The Midnight Knock
BJP leader Haren Pandya has been assassinated. It’s the ISI. Let’s raid the Muslim bastis.
DIONNE BUNSHA
in Ahmedabad
They didn’t expect a showdown at a memorial prayer meeting. So, when Vithalbhai Pandya said his son Haren’s assassination on March 26th was “a political murder”, BJP leaders were red in the face. Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani had to admit that an injustice had been done to the slain leader. Haren Pandya was former BJP Gujarat home minister and chief minister Narendra Modi’s most fierce opponent. The next day, Advani flew back to Delhi and announced the ‘ISI hand’ and involvement of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim in the killing. Before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had barely started work on the case.
That was a month back. Since then, Ahmedabad’s Muslim areas have faced the brunt. In the middle of the night, homes are raided in search of ‘ISI agents’. Soon after Advani’s prophecy, the Ahmedabad police’s crime branch arrested five suspected ISI-trained terrorists on 3rd April, who were allegedly involved in the plot to kill Pandya. Soon after, the CBI arrested five more youth in Andhra Pradesh. Of them, Asgar Ali is allegedly the one who pulled the trigger.
In all the CBI has arrested eight persons from Andhra Pradesh suspected to be involved in the Haren Pandya killing. While the CBI hasn’t yet charged the accused under the harsh Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), the Ahmedabad crime branch has remanded the 10 alleged ISI agents arrested by them under POTA and is waiting to book those in CBI custody as well. The Ahmedabad police say that the mastermind, Maulvi Mufti Sufian, is still at large. He was apparently co-ordinating with Rasool Parti, now in Karachi, who was once part of the Latif gang in Ahmedabad.
“The CBI is handling only Haren Pandya’s killing. Our case pertains to a larger conspiracy to destabilise the country,” says an official of the Ahmedabad police’s crime branch. “Three of the accused were trained in Karachi. They went there in December via Calcutta and Dhaka and returned on March 8th. They were sent by Sufian. They are all part of a bigger terrorist network involved in many other crimes.” However, all the ten accused arrested by them so far are connected with the Haren Pandya case. It seems that the crime branch is working parallel to the CBI, but only in a more repressive manner.
Their raids have instilled fear in Ahmedabad’s already-petrified Muslim community. “They bang on doors in the middle of the night, barge into homes, rummage through their belongings and arrest people without giving the family any information,” says Nazneen Bastawala, a corporator from Kalupur, Ahmedabad. She organised a protest of women whose sons and husbands have disappeared. Bastawala claims that the police have detained more than 25 men illegally. There is no record of their arrest. “For days, we didn’t know where they were. A week later, the police released them. Luckily, the police let off many without filing a false case against them,” said one of the women.
When the police came looking for Arif ‘s (name changed) younger brother, Salim (name changed), he wasn’t home. So, instead they arrested Arif, his father and his other brother. “They wouldn’t let us go until we told them where Salim was. But I really didn’t know where he had gone. The interrogations were like mental torture. They let my brother go home after two days. My elderly father, who has a heart problem, fell unconscious twice. But they weren’t bothered,” says Arif. Finally, Arif and his father were released after a week. But Arif was re-arrested because he wasn’t able to trace Salim. “They even sent me to Mumbai to look for Salim. But they arrested him in Ahmedabad on the day that I left for Mumbai,” says Arif. Several others narrated similar stories about brothers or fathers of the wanted youth being illegally arrested.
The raids continued till the end of the month. Women went rushing to lawyers asking them to help trace their husbands. Those who traced their sons and husbands in custody are afraid they could be killed in fake encounters, a well-known technique of the Gujarat police. The most recent dubious encounter death was that of Salim Khan Pathan, an accused in a plot to assassinate Modi. He was apparently taken to the site of a previous crime he had committed and was killed while he allegedly tried to escape. On April 30, Faqruddin Yusuf Sikligar, an accused in the Godhra case, died in custody. The police say he was suffering from low blood pressure.
“Why are all Muslims branded terrorists? Why is POTA applied only to the Godhra accused and now to these youth? Why not against those who killed so many during the communal massacres in Naroda Patiya and Gulbarg society? Why are they out on bail? Why is there selective justice?” asked one of the women who protested against the arbitrary arrests. A telling comparison. After the chargesheets of the riot cases were filed, several witnesses went to court stating that their testimonies were ignored or wrongly recorded. They asked for their statements to be recorded properly by the police. Moreover, riot victims from Naroda Gaam who testified to the role of VHP leader Dr Jaideep Patel and other BJP leaders were jailed six months later on a separate murder case.
Even Haren Pandya’s family is wary of the arrests. “I am of the firm opinion that this was an intentional political murder. This talk of a terrorist plan is absolutely absurd,” said Vithalbhai Pandya, Haren’s father. “The day after I said it was a political murder at the condolence meeting, Advani announced that ISI and Dawood Ibrahim were involved. The CBI inquiry had just begun. We have faith in the CBI. But when a responsible person makes an immature statement, it can derail the inquiry.” Speaking about the arrests, he said, “The murderer may have killed because of money. But the real political culprit must be arrested. No real inquiry can be made until the person in power steps down. They are making arrests just to show people that action is being taken. Everyone understands what is happening. But no one can speak.”
Ironically, the dreaded ‘terrorists’ seem to keep coming to Narendra Modi’s rescue. His campaign promise to wipe out terrorism from Gujarat helped him win the elections. Now, the arrests of ‘ISI terrorists’ are easing him out of an embarrassing situation.
Frontline, May 10 - 23, 2003 Also available here
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