Hindu Terror

by RVS Mani

  After the counter-affidavit

  However, in September 2009 there were reports about an inquest being conducted on the exhumed bodies of the dead. A judicial officer called S P Tamang had conducted this inquest proceedings. Ishrat’s mother had not requested this exhumation and the subsequent inquest. The magistrate’s court had concluded that there was an encounter and there was no reason for such a killing. Therefore it was a ‘fake’ encounter. One thing the inquest could not establish is that any of the victims had carried weapons or themselves opened fire.

  On 9 September 2009, the High Court of Gujarat Single Bench had stayed Tamang’s report following Criminal Application No.13526 /2009 and Misc. Criminal Application No.10625 of 2009.

  Ld. Single Judge of the High Court vide the impugned Order dated 9.9.2009 stayed the Magisterial Enquiry Report ( which had recorded that the encounter in which the petitioner’s daughter was killed, was a fake) without recognizing that the said proceeding is statutory in nature, and thereby severely prejudiced the petitioner in her effort to obtain justice for her daughter.

  She could not participate in the Inquiry by Shri S.P. Tamang Metropolitan Magistrate as summon dated 13.8.2009, directing her to participate in the Inquiry was received only on 7.9.2009.

  It was a case where the witness was zealous while the litigant was laid back. The entire process of reopening of the inquest by Judge Tamang was conducted on an application by some overzealous vested interest, whether political or nonpolitical, to further their own interest, keeping the next of kin in oblivion. Ishrat’s mother or Pranesh’s father had not known even of exhumation of their bodies and the subsequent inquest.

  On learning of the inquest, I had called for the relevant papers and after having perused them, I had submitted my views, for orders on what to do.

  In September 2009, the Home Minister was in the USA when this Tamang Report was being flashed on television and other media. He was accompanied amongst others by the Joint Secretary, Internal Security. The Home Minister of the State of Gujarat displayed the MHA counter-affidavit signed and filed by me on 6.8.2009. The Joint Secretary later told us that after the media reports, his trip with the Minister was no longer comfortable. Upon his return to India, he called for the file. I must confess that was the last I saw of the file at that point in time. (The file, the media tells me, has gone missing.)

  Thereafter, Home Minister Chidambaram, an eminent lawyer, with yet another eminent lawyer, set about to draft a supplementary affidavit to control the damage done by the MHA counter-affidavit.

  I asked my seniors whether we can or if we have ever filed a supplementary affidavit? I was curtly asked to shut up and watch the game. I later learnt that this supplementary affidavit was not even called a ‘supplementary’. It was given a new name by lawyer Chidambaram. It was called, ‘further affidavit’. At the time of writing, this affidavit too is missing from records.18

  After a few days, I was closeted with Director (IS) in his room in the evening. Evenings in the Room of Director (IS), which we called zero hour, were times when we would exchange, shout at each other, de-stress, convey our reservations/ constraints to him, argue with him and also find several solutions.

  That evening we were having a very acrimonious altercation, The Under Secretary in charge of Parliamentary Work, Ajay Sumbly walked in with a paper which warranted the Director’s immediate attention. After perusing the document, our Director (IS) nonchalantly said, ‘let’s attend to this but our altercation is to be continued’. This serious fellow who had entered our room could not comprehend what was happening.

  18 According to media reports, the papers, which disappeared from the Home Ministry, include the copy of an affidavit vetted by the then Attorney General and submitted in the Gujarat High Court in 2009 and the draft of the second affidavit vetted by the AG on which changes were made.

  Two letters written by the then Home Secretary G K Pillai to the then Attorney General, late G E Vahanvati, and the copy of the draft affidavit have also so far remained untraceable. All the four IB officers accused of rights violations were handling the key Internal Security-I division in the Home Ministry as Joint Secretaries in different periods.

  It was routine to assemble in the Director’s room every evening. One evening, an envelope was received from the Home Minister’s office, to be delivered to the Office/Home of the Attorney General of India. We deputed a dispatch rider from the Control Room to do this. After some time, the rider came back and informed us that the Attorney General was out of the country and would not be back before the 25th of the month.

  I am not privy to any other incident after that except that I was given a draft of the supplementary (further) affidavit and asked to go and file it with the Ahmedabad court on behalf of the MHA on 28.9.2009.

  As 29.9.2009 was Dusserha and the offices were closed, I booked myself on an evening flight to Ahmedabad on the 29th. I stayed at the same campus. The next morning, a personnel from the guard force was deputed to accompany me. Having stayed in this place, I knew many of the personnel posted there, so also this person. I had known the DIG in charge. I thought it was just a courtesy extended by the then DIG of the centre.

  Later on, when I was in the process of filing the supplementary (further affidavit) affidavit, I noticed this policeman/guard continuously giving an update on my movements and activities to someone on the mobile phone. I did not know, nor did I then ask to whom he was reporting. Much later, after several such instances during the trip, I solved the mystery. The office of the Home Minster had tracked my place of stay and through the headquarters of the Central Police Force, asked the station in charge to give an update on my movements. They wanted to ensure that the supplementary (further) affidavit was filed. I think they had little trust in me.

  The reasons for this are, I had a good memory and remembered details and they always thought I knew too many things.

  This had become a vice, not a virtue for the then Home Minister’s establishment. I was identified as a man carrying too many things in my head, someone with a long memory. It is also believed that one of the main reasons for the 30.12.2008 incident was this and my chances would have been zero, had the kidnapping been successful.

  On the balance, 2009 had been an eventful year for me in particular. Many friends and acquaintances had called me up saying they had read my name in the newspapers or seen me on television. But my father was a disturbed man. He said, the limelight was not good for me as I was identified now for the perpetrators and designers of terrorism. Now onward, I would always be at risk.

  In retrospect, readers can deduce from the Sardarji Maghanji case, the Ishrat Jahan case and several such other cases that ever since the notification of the POTA Repeal Ordinance on 21.9.2004, the UPA government was more interested in bailing out those accused of terrorism than providing justice to victims. Was there any other interest working in the background?

  The questions to ask would be, in how many cases has the Additional Solicitor General been engaged in defence of a person accused of crime? What was at stake in the Godhra-Vaghela case in February 2009? Was it not a terror case warranting trial under POTA which had stringent punishments and summary evidenciary process? Was the train burning not a crime under the IPC? Has any government ever engaged a law officer to protect the rights of an ordinary criminal vis-à-vis a victim of a crime or its survivors?

  Eventful 2010: Charges, counter-charges

  THE DAWN OF 2010 came and we began to expect some calmness in the Internal Security front. We had taken control of the terrorism scene. Many sleeper cells had been neutralised through close cooperation and coordination between security agencies, law enforcing agencies with MHA, Internal Security Division acting as facilitator over the last three years.

  The Agency Division which was generating inputs on many Pakistani/ Pok-based ISI sponsored cells, sleeper or active, was headed by Rajinder Kumar, a very committed IPS officer. We had never met as such except in one or two meetings in the OPS R
oom or some other senior officer’s room. At that time, I did not even vaguely remember his face. He had to face a lot of harassment at the hands of the then government in power due to his pro-active stance against terrorism.

  As fate would have it, in the case of Shamima Kauser, in which I filed the first MHA counter-affidavit, I was accused of having ‘taken an affidavit’ handed over by Rajinder Kumar, getting the approvals on this and had filed it in the Gujarat High Court on 6 August 2009. This illusion was perpetrated by the powers that be.

  It is my personal conviction that there was an agenda behind this. This officer had caused the breaking up of and neutralisation of many sleeper cells through his visionary inputs. I always felt this outstanding officer had the capacity to sense the activities of these sleeper cells, no matter how low or insignificant these lay. I had over the period become a mobile information bank on counter-terror activities. Our diligence did not suit some people in the corridors of power who were partnering terror and colouring these with a shade identified with the majority religion. Hence, first they accused us of bias against minority communities and then associated our names in an unholy collaboration.

  The 2010 CMs’ Conference

  In 2010, the third of the Chief Ministers’ Conference was held on 7th February. I had, with the guidance of senior officers, especially Special Secretary (Internal Security) U K Bansal with whom I had spent several hours, developed a template covering 15 points for assessing the preparedness of State governments to react to terror attacks, disasters etc. These included QRT, coastal surveillance, disaster response mechanism, help lines, toll free lines, intelligence sharing etc.

  During the conference, we felt that some of the State governments had also matured. Most Chief Ministers were handing out platitudes in their addresses, the ‘secular’ CMs mostly on saffron being the colour of terror. Just a few like Ashok Gehlot wanted to calibrate the new Home Ministry initiatives to the needs of their States.

  There was a long lecture by the Lt Governor of Chandigarh, Shivraj Patil. He gave a long list of what steps can be taken to reinforce security, preparedness, preempt terror attacks and so on. A Tamil officer sitting next to me said, ‘Gyanonodhayam’, meaning dawn of knowledge and wisdom. I replied, ’Kan kurudu aanaduka apparam, Surya namaskaram’, meaning, a blind man having lost sight is propitiating the Sun God (Lord of sight). Let him do it, today is Sunday.

  Around the same time, Home Minister Chidambaram had made a reference to the existence of Saffron Terror in a speech in Darul-ul-Islam at Deoband in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh.

  However, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi flagged a pertinent point. He told the gathering that transgression outside Indian territorial waters was a perennial problem for Gujarat’s fisherman. This leads them to attendant problems. Hence, if they are engaged as territorial army soldiers, they would get trained in reading maps, compass and other such equipment. Also, being soldiers, they would be less vulnerable to poaching and compromise by Pakistani groups on the international sea route, which is quite rampant. Rather, they could be of help. Could the Ministry of Defence follow up on this?

  The Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Raman Singh, also made a valuable suggestion regarding the selection criteria for recruitment to the Indian Reserve Battalion. The health standards, including height prescribed for it, is standardised across the States. He suggested, this should be made State specific. In his State, there were certain communities which were hardy, though traditionally of short height and they do not get selected. Hence there is incidences of disaffection.

  During the lunch break, some senior officers of the Director General of Police, some Joint Secretaries etc. had come out for a smoke break. Since it was time for resumption of the session, I had gone over to request them to rejoin the session. This also included a Director General of a paramilitary force, Raman Srivastava, who had not long before been our Special Secretary (IS), with whom I enjoyed a level of comfort and familiarity. They were discussing another officer in the Ministry of Home Affairs, in the Police Modernisation Division, who was unnecessarily delaying procurement decisions. There was a general feeling of consensus that this delay was actually crippling the real-time functioning of the paramilitary forces and the Home Secretary had asked the man, Dharmendra Sharma, to proceed on leave, although he had the support of the Home Minister.

  After lunch I was called by M A Siddique, Private Secretary to the Home Minister, and asked to locate an officer who was then Special Director, CBI. Sharad Chandra Sinha was to report to the Home Minister immediately. Accordingly, after scouting the Vigyan Bhavan main conference hall and consulting a few colleagues to confirm that it was the same person, I found Sinha in the middle rows in the centre half of the hall. I conveyed the ministry’s summons, asking him to meet the Home Minister in the ante room where other dignitaries like the PM, NSA M K Narayanan, Principal Secretary to PM, T K A Nair were also present.

  I am given to understand that it was at the CM’s conference ante-room that Sinha was told he would be the next DG NIA. We do not know what ACC procedure was followed and whether it was followed at all. It may be recalled that in those days, when a matter of avenging the loss of life of any security force officer was to be decided, the concerned Cabinet Committee members wanted 14 to 15 days time to frame their position. But to appoint a person of their own choice on a nomination basis, without a choice of three names etc.—that could be decided over a lunch in a conference. Notwithstanding, two main members of the ACC were there and it was their call and they were exercising their powers.

  German Bakery blast

  Thereafter, on 8th February we had a very serious input. I placed it before the Director (IS). He personally drafted an advisory communication to three States which had Chabad Houses (place of worship and seminary for Jewish worshippers). The advisory communication was signed by the concerned Joint Secretary and issued. There was imminent threat of fidayeen attacks to these places and their vicinity. According to information available with the Home Ministry, Chabad Houses were located in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Kochi. Hence the States of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala were sensitised on 8th February 2010.

  The input shared by the Home Ministry proved right. On 13th February 2010, there was a bomb blast in a German Bakery very close to the Chabad House in Pune. As many as 67 people died and many were injured.

  This was a blast which could have been avoided. It appears that the Central alert was not taken seriously by the State government and even the Commissioner of Police, Pune, did not receive the input from the government of Maharashtra.

  Or was it a deliberate policy not to share the input? I ask this question because of certain information on funds used for terror attack. It is a stated fact that finance is the life line of terrorism. MHA had received the input on the funds used for the German Bakery attack. It was traced to Moshin Akbar Chowdhury and many such Akbar Chowdhurys. As many as eight accounts in the Ratnakar Bank, Pune with last names as Akbar Chowdhury were frozen under Section 51 A of UAPA Act.

  This amendment was introduced in the new initiatives of the new Home Minister. But it was basically to meet the FATF membership criteria. Hence, these Bills were introduced under Article 253 of Indian Constitution, ie. a bill introduced to meet international commitments.

  At that time, it came to light that the real Akbar Chowdhury was a poor man. All these eight Akbar Chowdhurys were only dummy account holders (benami). There were some political entities belonging to the then ruling coalition who controlled them. One such entity was a big hawala dealer, a man known as Baba Siddiqui from Mumbai with political links.

  After the German Bakery blast, the Home Minister undertook a trip to Pune. Even his departure was delayed because Suresh Kalmadi, the then Member of Parliament from Pune, wanted to accompany the Minister. Kalmadi, now accused in the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scam, delayed the departure of the MHA team led by Chidambaram by few hours, perhaps giving enough time to vested interests, to en
gineer and manipulate evidences under the garb of crime scene protection.

  Another head rolls

  Immediately after the German Bakery Blast, the Budget Session of Parliament commenced. As usual, MHA was receiving literary hundreds of notices for questions and other motions. One such question was regarding the ‘onward passage of evidence collected in the Mumbai blasts’, sharing this with Pakistan. Only three persons, including the Joint Secretary (IS), were privy to the exact information, so the reply was drafted at that level.

  This happened on 1st of March 2010. It was the day of Holi which was a holiday. The Joint Secretary framed the reply that, ‘intercepts furnished by State Investigation Agency have been examined and were shared with Pakistani authorities’.

  Minister Chidambaram who had knocked off some intercepts from the basket to be shared with Pakistan, had amended the MHA answer for Parliament to read as, ‘All intercepts received have been shared’. This was, of course, not the full truth.

  No officer ever dares to lie in a Parliament question. Firstly, out of conscience and professionalism and secondly due to possible attendant consequences. The Joint Secretary (IS) re-submitted the file, reiterating his draft. Again the Union Minister modified it, holding his position which was less than the full truth. We were all oblivious of these happenings at the time. Subsequently, on the next working day, it appears the Minister ceded but made an unwanted remark on the file. The file never came back to the desk-level but the reply approved by the then Home Minister was placed in the table of the House. The Reply to Lok Sabha Starred question no 78 answered on 2.3.2010 was, ‘intercepts have been shared’ and not all intercepts have been shared.

  Later in the day, there was a meeting in the Home Secretary’s chamber. My Director asked me to go to then Home Secretary’s chamber and said he would go and fetch the Joint Secretary. But when we were settling down to the meeting in the HS’s chamber, Director (IS) came sans Joint Secretary Diptivilasa and whispered in my ears that, JS ka transfer ho gaya (the JS has been transferred). The Home Secretary also confirmed the news at the outset of the meeting.