sreekumar said that "encounters were done by the state as a matter of policy." http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/515313/ SEE ALSO: Even as the din over the Ishrat Jahan encounter case continues, there may be more for the Gujarat government to answer. This time on the encounter of 20-year-old Sadiq Jamal, who was handed over to the Ahmedabad Crime Branch by the Mumbai police's suspended encounter specialist, Daya Nayak. Mumbai-based journalist Ketan Tirodkar, who had handed Jamal to Nayak, reiterated to Newsline on Thursday that he did so only because Nayak wanted an encounter stooge to oblige the Gujarat Police. On January 13, 2003, Jamal, a Gujarat riot victim from Bhavnagar, was gunned down by the Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch in Naroda. The police claimed Jamal was a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative on a mission to assassinate Narendra Modi, L K Advani and Pravin Togadia. Tirodkar said: "When I had gone to Dubai, I came across Jamal. He used to work in Tarik Parvin's office, and had lost his relatives and house in the riots in Gujarat. He held Modi responsible for his losses, and asked me to help him take up his case with the Gujarat Human Rights Commission. Since he had returned to Gujarat and then came to Mumbai, I told Daya that I had found someone who may fit the bill." "Daya told me that we needed to do this to earn favours, so that, if necessary, we could prevent the arrests of some IPS officers who would soon get implicated in the Telgi scam. On January 11, a team of the Ahmedabad police posing as rights officials came to the city, and Nayak handed Jamal to them at the Borivili National Park," Tirodkar alleged. He added that one of the officers in the team was D G Vanzara. "Two days later, I came to know that Jamal had been killed." In May 2008, his brother Shabir had filed an application before the Gujarat High Court annexing a copy of Tirodkar's private complaint before the special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act court, in which he alleged Jamal was killed in a fake encounter. Tirodkar is now facing a court trial after he admitted to have taken Rs 5 crore (along with Nayak) from fugitive gangster Chhota Shakeel. The money was taken to bribe higher-ups to transfer police officers who were acting against the underworld. Tirodkar is currently out on bail, while Nayak is suspended for an offence of disproportionate assets. http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/515594/ SEE ALSO: A day after the Gujarat government rejected Metropolitan Magistrate S P Tamang's report that the encounters of Mumbai college student Ishrat Jahan and three others were fake, social activist Teesta Setalvad demanded probe into all encounters in the state since 2002. However, BJP state president Pursottam Rupala rubbished the demand, claiming that the state's actions were justified. Jahan, along with Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Shaikh, Amjad Ali Rana and Jeeshan Johar, were killed in an encounter by the city crime branch here on June 15, 2004. As the case came back into public glare, following the revelation by Magistrate Tamang, Setalvad's non-government organisation, Citizens for Justice and Peace, on Wednesday presented kin of two other victims of alleged police atrocities. "Criminal proceedings should be initiated, besides disciplinary actions, against the officers," said Setalvad, giving details of 11 cases where at least 20 persons had lost their lives. She alleged that a group of senior police officials engineered the shootouts to make chief minister Narendra Modi happy. Setalvad presented the kin of Mahendra Jadhav and Qasim (known only by his first name), who were allegedly killed after being taken into police custody in June 2003 and December 2006, respectively. The encounters drew strong criticism from former additional director general of police (intelligence) Sri Kumar, who alleged that the series of encounters were part of a "planned political strategy to propel Modi as a strict chief minister". But BJP leader Rupala said the encounters were genuine and those killed were terrorists. http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/452119.aspx SEE ALSO: Investigations can continue in the September 2008 Malegaon blast case, the Bombay High Court clarified on Tuesday. The division bench of Justice Bilal Nazki and Justice A R Joshi said there was no stay on the investigation in the case and the Anti-Terrorism Squad can carry on further investigations even under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). The HC was hearing an appeal filed by the state government challenging the dropping of the Act from the case. The HC, upon the request made by senior counsel for government Harish Salve, said the trial court’s order will not interfere with the investigation under MCOCA till further orders. Salve argued that further investigations were necessary as three accused were still absconding. On July 31, the special trial court held that 11 accused in the blast case, including sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, cannot be tried under the stringent Act. Seven people were killed in the September 29, 2008, blast at Malegaon, a textile town near Nashik. The government contended that the special court judge assumed the power of the high court under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Only the high court and the Supreme Court can quash the sanction orders. The next hearing is on October 6. http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/451775.aspx SEE ALSO: The 2002 riots in Gujarat were the result of a thoroughly thought-out, elaborate and heinous strategy to communalise the society at large in Gujarat with a view to derive political benefits, writes former Gujarat minister and ex-Indian Police Service officer Jaspal Singh to the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team that is looking into the role of Chief Minister Narendra Modi [ Images ] and his ministerial colleagues and police officers in the riots. Jaspal Singh, who has been the commissioner of police and then mayor of Vadodara, wrote the letter on September 7, 2009 to Dr R K Raghavan, Chairman, SIT. Here we reproduce the full text of Singh's letter:'… Apropos my letter dated Jun 06, 2009, I write to compliment you for pursuing investigations into the Gujarat riots of 2002 with vigour by recording statement of Mrs Zakia Jafri, widow of late of Mr Ehsan Jafri, a former member of the Parliament, Shri R B Sreekumar, IPS (Retd), former DGP of Gujarat, and Mr Rahul Sharma, a serving IPS officer of Gujarat cadre. While the progress of the case does bring some comfort to the victims of the genocide unleashed in Gujarat, lot more remains to be done as expeditiously as possible, so as to instil a sense of hope in the hearts and minds of Indians, that the rule of law would be respected and no one would be spared for flouting it. The happenings of 2002 have brought shame and disgrace of unfathomable proportions, and only investigation by the SIT under your command can redeem the honour of the country. I list below some of the matters which need to be investigated in detail in pursuance of trust reposed in you, and your team by the hon'ble apex court. Your efforts will assuage the terribly dented image of our great country, and hence your responsibility is immense. As a retired IPS officer I consider it a matter of pride that the job to redeem the honour of the country has been entrusted to the SIT headed by an IPS officer. The outcome of the SIT's investigation and actions following it may prove to be a benchmark in the history of our country. 1. Communalisation of Gujarat: The mayhem in Gujarat was the result of a thoroughly thought out elaborate and heinous strategy to communalise the society at large in Gujarat, with a view to derive political benefits. Towards that end the exclusivist, fundamentalist and sectarian pseudo-religious groups among Hindus and Muslims played a leading role, aided and abetted by those at the helm. 2. Examination of participants in the crucial meeting chaired by the CM Narendra Modi: Examination of the following persons is crucial for the purpose of the SIT: a) Smt Swarnakanta Varma IAS, the then Acting Chief Secretary b) Mr Ashok Narayan, IAS, the then Home Secretary c) Dr P K Mishra, IAS, the then Principal Secretary to the CM d) Mr Anil mukim, IAS & Mr A K Sharma, IAS Secretaries to CM e) Mr P C Pande IPS, then Commissioner of Police Ahmedabad f) Shri K Chakravarty, IPS, the then DG of Police, Gujarat g) Shri G C Raiger, IPS, the then Addl DGP of Gujarat h) Shri Nityanand, IPS, Secretary in the Home Department. 3. Representative of CBI: The SIT must examine Shri Rajendrakumar, the then Jt.Director, Central Intelligence Bureau in charge of Gujarat who had insisted on the state DGP to deem the burning of the train at Godhra as a terrorist act mounted by the ISI. 4. Examination of Ministers: Examine all those ministers of Shri Modi's government about the details of the meeting held at the residence of the CM on 27.02.2002, including the then Minister of State for Home Shri Govardhan Zadapiya who had admitted in the state assembly about the meeting convened by the CM. It may be mentioned that the state assembly was in session on the day the tragic events took place at Godhra. This can be verified from the official records of the state assembly. This will clarify that the CM had directed the officers to permit free play of Hindu revengefulness on the Muslims (Reference to June 03, 2002 issue of the weekly - Outlook).… Any failure by the Indian Judicial system to bring under the clutches of law, the real planners and executioners of anti-minority genocide in 2002 would further energise anti Indian forces internationally and particularly those jihadi groups who have been denigrating the Indian state authorities for their failure to protect the minority community. The Islamic terrorists who had claimed responsibility for explosions and terror acts throughout India since 2002 have declared their dastardly acts as revenge and retribution for Gujarat genocide. These groups will fully capitalise on any situation which will provide immunity from prosecution to the CM, Shri Narendra Modi and his aides and attract frustrated riot victims to their camps to the detriment of our national interest. http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/10/guj-riots-ex-minister-tells-sit-to-probe-modi.htm SEE ALSO: Describing BJP as a "political instrument" of RSS, CPM on Sunday said it was proved by the manner in which RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat summoned all BJP leaders for resolving the crisis that has hit the party. "The RSS had maintained that it will not interfere in the decision making process of BJP as it is a cultural organisation. This fiction has been exposed by the manner in which all BJP leaders were summoned by Bhagwat and a formula was worked out to resolve the leadership issue within the party," the CPM's polit bureau said here after the conclusion of its two-day meeting. In a statement issued after the meeting, the polit bureau said, "BJP is nothing but the political instrument of RSS. By this latest intervention, RSS will be further tightening its grip over the party with the consequent repercussions on the party's ideology and policies." In this light, the party decided to carry forward its struggle "to expose the disruptive communal ideology and politics", given the adherence of BJP/RSS combine to the Hindutva ideology. The Polit Bureau also condemned the ongoing attacks on the party and its cadres in West Bengal. "The spree of killings by Trinamool and Maoists have not stopped after the Parliamentary elections. In the Lalgarh area, the Maoists continue to indulge in targeted killings of CPM cadres and supporters," the statement said. In this regard, the polit bureau took a decision to step up its all-India campaign against the "anti-democratic attacks on CPM and the Left in West Bengal". The CPM's polit bureau also heard reports on preparations for assembly polls in Maharashtra and Haryana of the party and approved the decision of the two state committees concerned on the list of seats to be contested. Commenting on the first 100-days performance of the UPA government, the Polit Bureau said its record "confirms that it will pursue the same neo-liberal policies. "It (UPA) has announced that it will further liberalise foreign direct investment in various spheres, go in for disinvestment of profitable PSUs on the pretext of ensuring people's participation in the public sector and provide for further tax concessions to the corporate sector." http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4979324.cms SEE ALSO: No incidents of violence were reported from Sangli, Kolhapur and Satara on Wednesday as efforts to re-establish peace in riot-torn areas gathered further steam. Home Minister Jayant Patil, Revenue Minister Patangrao Kadam and Minister for Agriculture Marketing Harshvardhan Patil held a meeting with representatives of Ganesh mandals who had stopped immersion of idols to protest removal of a cutout showing Shivaji killing Afzal Khan. The meeting was attended by Sangli Collector Shyam Vardhane and state police chief S.S. Virk. Under the formula for peace that has been worked out, the mandals will immerse the idols on Thursday. For the last five days, parts of Sangli and Kolhapur had witnessed communal clashes, and curfew had been clamped in several areas. Curfew was relaxed in both Sangli and Miraj between 10 am and 1 pm on Wednesday. Vardhane said curfew will stay till further orders. "It will be lifted in Miraj during the period of procession," he said. Two companies of the Rapid Action Force have already been deployed in Sangli and Miraj. The situation in neighbouring Ichalkaranji in Kolhapur district, which witnessed a series of violent incidents, was normal on Wednesday. Curfew here was relaxed between 10 am and 11.30 am, but the hours were curtained after people started gathering at various places. Meanwhile in Mumbai, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) vehemently opposed the state government's decision to proceed with immersions at Miraj. VHP leader Ashok Singhal said, "Those accused of desecrating Ganesh idols should be punished. The state government cannot delay the issue saying they will look into the matter after immersions." A 10-member delegation of Muslim leaders led by president of Jamiat Ulema-i-Maharashtra Hafiz Mohammed Nadim Siddiqui met Governor S.C. Jamir. They demanded suspension of the district magistrate and police commissioner of Sangli and Kolhapur districts and an inquiry into the violence. http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/452096.aspx SEE ALSO: A woman was allegedly poisoned to death by her in-laws in Dachar village in Taravadi tehsil of Karnal district last evening. The victim identified as Baljinder Kaur, wife of Malik Singh, reportedly informed her brother Gurpeg Singh around 5 pm that her in-laws had administered poison to her. She died at the Karnal Civil Hospital at 7 pm, the police said. Gurpeg Singh alleged that her sister's in-laws used to harass her for bringing more dowry. The police has registered a case under Sections 304-B and 34 of the IPC against five persons, including Malik Singh (husband), Joginder Singh (father-in-law), Paramjit Kaur (mother-in-law), Virendra Singh (brother-in-law) and Kashmir Singh. Baljinder Kaur got married to Malik Singh 21 months ago. No arrests have been made so far and the police is investigating the case. The body was sent for a postmortem and the report said she had consumed celphos. Irate villagers went to the house of Malik Singh and allegedly assaulted him. He was admitted to the trauma centre. http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090909/haryana.htm#13 SEE ALSO: A Dalit man was allegedly beaten to death by the Kaushambi police late on Wednesday night while his relative managed to escape from the police clutches. Nand lal Pasi (45) and his brother-in-law Munshi Lala were stopped by the police around 7.30 pm, while they were on their way home from Phoolwa village under Pipari police station in Kaushambi. Nand Lal is a resident of Rajapur, Allahabad. Asking for the registration papers of their bike, the policemen allegedly demanded money, but when Nand Lal refused to pay, they dragged the two men to the nearby Makdoompur police outpost. "Since Nand Lal had refused to pay the money, the cops and the outpost in-charge first thrashed him with rifle butts and sticks," said Munshi Lal, who claimed to have witnessed the incident. "They beat him till he fell unconscious. Sensing danger, the cops then threw him near a brick kiln. I managed to escape from the outpost before they returned." Reaching the Phoolwa village, Munshi Lal told the locals about the incident, following which, hundreds of irate villagers gheraoed the police outpost. The mob critically injured sub inspector Brij Bali Tiwari of the Rahima Police outpost, who had to be taken to the SRN Hospital in Allahabad. The locals kept the body of Nand Lal and blocked the Pipari road. District Magistrate Lokesh M and Superintendent of Police RK Bhardwaj also reached the spot and tried to pacify the locals. "We are inquiring into the matter and verifying the allegations of the locals," said Bhardwaj, "if any policemen are found guilty, stern action will be taken against them." Vehicular traffic remained blocked till the time of filing the report as the locals refused to lift the blockade till the guilty policemen were arrested and an FIR was filed. The police had to use force to take possession of the body which has been sent to the SRN Hospital for postmortem. The locals laid siege to the Makdoompur police outpost and the situation is volatile. The Samajwadi Party parliamentarian Sailendra Kumar, too, reached the spot and condemned the police action. http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/515220/ SEE ALSO: There could have been no more appropriate gift in this month of Ramzan for the soul of Ishrat Raza Jahan, who was branded a terrorist, and the members of her family who were ostracised for that than the verdict of the metropolitan magistrate of Ahmedabad, Mr S P Tamang who found her killing along with her three friends as a cold-blooded murder by the Gujarat police for getting 'name, fame, promotion and praise' from the Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi. The police gunned down Ishrat, Javed Sheikh, Amjad Ali and Jisan Abdul Gani at close range outside Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004 claiming they were members of Lashkar-e-Toiba involved in a plot to kill Mr Modi. The state police had brought Ishrat and Javed from Mumbai three days before the police shot them. In another sensational case, the Sohrabuddin fake encounter, the matter is already before the Gujarat High Court and the policemen who carried out the encounter are behind bars. Ishrat's case is perhaps the first time that a magisterial report has clearly pointed out the encounter was fake. Driven to a corner, the Gujarat government is desperate to save its face. Instead of accepting the findings in a graceful manner and pledging to punish the guilty, it has questioned the conclusions of the judicial inquiry. Rejecting the issues of probity and decency, the government today virtually sanctified the encounter and raised the issue of validity of the report. It even said that the magistrate was transgressing his boundaries. How could the government ignore the fact that the magistrate's court had undertaken the inquiry at the direction of the superior court? It had not acted on its own. The retaliation has the hallmark of typical bullying tactics by the Modi government. The fake encounter has snowballed into a major embarrassment for the 'invincible' Modi regime is for everyone to see. Probably Gujarat had seen maximum number of encounter killings during the regime of Mr Narendra Modi on the plea to protect the lives of Mr Modi and leaders of his Hindutva brigade. The death of Kausarbi is still a mystery. The interim report of the IG (CID) Ms Geeta Johri who investigated the case at the instruction of the Supreme Court revealed that Kausarbi was strangled to death by D H Vanjara. In fact the Gujarat High Court had decided on August 13, 2009 to form a special investigation team of senior police officers to review the investigation in the shoot-out in 2004 in which four persons, including Ishrat, were gunned down. The Modi regime, instead of coercing the judiciary and honest policemen, should respect the judicial findings and prosecute the persons including the policemen involved in this and other gory incidents. The government should immediately put under arrest the policemen who carried out the encounter and are evading the law. Mr Modi should realise what happened in Gujarat in the name of fighting terrorists is a series of monstrous crimes perpetrated by the state. No amount of lies would whitewash the stigma that the Modi regime carries. Though Mr Modi won the 2009 assembly elections, it cannot be taken as exoneration of his crime by the people. Mr Modi could be heading for more trouble as there are many skeletons in his cupboard. If fair investigation is conducted, more skeletons will tumble out. The Ishrat case shows that the Supreme Court and Gujarat High Court should club all the cases relating to riots and entrust their prosecution to upright police officers and judges. http://www.navhindtimes.in/opinions/2848-skeletons-out-modi-cupboard SEE ALSO: One of the objections raised by the Gujarat government to the report of the metropolitan magistrate, S.P. Tamang, on the killing of Ishrat Jahan Raza and three others in June 2004, is that Section 176 of the criminal procedure code, under which the inquiry was held, was specifically meant for custodial deaths, whereas Ishrat and the others were killed on the road. In matters of life and death, a good rule of thumb for judging whether a government is arguing in good faith is to see if it makes substantive arguments or technical ones. A government that argues that an inquiry into extra-judicial execution is out of line because the killings happened in the open air and not indoors doesn't pass that test. The other arguments made by the Gujarat government against the Tamang inquiry report were of the same genre. The spokesman for the Gujarat government, Jaynarayan Vyas, claimed that the inquiry report should not have been released because the matter was being examined by a higher court, that a copy of the report had not been supplied to the state government and that the magistrate's inquiry was suspect because it had been completed too quickly, in a mere 25 days. This last was said without irony: five years after the killings, the Gujarat government was complaining about the unnatural speed of judicial proceedings. It's another matter that these objections were bogus: Section 176 allows all unnatural deaths to be investigated at the discretion of the magistrate, the magistrate's inquiry can proceed in parallel with the high court's deliberations and the report was released to the press not by a 'leaking' magistrate but by a defence lawyer, Mukul Sinha, who formally applied for a certified copy and made it public. These four deaths can be read as a chapter in more than one narrative. They can, for example, be read as an instance of the summary way in which the Gujarat government deals with Muslims. From the state-sanctioned pogroms of 2001, to the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausar Bi, to the 'encounter' killing of Ishrat and the three men found dead with her, the Gujarat government has allowed Muslims to be murdered with impunity, justifying its position by invoking the spectre of terror. So to see this as one more story in the saga of the mistreatment of minorities in Gujarat is understandable but it isn't the main reason we should be angry or concerned. What should worry us about these 2004 killings on the outskirts of Ahmedabad is that they are one more example of the impunity with which the State in India gets away with extra-judicial execution and the degree to which public indifference licenses this impunity. The most substantial part of the magistrate's report is the section where he shows that the ballistic evidence does not bear out the police story of an 'encounter' and argues that the four were first killed in cold blood and then had weapons planted on them to simulate a shoot-out. The implication of this is hideous: policemen first murdered four people without due process and then perjured themselves on an epic scale by fabricating a 'set'. Tamang demonstrated that the Gujarat police behaved like a murderous repertory company, not as guardians of law and order, and yet the Gujarat government made no attempt to rebut his charges. Instead, it devoted itself to proving that the four people killed were terrorists connected to Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Toiba. It produced an affidavit filed by the Central government a month ago certifying that Ishrat and the others were terrorists seeking to assassinate Gujarati politicians. This supplied non-partisan endorsement of the Gujarat police's claim that the four people killed were terrorists. And there the Gujarat government rested its case. Apart from a pro forma assertion that the 'encounter' was genuine and not staged, it made no attempt to prove that the magistrate's reading of the evidence was wrong because it was confident that extra-judicial murder in a 'good cause' had public sanction. In a news programme, Vyas made this strategy explicit: he asked why civil rights activists were so concerned about the civil rights of terrorists and so indifferent to the civil rights of ordinary citizens who were victims of terror. Colin Gonsalves, a lawyer, pointed out that this was the reddest of red herrings because no civil rights group had remotely made the case that the perpetrators of terror ought to go unpunished, but Vyas, ironically Gujarat's minister for health, wasn't debating Gonsalves, he was trying to tap into a public appetite for summary justice, an appetite that would absolve vigilante policemen of any blame; that would, in fact, make them heroes. Unless we learn to monitor and protest the impunity with which the State and the police resort to extra-judicial murder and custodial killing, outrage at specific instances of these becomes ineffective, even counter-productive. So if you rage and grieve when a middle-class Muslim girl who could have been your daughter is killed but ignore the recent and mysterious death of a murderous hoodlum called R. Rajan in police custody in Chennai, you aren't protesting the violation of due process or taking a stand against extra-judicial murder: you are merely riding a private hobby horse: the welfare of minorities or the wickedness of the Gujarat government. The Congress spokesperson and member of parliament, Manish Tiwari, made the point that the Central government's affidavit asserting that Ishrat and her companions were terrorists made no difference to the material facts of the case against the Gujarat police, namely their complicity in cold-blooded executions carried out without warrant or due process. The Congress, he said, wanted a probe into all custodial deaths and encounters that had been reported during the tenure of Narendra Modi's government. The problem with this otherwise unexceptionable position is that Tiwari speaks for a party that has helped make State-sponsored murder and extra-judicial killing a form of State policy in states like Chhattisgarh. It was in 2005 that Mahender Karma, Congress member of the legislative assembly and leader of the Opposition in Chhattisgarh, pioneered the idea of training civilians as special police officers, paying them a monthly wage, and then arming them to liquidate anyone tarred with the brush of another form of terror, Naxalism. We have seen State-sponsored vigilante killing by these 'special police officers' formally adopted as policy by state governments in Manipur, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to deal with Naxalite/Maoist insurgency. Why should Manish Tiwari expect the Gujarat police and the Bharatiya Janata Party government there to submit themselves to the rule of law when his own party, the Congress, sees due process as a luxury that India can't afford? The moral of Ishrat's tragic story has little to do with her antecedents and everything to do with the impunity with which governments in India kill their own citizens in the name of summary 'justice'. Given the incompetence, politicization and corruption of the police in India, there isn't even the consolation that the people policemen lynch are villains. The recent history of India shows us that extra-judicial murder isn't just immoral and illegal, it doesn't even succeed on its own terms in protecting us from terror. Three days ago, the British police successfully obtained convictions against three men of Pakistani origin in an English court for plotting to blow up three airliners over the Atlantic in 2006. They saved hundreds, possibly thousands, of lives by gathering water-tight, actionable evidence through surveillance. The surveillance was scrupulously legal: whenever required by law, the British police got warrants from the relevant courts. By putting terrorists away legally, the British State kept Britons secure while heading off any suspicion that it was biased against Muslims. There's something for all of us to learn from this example. First, India's police forces should return to police work, to catching killers and terrorists legally, instead of joining them in murder. Second, civil rights groups and concerned citizens should make the effort to hold the police accountable for every custodial death that comes to their notice, not just the ones we are ideologically invested in. If the principle we're defending is the rule of law, the death of R. Rajan, very likely a murderer and a thief, in police custody, is as evil and tragic as Ishrat's killing. In the matter of extra-judicial killing, Indians should shorten Donne's great line with a full stop and use it as a motto: Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090910/jsp/opinion/story_11471260.jsp SEE ALSO: The Gujarat High Court has rightly revoked the ban on expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh's book, Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence and in the process exposed the hamhanded manner in which Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had banned it without reading the book. The High Court has also upheld the writer's fundamental right to freedom of expression as guaranteed under Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution. A Bench consisting of Chief Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan, Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice K.M. Thaker has ruled that the government's notification banning the book fell short of the statutory requirements and thus failed the test of legal scrutiny. It came down heavily on the government for issuing a ban order that showed "lack of thinking, caution and prudence" which was required in cases pertaining to the fundamental rights of the citizen. The Bench was fully convinced with the stand of the petitioners - Prakash Shah and Manishi Jani, both writers and social activists - that the government banned the book in a tearing hurry without substantiating its claim that the contents of the book were "highly objectionable and against the national interest". It is also silent as to how the contents of the book would disturb public tranquillity. Ever since the book launch on August 17, there had been no untoward incident anywhere in Gujarat. The government's mala fide intent can be proved by the fact that the book was banned just two days after its release. The ban is indicative of the Modi government's increasing intolerance towards a differing opinion even though constructive thinking, writing and criticism strengthen democracy. If Mr Modi differs with Mr Jaswant Singh's opinion about Sardar Patel, he should have issued a statement instead of banning the book which smacks of sheer arbitrariness. In a liberal democracy, a government cannot behave abrasively and trample upon the citizens' fundamental rights. The Modi government will have to do a lot of explaining before the Supreme Court when it takes up Mr Jaswant Singh's petition against the ban order on September 8. Mr Modi would do well to accept his folly and pledge to respect dissent and debate. http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090907/edit.htm#1 SEE ALSO: "There is a tendency to view the current developments in the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] as the result of some new tumult within the organisation. But this is only the intensification of a process that has been going on for at least the past five years." This was the comment made by a senior leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) to Frontline on August 25, after former Union Minister Arun Shourie went hammer and tongs at the BJP leadership in a television interview. Shourie castigated the top leadership, including party president Rajnath Singh, calling him "Humpty Dumpty" and "Alice in Blunderland". The RSS leader pointed out that the issues raised in the present round of jousting were laid out in concrete terms within the BJP as early as June 2004, immediately after the first Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power, inflicting a shock defeat on the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). This was done through a document titled "Tasks Ahead: Immediate and Long-Term", which was presented at the national executive of the BJP between June 22 and June 24, 2004, in Mumbai. The 42-page document's preface said that it formulated "the main tasks before the party in fulfilment of its resolve to re-energise itself in a comprehensive manner, in order to be able to successfully deal with both the immediate and long-term challenges before the party". At the outset, it said: "Growth is a way of life for any living and mission-driven organisation. In the course of their growth, all such organisations face difficulties and develop shortcomings. Quantitative expansion brings in its wake qualitative deficiencies, which, if unchecked and uncorrected, can hinder further growth and even cause decline. However, an organisation that is aware of its purpose of existence and continually reminds itself of the goal for which it was founded never fails to study these shortcomings and to overcome them by applying necessary correctives. During the period of the party's phenomenal growth since the late 1980s, many shortcomings have surfaced in the organisation. These are inconsistent with our party's ideals and objectives, with our distinctive ideology, and also with our guiding organisational principles and canons." The document, which was supposed to be a kind of guideline to correct these aberrations, specifically laid down tasks relating to four fronts: ideological, organisational, legislative and governance-related. On ideology, the document stated that "the BJP is part of a wider movement guided by the ideology of nationalism" and that "it should not be defensive or apologetic about projecting a distinctive ideological identity" and about its "relationship with other nationalist organisations", which obviously meant the RSS and its Parivar (family). On the organisation, the document listed tasks under 20 specific headings. These emphasised the need for collective leadership, cooperation and communication among top leaders, commitment and accountability to party as opposed to individuals, the need to stem indiscipline and the utmost necessity of developing young leaders through sustained mass and organisational work. Discussing many of these points at some length, the document openly stated that there had been an erosion of commitment to the principles of collective leadership, cooperation and commitment at various levels of the party. "Individualism, lack of consultation and coordination, and absence of camaraderie are taking root, diluting the effectiveness of the party's activities," it said without mincing words. It also stated that the "commitment to ideology has to be measured also against the yardstick of behaviour and style of functioning" of individual leaders. It further said that there was a "rapidly gathering impression that acts of indiscipline will be condoned and that even serious cases of anti-party activities will be overlooked" and that it "has done immense damage to the health of our organisation". This segment pointed out that "earlier, the common people admired the BJP as a party of disciplined leaders and cadres… and this was something that even our ideological and political adversaries admitted". It went on to point out that "one of the manifestations of indiscipline is the tendency to use the media to air one's grievances. Wittingly or unwittingly, some people in the party share organisational matters with the media. This causes considerable damage to the party's image and internal cohesion." If there were no dateline on the document, "Tasks Ahead" could well have been mistaken as a commentary on the present rumblings in the party. In this context, the assertion of the RSS leader that the present developments marked only an "intensification of a process that has been going on for at least the past five years" does have merit. But that raises another question. Why has this process intensified now? The senior RSS leader said there were several reasons: "To start with, one needs to go with the premise that the formulations done at the June 2004 national executive in terms of rectifying the ideological, political and organisational aberrations were not implemented with any modicum of sincerity or efficiency. One would also have to recognise that the several organisational initiatives taken to carry out this process were not successful at all." This view is shared by a number of Sangh Parivar activists. According to them, one of the most important rectification initiatives in the post-2004 period was the elevation of Rajnath Singh as president of the BJP. They point out that right from the second year of the NDA regime (1999-2004) under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, significant sections of the RSS top brass realised that both Vajpayee and L.K. Advani were promoting individual commitments within the party at the cost of larger political and ideological interests. And this, in turn, encouraged negative tendencies such as sycophancy, nepotism and corruption and led to the overall degeneration of the party, which were clearly pointed out in the 2004 document. When Rajnath Singh was made BJP president in December 2005, one of the briefs that the RSS gave him was to implement the "Tasks Ahead" document truthfully and effectively. This meant putting an end to the drift towards "individual commitments" as promoted by Vajpayee and Advani. In fact, approximately two months before Rajnath Singh's elevation, Mohan Rao Bhagwat, then RSS saha (deputy) sarsanghchalak, asserted that the role of the BJP leadership was to stop the drift in the party and hasten the pace of reforms. In concrete terms, Advani had become the primary representative of this drift in the post-2004 situation as Vajpayee was indisposed for long periods. But, five years later, the RSS assessment is that Rajnath Singh has failed in fulfilling the brief given to him. Post-2009 elections, too, the senior RSS leader pointed out to Frontline, the BJP witnessed a strengthening of the "individual commitments syndrome" despite the electoral reverses. Several appointments made in the party at the national level as well as the refusal of former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje to demit office as Leader of the Opposition were only the manifestations of this trend. And it is in this context that the RSS leadership, particularly sarsanghchalak Mohan Rao Bhagwat, decided to strike decisively. There is a stream of opinion within the top echelons of the Sangh Parivar that the controversy over Jaswant Singh's book - Jinnah: India, Partition and Independence - was essentially exploited by the RSS leadership to drive home a strong message on discipline and course correction. Several observers and functionaries of different Sangh Parivar organisations, ranging from the RSS to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), believe that the Arun Shourie "outburst" against Rajnath Singh was also part of a political scheme that had the blessings of a section of the RSS top brass.… http://www.frontline.in/fl2619/stories/20090925261911400.htm SEE ALSO: The bloodletting in the BJP has turned out far more prolonged and self-destructive than the party's staunchest critics, including me, had expected. Not a day passes without senior leaders calling their colleagues names which would embarrass street-level thugs. As the BJP suffers painful upheavals, its cadres lampoon their bosses as cartoon characters like Tarzan, and exhort loyalists to 'bombard the headquarters', imitating Mao during the Cultural Revolution-perhaps with equally disastrous results. Many observers are dismayed at this explosion of virulent recrimination. Some even rue the BJP is blurring its line of demarcation from the Congress, which stifles inner-party debate. This betrays astounding naivete. The BJP has never had inner-party democracy. Its core political and organisational concepts derive from the Sangh Parivar, which is profoundly undemocratic and doesn't elect its leaders. The BJP cannot comprehend the causes of its consecutive election defeats in structural terms linked to changes in the balance of social forces, Hindutva's receding appeal and the attraction of inclusive agendas in a society as badly divided, and hence in great need of healing, as India. The Congress understood this, and won. The BJP remained stuck in Hindutva, too-clever-by-half leadership projection, caste arithmetic and image management. It's now blaming individuals for its losses. Targeting the Iron Man: The person who has been most ruthlessly attacked and suffered the greatest loss of stature is none other than the BJP's tallest functioning leader - the Prime Ministerial-aspirant Mr LK Advani. Mr Jaswant Singh has pilloried him for his 'consuming ambition' and for not defending him against his summary expulsion from the BJP. The 'Iron Man' has become the butt of inner-party jokes. He was told by RSS chief, Mr Mohan Bhagwat that he must quit as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The RSS also wants BJP president, Mr Rajnath Singh to make way for a younger leader. This isn't a way of levelling the BJP's two competing power centres: the unelected Core Group dominated by Mr Advani, and the other controlled by Singh loyalists. Mr Rajnath Singh will complete his full term as party president at the end of 2009. He cannot have a second term unless the party constitution is amended. Mr Singh, a provincial, petty-minded, intrigue-obsessed politician, cannot bring this about. The RSS's real target is Mr Advani, who breached his promise that he wouldn't be the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate beyond 2009. After the election results, he offered to step down as the Opposition Leader, but unilaterally re-usurped that position. The RSS won't let him stay. Micromanaging of the BJP: The BJP is in it's worst-ever crisis thanks to a total collapse of organisational authority, political disorientation and strategic bankruptcy. Nobody in the BJP can arbitrate between its warring leaders. This has allowed the RSS to brazenly dictate terms to the BJP. The RSS decided that the BJP must promote leaders aged 55 to 60 years. And four such leaders duly landed at Mr Bhagwat's feet. The RSS wants the choice of the next party president to be extended beyond the Advani coterie (Mr Arun Jaitley, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, Mr Ananth Kumar and Ms Sushma Swaraj). So serving/former state-level ministers are suddenly in the running. The RSS is now micromanaging the BJP. It'll probably dictate its political line. In some ways, this function is new. The RSS has doubtless messed with the BJP in the past. Sarasanghachalak Sudarshan's 'midnight knock' in 1998 famously ensured that Mr Jaswant Singh wouldn't become finance minister. After the BJP's 2004 debacle, the RSS summarily replaced Mr Naidu as party president with Mr Advani. In April 2005, Mr Sudarshan publicly demanded that 'there should be a generational shift in BJP …" and that Messrs Vajpayee and Advani "should step aside…" This directive was unambiguous. Mr Vajpayee shrewdly ducked it by saying he held no post. But Mr Advani refused to quit. Soon, the RSS succeeded in sacking him by using his remarks praising Jinnah as 'secular' during his Pakistan trip. RSS Interference: What's new about the present RSS-BJP relationship, shaped by the unprecedented turmoil following the BJP's election defeat, is the scope and quality of the RSS's interference in its day-to-day affairs. Even BJP leaders without RSS backgrounds, like Mr Arun Shourie, pleaded for this by demanding the RSS should 'take over' the BJP. This inaugurates a new phase in the BJP's evolution. As long as the Vajpayee-Advani duo was strong, and while the BJP held central power, they could get a certain degree of autonomy from the RSS in the party and government's day-to-day running-without breaking with Hindu communalism ideologically, or the RSS organisationally. Neither leader had the conviction to put the BJP on the path of moderation or turn it into a conservative Right-wing party-like, say, European Christian Democrats-without its communal baggage. The RSS adopted a low profile, but remained the BJP's mentor, political guide and organisational gatekeeper. It conceded some policy space to the BJP in governance, especially in economic matters. But behind the scenes, it always asserted its primacy, especially that of Hindu nationalism. A key to this was the BJP's dependence on RSS pracharaks to mobilise votes for it during elections. This dependence has recently grown not least because the BJP's base has shrunk. RSS leaders claim that 40 per cent of the BJP's vote in the last election came from their work. The RSS influence is even stronger in the party organisation than in its Parliamentary wing. Thus, only 30 of the BJP's 116 Lok Sabha members come from the RSS. But two-thirds of its national executive members have RSS backgrounds. That means the RSS will overtly and blatantly tighten its hold on the BJP, further damaging its credibility. Unless the BJP returns to the politics of passion and mass mobilisation, it's likely to become a rump party, much like the Jana Sangh, albeit bigger in its Lok Sabha presence than the latter, with its 20-35 seats. Even such a rump cannot be written off. But it'll be a far cry from a force that's about to come to power. http://www.navhindtimes.in/opinions/2897-increasing-grip-of-rss-over-bjp SEE ALSO: It is not just the 'loony' 'vernacular' media, as many are given to believe, but even the 'respectable', 'mainstream', 'national' English-language press in India that have sedulously cultivated the notion of 'Islamic terrorism,' so much so that the image of Muslims in general being either terrorists or their sympathizers enjoys wide currency today. While it is true that some of the most dastardly terror attacks that India has witnessed in recent years have been the handiwork of some Muslims-and this is something that the vast majority of the Indian Muslims themselves deplore - it is also undeniable that Muslims have been unfairly blamed for many other attacks or alleged 'terror plots' by the police as well as the media in which they have had no role to play at all. Many Muslims-and others, too-believe that these false allegations are not innocent errors, but can be said to represent a deliberate and concerted effort to defame and demonise an entire community and the religion with which it is associated. That, precisely, is what a recently-released report, brought out by a team of secular, leftist non-Muslim activists from Karnataka argues. Titled 'Media on Terror', and issued by the activist group 'Column 9' [so named, the report says, because in a standard newspaper of eight columns, issues and perspectives that deserve a column of their own generally go missing), it is a detailed examination of the coverage and projection of 'terrorism' in the state of Karnataka. It is based on an analysis of the reporting of 'terrorism' in the Bangalore editions of leading Kannada and English newspapers over several months in 2008, supplemented with in-depth interviews with journalists, stringers and police officials in Honnali, Davangere, Hubli, Kalghatgi and Bangalore - places where, the media had reported, 'terrorists'- all of them incidentally Muslims-had been apprehended. This was a period when the media was awash with stories of Muslim 'terrorists' allegedly plotting to 'take over' the whole of Karnataka. A striking finding of the report is that the media in Karnataka, both Kannada and English, 'dangerously seemed to pronounce judgments on those arrested, much before the due process of law was played out'. In fact, the report says, there was 'no material basis to most of the news reports'. The tone of their reporting was sharply 'jingoistic', and 'none of the standards' expected of professional journalism 'seemed to be in evidence'. Alleged terrorists-in many cases innocent Muslim youths arbitrarily picked up by the police-were subjected to 'media trials' based simply on unsubstantiated police claims. The report speaks of 'the blurring of lines between police officials and investigative journalists, who seemed to pre-empt "official" investigation.' The language and rhetoric used in the reporting reflected, the report says, an obvious and deep-rooted bias against Muslims, and a deliberate effort to create a sense of siege among Hindus. Scores of sensational stories of Muslims being picked up for being 'suspected' terrorists published in the Karnataka media were based on information allegedly received from what were routinely called 'highly placed police officials' or 'intelligence bureau officials'. Predictably, the report says, the names of these police or investigating officials were not provided, which meant that these stories-many of which were patently fabricated-could not be substantiated by these officials. In numerous instances, the reports were based on 'news' wholly manufactured by reporters and stringers, as evidenced from the denials that emerged from the police officials themselves a day after these reports were published, which many papers chose to ignore. In almost all such cases, the newspapers did not bother to issue an apology despite irrefutable confirmation of their falsity. In most instances where the stories about alleged Muslim terrorists were based on information supplied by the police, journalists simply asked no questions at all as to the process of investigation that took place within the police stations despite it being common knowledge that torture is widely used by the police in such cases to extract information or else to force detainees to admit to crimes that they have had no hand in. Consequently, the arrested Muslims were uncritically presented in the media as 'hardcore Islamist terrorists', even without the courts having made their judgments. By presenting no version other than that of the police, the report remarks, the 'investigative' aspect of journalism in Karnataka on the matter of alleged Muslim involvement in 'terrorism' has in fact been reduced to what it calls 'stenographic reporting'. The report adds that the few journalists who tried to balance the stories with the other views about reported incidents about Muslim 'terrorism' or foiled 'terrorist plots' rarely found space in the newspapers. In this regard, it is significant to note that, as the report says, it was mainly at the lower-rungs of the police that journalists depended for their 'stories' (often, for a price it suggests). The journalists interviewed by the team that commissioned the report confirmed that to sustain their relations with police constables they needed to 'keep them happy' and desist from 'undertaking any steps to antagonize them'. This, the report points out, greatly affected the credibility of their reports since they assumed the police version as valid and often failed to critique or to ask any questions about that version. The report adds: 'Across the board, journalists specifically mentioned lower rung police officials, including constables and head constables within the concerned police stations, as sources of information. The journalists' access to these police officials was determined entirely on the basis of their personal rapport and connections staked out within the police stations. It was fairly obvious that the journalists nurtured these relationships with the officials very carefully since the relationships were the base for a potential "exclusive" story"[…] Despite the team's repeated questions seeking names of police officials who acted as sources of information, not a single reporter was willing to share these details.' Another alarming finding of the report was the arbitrary branding by both the police and the media of literature and CDs allegedly seized by the police from the Muslims who had been arrested as 'jihadi materials'. These were presented as 'proof' of those arrested as being behind acts of terror or even as would-be terrorists. In many cases, the police officials simply refused to share the material with journalists, at most showing them only photos of the covers of books seized from the arrested Muslims. Amazingly, the report relates, according to the journalists they interviewed, 'evidence of the books indeed being jihadi materials lay in the fact that most were books written in Urdu.' In one location where alleged Muslim terrorists had been arrested and so-called jihadi material recovered from them, journalists interviewed by the team mentioned that the police had produced a panel of Urdu experts at a press briefing to confirm that the seized materials were indeed 'jihadi'. Strikingly, none of the journalists had any clue about the identity of these so-called Urdu 'experts'. A journalist in Honnali spoke about a particular CD that was seized by the police from an arrested Muslim, whom the police and the media had alleged was a 'terrorist'. Far from being incendiary material, as was alleged, the CD, it turned out, was actually about an orphanage. Another journalist provided the team that had prepared the report a photograph taken on a mobile phone, where they could read the titles of two books since they were printed in English-one of these was 'The Spirit of Islam' and the other was the 'Holy Quran', books that, needless to say, are not proscribed and are readily available in the market. In this regard, the report rightly asks, 'How can possession of the Holy Koran be presented as proof that the people owning them are suspected terrorists? Why weren't any questions or objections raised about this new tendency of the Indian police who chose to present the possession of the Holy Koran as proof of possible terrorism?'. Thus, the report argues, 'It was very clear that the journalists had labeled books and other seized materials primarily on the basis of their interactions with the police and, to some extent, on the basis of internalized personal prejudice'.… http://www.countercurrents.org/sikand260809.htm SEE ALSO:
IN THIS ISSUE
NEWS HEADLINES
OPINIONS & EDITORIALS
NEWS HEADLINES
COPS FAKED ISHRAT KILLING FOR REWARDS: PROBE REPORT (SEP 8, 2009, INDIAN EXPRESS)
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/24005/ishrats-family-wants-action-against.html
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/514758/
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/09/stories/2009090960471000.htm
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/515118/FAMILIES OF OTHER VICTIMS SPEAK UP, DEMAND JUDICIAL INQUIRY (SEP 10, 2009, INDIAN EXPRESS)
http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/10/ishrat-judge-to-hear-another-victim-kins-plea.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4992303.cms
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/515314/
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4996374.cmsSADIQ JAMAL WAS KILLED TO PREVENT ARREST OF TOP GUJARAT COPS IN TELGI SCAM (SEP 11, 2009, INDIAN EXPRESS)
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/452118.aspx
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/10/stories/2009091050060100.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4993817.cms
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090911/haryana.htm#10ENCOUNTERS MEANT TO PLEASE MODI, PROBE ALL (SEP 10, 2009, HINDUSTAN TIMES)
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/514488/
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4988465.cms
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/09/stories/2009090960381000.htm
http://www.asianage.com/PROBE CAN CONTINUE UNDER STRINGENT ACT: HC (SEP 9, 2009, HINDUSTAN TIMES)
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/514799/
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/07/stories/2009090754070500.htm
http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/10/govt-extends-rehab-package-to-anti-sikh-riots-victims.htm
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/09/stories/2009090957570100.htmGUJARAT EX-MINISTER TELLS SIT TO PROBE MODIS ROLE IN 2002 RIOTS (SEP 10, 2009, REDIFF)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4984332.cms
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/514662/
http://www.expressindia.com/story_print.php?storyId=515585
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/514357/BHAGWATS INTERVENTION SHOWS BJP IS RSS POLITICAL TOOL: CPM (SEP 6, 2009, TIMES OF INDIA)
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090910/main5.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4995131.cms
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4992785.cms
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/514370/ALL QUIET AMID CURFEW IN SANGLI (SEP 10, 2009, HINDUSTAN TIMES)
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/24171/curfew-relaxed-miraj-sangli.html
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/451716.aspx
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4997040.cms
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/11/stories/2009091154160400.htmWOMAN POISONED TO DEATH OVER DOWRY (SEP 9, 2009, THE TRIBUNE)
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/514346/
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-5000650,prtpage-1.cms
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/women-sold-to-survive-drought-in-bundelkhand/100770-3.html
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/451395.aspxDALIT BEATEN TO DEATH BY COPS IN KAUSHAMBI (SEP 10, 2009, INDIAN EXPRESS)
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/print.aspx?artid=pNnGhQbWdg4=
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4979349.cms
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/08/stories/2009090850250100.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4977440.cms
OPINIONS AND EDITORIALS
SKELETONS OUT MODI CUPBOARD - EDITORIAL (SEP 9, 2009, NAV HIND TIMES)
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/515263/
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4988427.cms
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/print.aspx?artid=/Sl57fU/lpI=
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/10/stories/2009091055600800.htmISHRAT JAHANS DEATH - BY MUKUL KESAVAN (SEP 10, 2009, THE TELEGRAPH)
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?261803
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4987180.cms
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/10/stories/2009091055630800.htm
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/24244/zero-tolerance.htmlJOLT TO MODI - EDITORIAL (SEP 7, 2009, THE TRIBUNE)
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/08/stories/2009090854830800.htm
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/513776/
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4978656.cms
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090909/jsp/opinion/story_11461428.jspDIVIDED FAMILY - BY VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN (SEP 12, 2009, FRONTLINE)
http://www.centralchronicle.com/viewnews.asp?articleID=14191
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/print.aspx?artid=oY|Z8oj|lRo=
http://www.countercurrents.org/puniyani060909.htm
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/450713.aspxINCREASING GRIP OF RSS OVER BJP - BY PRAFUL BIDWAI (SEP 10, 2009, NAV HIND TIMES)
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090911/edit.htm#4
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne120909rss_appointees.asp
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4991448.cms
http://www.frontline.in/fl2619/stories/20090925261912600.htmMUSLIM TERRORISTS MANUFACTURED BY THE MEDIA - BY YOGINDER SIKAND (AUG 26, 2009, COUNTERCURRENTS)
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/24613/cult-intolerance.html
http://www.frontline.in/fl2619/stories/20090925261910500.htm
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090911/jsp/opinion/story_11476493.jsp
http://countercurrents.org/alamkhan100909.htm
