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हिरण्मयेन पात्रेण सत्यसापिहितं मुखं । तत्त्वं पुषन्नपावृणु सत्यधर्माय दृष्टये
‘Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t’, said Mark Twain
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. —Milan Kundera
A good journalist should learn the art of detaching herself from a story and be pragmatic.
D.G.Vanzara and Rajkumar Pandian were behind bars.
All links related to Sohrabuddin spoke about a CBI investigation into the case and the arrest of one of Gujarat’s top IPS officers, Abhay Chudasama.
What I had encountered in Gujarat though was not a Gujarat-centric issue. Prosecution of honest police officers was routine in Uttar Pradesh and Manipur as well, two states I had extensively reported from.
Within weeks of the exposé, the CBI arrested Amit Shah, the first serving Home Minister in the history of independent India to be arrested.
first in my list was G.L.Singhal, then posted with the ATS in Gujarat as its defacto head. Singhal was being probed for his role in the Ishrat Jahan ‘fake’ encounter.
Justice Tamang Committee headed by an exmagistrate of the Gujarat High Court gave a verdict that stunned the nation, ‘Ishrat Jahan’s was a fake encounter— the case needed further investigation’.
Later in 2013, the CBI team appointed by the Gujarat High Court to look into the encounter called it fake, and listed top cops in the Gujarat police as accused officers.
Especially with the controversies? A) It’s a funny situation. If somebody comes to us with a complaint and we satisfy the complainant, we upset the government and if we please the government we upset the complainant, so what do we do, the police is caught.
How have the riots affected the state? The police? A) See, I have served in Gujarat during the riots and I have been here since 1991. So I have seen many riots. We have seen riots in 82, 83, 85, 87, and in 92 post Ayodhya. Muslims were more dominant. In 2002, more Muslims were killed. See with Muslims it’s like this. Especially in 2002 it was like this, Muslims were killing Hindus all these years so whatever happened in 2002 was a retaliation for all those years of being beaten by Muslims. And everybody across the world created havoc. They did not see the situation in which the Hindus were
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Is it really difficult to not compromise and still be a part of the system. A) Once you compromise you have to compromise with everything, yourself, your thoughts, conscience.
But Priyadarshi [his senior] was not close to the government? A) He was close to the government, but every time they would ask him to do something wrong, he would refuse to do so. Q) Yeah, he told me that they had asked him to do an encounter, including Mr Pandian. But he refused? A)
But what’s with this Amit Shah thing. Also I hear about your officers... I mean there is some kind of officer-political group especially vis a vis encounters. I got this feeling as I got to meet a lot of other ministers. A) See, even the CM. All the ministeries that are there and the ministers. They are rubber stamps. All decisions are taken by the CM. Whatever decisions all the ministers make, they have to take his permission. Q) How does he manage to remain unscathed then, including your case, why has he not been indicted in the same case? A) Because he does not come [as in, appear] in the
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It was clear to me that by keeping quiet over the years, Singhal was as complicit in the crime as others, but one could not help but notice the brazen use of such vulnerable cops by the state administration. The use-and-abandon policy about which Singhal had spoken on the hidden camera that I carried cropped up years later when another top officer D.G.Vanzara complained of it.
Additionally, by the end of the investigation there was enough material to suggest that most of the officers being manipulated and mistreated by the administration were from the backward classes.
Your CM Narendra Modi is very popular here, in Gujarat? A) Yes, he fools everybody and people get fooled. Q) In that case, as additional DG, you would have had a tough time working under them? A) They never had the guts to force me to do anything illegal. Q) Lawlessness is rampant here no? Hardly any officers who are upright? A) There are very few of them. This man Narendra Modi has been responsible for the killing of Muslims across [the state]. Q) Achcha, I hear that the cops also toed the line of the government? A) All of them, like this P.C.Pande, it all happened in their presence.
So, you never served under him? A) I did, when I was the ATS chief. He transferred Vanzara and brought me [in]. And I am a person who believes in human rights. So this Shah calls me to his bungalow. Now I have never gone to anybody’s bungalow. Nor anybody’s residence or office. So I told him, Sir I haven’t seen your bungalow and he was baffled and asked, why haven’t you seen my bungalow. Then he said, Ok I will send you my private vehicle, come in that. So I said, Ok, you send me your vehicle. So when I reach he says. ‘Achcha aapne ek bande ko arrest kiya hai na, jo abhi aaya hai ATS mein,
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I wanted to meet the most important decision-makers during the Gujarat riots. There were four individuals who had been in key roles during the Gujarat riots. Home Secretary Ashok Narayan, DG of Police Chakravarthy, Commissioner of Police P.C.Pande, and Swarnakanta Verma who was the Principal Advisor to the CM during the riots in 2002.
You must have gone red in the face when the CM asked you to go slow [while controlling the riots]? A) He would never do that. He would also never write anything on paper. He had his people and through them the VHP and then through them [it would] trickle down through informal channels to the lower rung police inspectors. Q And then you were rendered helpless? A) Precisely. And then we would say, ‘oh why did this happen’ but by then things would have already taken place. Q)
press. Q) But why has the CM been so much in the line of fire? Is it because he’s with the BJP? A) No, because he supported the VHP during the time of the riots. He did it to get Hindu votes which he did. He did what he wanted to do and that happened. Q) But he asked people to go slow? A) He would not say that in the meeting. He would say that to his men. He would convey to the VHP and then to officers like Tandon and other officers and the VHP. And as an officer you can choose to toe the line. Q) Chakravarthy did not toe the line? A) We two were the only people. We did our job. I told
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Q) The CM should have stepped down. He was the chief minister, especially after so much has happened. A) At one stage he was going to be changed, in the Goa meeting. Apparently he resigned but under Advani’s pressure, Advani pressurized Vajpayee to not accept the resignation. I had given a presentation about the riots to then PM Vajpayee and Modi was also there.
A key point of the SIT report on the 2002 riots was that it affirmed that the Narendra Modi government persecuted police officers who tried to put an end to the violence in 2002 and that their persecution and hounding by the state had continued even after the riots.
Fake encounters are either politically motivated or [due to] over-enthusiasm of cops.
There is no ambiguity that Maya Kodnani not just believed that Amit Shah was close to Modi but also that Modi would go to any extreme to save Shah. During her conversation with me, she reasserted the facts I had heard many times before that officers were used and then abandoned as per convenience.
Geeta Johri, of the 1982 batch, was Gujarat’s first woman IPS officer.
