In the business of spreading confusion, the mass media, particularly television journalists, can be counted on to be perfect collaborators. On discussions, chat shows, and “special reports,” we have television anchors playing around with crucial facts, like young children in a sandpit. Torturers, estranged brothers, senior police officers, and politicians are emerging from the woodwork and talking. The more they talk, the more interesting it all becomes.
At the end of November 2006, Afzal’s older brother Aijaz made it onto a national news channel (CNN-IBN).13 He was featured on hidden camera, on what was meant to be a “sting” operation, making—we were asked to believe—stunning revelations. Aijaz’s story had already been on offer to various journalists on the streets of Delhi for weeks. People were wary of him because his rift with his brother’s wife and family is well known. More significantly, in Kashmir he is known to have a relationship with the STF. More than one person has suggested an audit of his newfound assets.
But here he was now, on the national news, endorsing the Supreme Court decision to hang his brother. Then, saying Afzal had never surrendered, and that it was he (Aijaz) who surrendered his brother’s weapon to the Border Security Force! And since he had never surrendered, Aijaz was able to “confirm” that Afzal was an active militant with the Jaish-e-Mohammed and that Ghazi Baba, chief of operations of the Jaish, used to regularly hold meetings in their home. (Aijaz claims that when Ghazi Baba was killed, he was called in by the police to identify the body.) On the whole, it sounded as though there had been a case of mistaken identity—and that given how much he knew, and all he was admitting, Aijaz should have been the one in custody instead of Afzal.
We must keep in mind that behind both Aijaz and Afzal’s “media confessions,” spaced five years apart, is the invisible hand of the STF, the dreaded counterinsurgency outfit in Kashmir. They can make anyone say anything at any time. Their methods (both punitive and remunerative) are familiar to every man, woman, and child in the Kashmir valley. At a time like this, for a responsible news channel to announce that their “investigation finds that Afzal was a Jaish militant,” based on totally unreliable testimony, is dangerous and irresponsible. (Since when did what our brothers say about us become admissible evidence? My brother, for instance, will testify that I’m God’s gift to the universe. I could dredge up a couple of aunts who’d say I’m a Jaish militant. For a price.) How can family feuds be dressed up as breaking news?
The other character who is rapidly emerging from the shadowy periphery and wading onto center stage is deputy superintendent of police Dravinder Singh of the STF. He is the man named by Afzal as the police officer who held him in illegal detention and tortured him in the STF camp at Humhama in Srinagar, only a few months before the Parliament attack. In a letter to his lawyer Sushil Kumar, Afzal says that several of the calls made to him and Mohammad (the man killed in the attack) can be traced to Dravinder Singh. Of course no attempt was made to trace these calls.
Dravinder Singh was also showcased on the CNN-IBN show, on the by-now ubiquitous low-angle shots, camera shake and all.14 It seemed a bit unnecessary, because Dravinder Singh has been talking a lot these days. He’s done recorded interviews, on the phone as well as face to face, saying exactly the same shocking things. Weeks before the sting operation, in a recorded interview to Parvaiz Bukhari (at that time a freelance journalist based in Srinagar), he said:
I did interrogate and torture him [Afzal] at my camp for several days. And we never recorded his arrest in the books anywhere. His description of torture at my camp is true. That was the procedure those days and we did pour petrol in his ass and gave him electric shocks. But I could not break him. He did not reveal anything to me despite our hardest possible interrogation. We tortured him enough for Ghazi Baba but he did not break. He looked like a “bhondu” those days, what you call a “chootya” type. And I had a reputation for torture, interrogation, and breaking suspects. If anybody came out of my interrogation clean, nobody would ever touch him again. He would be considered clean for good by the whole department.15
On TV this boasting spiraled into policy making. “Torture is the only deterrent for terrorism,” he said, “I do it for the nation.”16 He didn’t bother to explain why or how the “bhondu” that he tortured and subsequently released allegedly went on to become the diabolical mastermind of the Parliament attack. Dravinder Singh then said that Afzal was a Jaish militant. If this is true, why wasn’t the evidence placed before the courts? And why on earth was Afzal released? Why wasn’t he watched? There is a definite attempt to try and dismiss this as incompetence. But given everything we know now, it would take all of Dravinder Singh’s delicate professional skills to make some of us believe that.
Meanwhile, right-wing commentators have consistently taken to referring to Afzal as a Jaish-e-Mohammed militant. It’s as though instructions have been issued that this is to be the party line. They have absolutely no evidence to back their claim, but they know that repeating something often enough makes it the “truth.” As part of the campaign to portray Afzal as an “active” militant and not a surrendered militant, S. M. Sahai, inspector general, Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir police, appeared on TV to say that he had found no evidence in his records that Afzal had surrendered.17 It would have been odd if he had, because in 1993 Afzal surrendered not to the Jammu and Kashmir police, but to the Border Security Force. But why would a TV journalist bother with that kind of detail? And why does a senior police officer need to become part of this game of smoke and mirrors?
The official version of the story of the Parliament attack is very quickly coming apart at the seams.
Even the Supreme Court judgment, with all its flaws of logic and leaps of faith, does not accuse Mohammad Afzal of being the mastermind of the attack. So who was the mastermind? If Mohammad Afzal is hanged, we may never know. But L. K. Advani, leader of the opposition, wants him hanged at once. Even a day’s delay, he says, is against the national interest.18 Why? What’s the hurry? The man is locked up in a high security cell on death row. He’s not allowed out of his cell for even five minutes a day. What harm can he do? Talk? Write, perhaps? Surely (even in L. K. Advani’s own narrow interpretation of the term) it’s in the national interest not to hang Afzal. At least not until there is an inquiry that reveals what the real story is and who actually attacked Parliament.
Among the people who have appealed against Mohammad Afzal’s death sentence are those who are opposed to capital punishment on principle. They have asked that his death sentence be commuted to a life sentence. To sentence a man who has not had a fair trial, and has not had the opportunity to be heard, to a life sentence is less cruel but just as arbitrary as sentencing him to death. The right thing to do would be to order a retrial of Afzal’s case and an impartial, transparent inquiry into the December 13 Parliament attack. It is utterly demonic to leave a man locked up alone in a prison cell, day after day, week after week, leaving him and his family to guess which day will be the last day of his life.
A genuine inquiry would have to mean far more than just a political witch hunt. It would have to look into the part played by intelligence, counterinsurgency, and security agencies as well. Offenses such as the fabrication of evidence and the blatant violation of procedural norms have already been established in the courts, but they look very much like just the tip of the iceberg.19 We now have a police officer admitting (boasting) on record that he was involved in the illegal detention and torture of a fellow citizen. Is all of this acceptable to the people, the government, and the courts of this country?
Given the track record of Indian governments (past and present, right, left, and center), it is naive—perhaps utopian is a better word—to hope that it will ever have the courage to institute an inquiry that will once and for all uncover the real story. A maintenance dose of pusillanimity is probably encrypted in all governments. But hope has little to do with reason.
“Ironically, the era of the free market has led to the most succes
sful secessionist struggle ever waged in India—the secession of the middle and upper classes to a country of their own, somewhere up in the stratosphere where they merge with the rest of the world’s elite. This Kingdom in the Sky is a complete universe in itself, hermetically sealed from the rest of India. It has its own newspapers, films, television programs, morality plays, transport systems, malls, and intellectuals.”
This chapter was the introduction to 13 December, A Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament (Delhi: Penguin India, 2006).
“AND HIS LIFE SHOULD BECOME EXTINCT”: THE VERY STRANGE STORY OF THE ATTACK ON THE INDIAN PARLIAMENT
We know this much: On December 13, 2001, the Indian Parliament was in its winter session. (The National Democratic Alliance government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party was under attack for yet another corruption scandal.) At 11:30 a.m., five armed men in a white Ambassador car outfitted with an improvised explosive device drove through the gates of Parliament House in New Delhi. When they were challenged, they jumped out of the car and opened fire. In the gun battle that followed, all the attackers were killed. Eight security personnel and a gardener were killed, too. The dead terrorists, the police said, had enough explosives to blow up the Parliament building and enough ammunition to take on a whole battalion of soldiers.1 Unlike most terrorists, these five left behind a thick trail of evidence—weapons, mobile phones, phone numbers, ID cards, photographs, packets of dried fruit, and even a love letter.2
Not surprisingly, prime minister A. B. Vajpayee seized the opportunity to compare the assault to the September 11 attacks in the United States that had happened only three months previously.
On December 14, 2001, the day after the attack on Parliament, the Special Cell of the Delhi police claimed it had tracked down several people suspected to have been involved in the conspiracy. A day later, on December 15, it announced that it had “cracked the case”: the attack, the police said, was a joint operation carried out by two Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Twelve people were named as being part of the conspiracy: Ghazi Baba of the Jaish (Usual Suspect I); Maulana Masood Azhar, also of the Jaish (Usual Suspect II); Tariq Ahmed (a “Pakistani”); five deceased “Pakistani terrorists” (we still don’t know who they are); three Kashmiri men, S. A. R. Geelani, Shaukat Hussain Guru, and Mohammad Afzal; and Shaukat’s wife, Afsan Guru. These were the only four to be arrested.3
In the tense days that followed, Parliament was adjourned. On December 21, India recalled its high commissioner from Pakistan; suspended air, rail, and bus communications; and banned overflights. It put into motion a massive mobilization of its war machinery and moved more than half a million troops to the Pakistan border. Foreign embassies evacuated their staff and citizens, and tourists traveling to India were issued cautionary travel advisories. The world watched with bated breath as the subcontinent was taken to the brink of nuclear war.4 All this cost India an estimated Rs 100 billion ($2 billion) of public money. A few hundred soldiers died just in the panicky process of mobilization.
Almost three and a half years later, on August 4, 2005, the Supreme Court delivered its final judgment in the case. It endorsed the view that the Parliament attack be regarded as an act of war. It said, “The attempted attack on Parliament is an undoubted invasion of the sovereign attribute of the State including the government of India which is its alter ego … the deceased terrorists were roused and impelled to action by a strong anti-Indian feeling as the writing on the fake home ministry sticker found on the car (Ex PW1/8) reveals.” It went on to say, “[T]he modus operandi adopted by the hardcore ‘fidayeens’ are all demonstrative of launching a war against the Government of India.”
The text on the fake home ministry sticker read as follows:
INDIA IS A VERY BAD COUNTRY AND WE HATE INDIA WE WANT TO DESTROY INDIA AND WITH THE GRACE OF GOD WE WILL DO IT GOD IS WITH US AND WE WILL TRY OUR BEST. THE EDIET WAJPAI AND ADVANI WE WILL KILL THEM. THEY HAVE KILLED MANY INNOCENT PEOPLE AND THEY ARE VERY BAD PERSONS THERE BROTHER BUSH IS ALSO A VERY BAD PERSON HE WILL BE NEXT TARGET HE IS ALSO THE KILLER OF INNOCENT PEOPLE HE HAVE TO DIE AND WE WILL DO IT.5
This subtly worded sticker-manifesto was displayed on the windscreen of the car bomb as it drove into Parliament. (Given the amount of text, it’s a wonder the driver could see anything at all. Maybe that’s why he collided with the vice president’s cavalcade?)
The police charge sheet was filed in a special fast-track trial court designated for cases under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. On December 16, 2002, the trial court sentenced Geelani, Shaukat, and Afzal to death. Afsan Guru was sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment. A year later the high court acquitted Geelani and Afsan, but it upheld Shaukat’s and Afzal’s death sentence. Eventually, the Supreme Court too upheld the acquittals and reduced Shaukat’s punishment to ten years of rigorous imprisonment. However, it not just confirmed but also enhanced Mohammad Afzal’s sentence. He has been given three life sentences and a double death sentence.
In its August 4, 2005, judgment, the Supreme Court clearly says that there was no evidence that Mohammad Afzal belonged to any terrorist group or organization. But it also says, “As is the case with most of the conspiracies, there is and could be no direct evidence of the agreement amounting to criminal conspiracy. However, the circumstances, cumulatively weighed, would unerringly point to the collaboration of the accused Afzal with the slain ‘fidayeen’ terrorists.”
So no direct evidence, but yes, circumstantial evidence.
A controversial paragraph in the judgment goes on to say, “The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.”6
To invoke the “collective conscience of the society” to validate ritual murder, which is what the death penalty is, skates precariously close to valorizing lynch law. It’s chilling to think that this has been laid upon us not by predatory politicians or sensation-seeking journalists (though they too have done that), but as an edict from the highest court in the land.
Spelling out the reasons for awarding Afzal the death penalty, the judgment goes on to say: “The appellant, who is a surrendered militant and who was bent on repeating the acts of treason against the nation, is a menace to the society and his life should become extinct.”
This sentence combines flawed logic with absolute ignorance of what it means to be a “surrendered militant” in Kashmir today.
So: Should Mohammad Afzal’s life become extinct?
A small but influential minority of intellectuals, activists, editors, lawyers, and public figures have objected to the death sentence as a matter of moral principle. They also argue that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that the death sentence works as a deterrent to terrorists. (How can it, when, in this age of fedayeen and suicide bombers, death seems to be the main attraction?)
If opinion polls, letters to the editor, and the reactions of live audiences in TV studios are a correct gauge of public opinion in India, then the lynch mob is expanding by the hour. It looks as though an overwhelming majority of Indian citizens would like to see Mohammad Afzal hanged every day, weekends included, for the next few years. L. K. Advani, leader of the opposition, displaying an unseemly sense of urgency, wants him to be hanged as soon as possible, without a moment’s delay.7
Meanwhile in Kashmir, public opinion is equally overwhelming. Huge angry protests make it increasingly obvious that if Afzal is hanged, the consequences will be political. Some protest what they see as a miscarriage of justice, but even as they protest, they do not expect justice from Indian courts. They have lived through too much brutality to believe in courts, affidavits, and justice anymore. Others would like to see Mohammad Afzal march to the gallows like Maqbool Butt, a proud martyr to the cause of Kashmir’s freedom struggle.8 On the whole, most Kashmiris see Mohammad Afzal as a sort of prisoner of war being tried i
n the courts of an occupying power. (Which it undoubtedly is.) Naturally, political parties, in India as well as in Kashmir, have sniffed the breeze and are cynically closing in for the kill.
Sadly, in the midst of the frenzy, Afzal seems to have forfeited the right to be an individual, a real person anymore. He’s become a vehicle for everybody’s fantasies—nationalists, separatists, and anti–capital punishment activists. He has become India’s great villain and Kashmir’s great hero—proving only that whatever our pundits, policy makers, and peace gurus say, all these years later, the war in Kashmir has by no means ended.
In a situation as fraught and politicized as this, it’s tempting to believe that the time to intervene has come and gone. After all, the judicial process lasted forty months, and the Supreme Court has examined the evidence before it. It has convicted two of the accused and acquitted the other two. Surely this in itself is proof of judicial objectivity? What more remains to be said? There’s another way of looking at it. Isn’t it odd that the prosecution’s case, proved to be so egregiously wrong in one half, has been so gloriously vindicated in the other?
The story of Mohammad Afzal is fascinating precisely because he is not Maqbool Butt. Yet his story too is inextricably entwined with the story of the Kashmir valley. It’s a story whose coordinates range far beyond the confines of courtrooms and the limited imagination of people who live in the secure heart of a self-declared “superpower.” Mohammad Afzal’s story has its origins in a war zone whose laws are beyond the pale of the fine arguments and delicate sensibilities of normal jurisprudence.
My Seditious Heart Page 40