The Amit Shah Files Even before the trial is concluded, a CBI court finds reason to discharge a powerful man

The Trail…

• Despite SC order that the same trial judge who starts hearing the case should conclude it, Sohrabuddin case has seen three judges

• One year after being assigned the trial in the CBI special court, J.T. Utpat was transferred in June 2014

• Utpat’s successor Brijmohan Loya died at a government guesthouse in Nagpur on November 30, 2014

• Loya’s successor M.B. Gosavi heard Amit Shah’s discharge petition from December 15-17, and delivered a 75-page order on December 30, 2014

• Dropping of charges against Shah has led to a flurry of discharge petitions being filed by other accused

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The tantalising phrase “somewhat opposed to common sense” is likely to ring in the ears of BJP national president Amit Anilchandra Shah for a long time to come. The five words were uttered on the penultimate day of 2014 by a trial judge in a CBI special court in Mumbai to let Shah, 50, off the hook in the infamous Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.

Dasrath Patel and Raman Patel, two builders from Ahmedabad produced as star witnesses against Shah by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), had told investigators that police officers close to Shah extorted money from them and had dispatched Sohrabuddin’s henchmen to issue threats. The officers, notably Abhay Chudasama and D.G. Vanzara—both now on bail, Chudasama reinstated by the Gujarat government—would not only drop Shah’s name but even make extortion targets speak to the all-powerful minister of state (home) on phone. Shah, they claimed, had also directed them to be discreet while giving statements on Sohrabuddin Sheikh to the CBI after the central agency was ordered by the Supreme Court in 2010 to investigate the case.

The builders had video-recorded one of the conversations they had with Shah’s officers. They gave three statements to the CBI, two under Section 161 of the CrPC and the other under Section 164. (Statements under Section 161 are given to the police and are not accepted as evidence; statements under Section 164 are recorded before a judge and are adm­issible evidence.)

The CBI special court of M.B. Gosavi, however, refused to accept the builders’ statement, recorded in court. The duo, noted Gosavi in his order on December 30, 2014, had not deviated even gramm­atically in the three statements, each of which were recorded after gaps of weeks and months. This he found “somewhat opposed to common sense” as he threw out their testimony. Many lawyers say such exact reproductions of statements often dog trials, forcing judges to disregard them as evidence as they seem tutored. This is what seems to have happened here and shows the prosecution may have failed to build the case. Gosavi, however, contradicts him­self in the same order by claiming the builders had made ‘improvements’ in the statements. To accept both arguments, quipped a prom­inent Supreme Court law­yer, would be ‘somewhat opposed to common sense’ indeed.

Gosavi also found no merit in the CBI producing Call Detail Records to show that, on the days Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauserbi were abducted and subsequently killed in 2005, Shah was in regular touch with the police officers who were executing the deed. The CBI came up with details of the outgoing and incoming calls including the duration in seconds (see graphic) to suggest Shah knew what was happening on the ground. While a home minister is expected to give directions to the dgp and home secretary, CBI argued, there was no occasion for him to be in touch with SPs and DySPs. But the CBI court chose to accept Shah’s plea that phone calls proved nothing. He was a proactive, hands-on minister and liked to be in direct touch with field officers, the court was told by his counsel. The trial judge found merit in the submission and held that while the CBI was at liberty to think a powerful minister directly calling field officers was unusual and strange, actually there was no reason to question such conduct when terrorism stalked the world

The argument can cut both ways tho­ugh, because, if one accepts that Shah was an effective minister in constant touch with field officers and who kept his eyes and ears open all the time, surely he would have been aware of fake encounters taking place right under his nose. For, had not Gujarat police conducted its own investigation and found the officers guilty of killing Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kauserbi and prominent eyewitness Tulsiram Prajapati in fake encounters? In two separate chargesheets, filed in 2007 and 2008, Gujarat police claimed the trio was killed because the officers wanted “name, fame and promotion”. The SC, which had directed the state police to conduct the investigation, remained unconvinced. Pointing out discrepancies in reports submitted to the SC and the chargesheets, the apex court ordered a CBI inquiry in 2010 and directed the agency to probe the “larger conspiracy” and the involvement of ‘high officials of the state of Gujarat’.

Trashing the voluminous chargesheet (22,000 pages, including statements from 710 prosecution witnesses) against 38 accused, including Shah, Gosavi, in his discharge order, held the case was foisted on Shah for ‘political reasons’. Since then, he has discharged two other accused top cops, P.C. Pande and Rajkumar Pandyan, from the case, raising questions about the role of the CBI as well as the judiciary.

One For Sorrow, Three For Joy

Brijmohan H. Loya (52) looked forward to a relaxed weekend as he boarded a train at Mumbai for Nagpur. He had taken charge of the Sohrabuddin fake encounter trial as a judge in July; subsequent months were stressful. He looked forward to attending a wedding at Nagpur the next day, November 30, 2014, a Sunday. He planned to stay overnight at the state government guesthouse, Ravi Bhavan, and return to the court on Tuesday. But he did not wake up on Monday morning, having succumbed apparently to a massive cardiac arrest. The news of his sudden death shocked and saddened lawyers and judges in Mumbai; the Indian Express (Dec 2, 2014) reported that “sources close to him (Loya) said he had sound medical history”. Advocate Vijay Hiremath remembered him as an exceptionally cheerful judge who had looked fit and fine.

As the judge was cremated in his native Latur, in faraway New Delhi a group of MPs demonstrated outside Parliament against his “mysterious death” and demanded a CBI probe. The event only found cursory mention on the inside pages of newspapers. The day after, on December 4, in a letter addressed to the Chief Justice of India from Ujjain, Sohra­buddin Sheikh’s brother Rubabuddin (see box) wrote: “I am disturbed by the incident and am in a deep state of shock. I am writing the present letter on suspicion that the unti­mely death of a sitting judge of a sessions court may be part of a larger conspiracy, possibly made with intention to threaten the coming judge….”

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“Acche Din” are here: 40 fake encounter accused released

Ahmedabad, February 08:

40 accused police officers who were in jails in connection with 21 fake encounters had been granted bail within a year, according to Gujarat Siyasat; an Ahmedabad based Gujarati Muslims fortnightly predicted.

When the Modi man, Amit shah clearly got clean chit from encounter cases, the release of Gujarat fake encounter cops was expected, say activists.

With the news of the last two accused IPS officers Vanzara and Pandey being granted bail in the Ishrat case, families of the encounter victims have all faced disappointment, they vow to go on with their struggle for justice.

When Vanzara was granted bail, his advocate V D Gajjar told mediapersons, “Acchhe din aa gaye hain (Good days have come)”.

When get in touch with Pune resident Asif Shaikh, who was Javed Sheikh’s close buddy said, “These are the so-called ‘Achhe Din’ (good times) promised by the party in power. Now it is time to wait and watch for the final outcome of the case. We will protest if the verdict does not bring justice for those who were killed and their families,” he said. Asif had married Javed’s widow Sajida in 2007.

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Extremism has distorted image of Muslims

“Extremism has tarnished Islam and the image of Muslims around the world,” said a top official at the King Abdul Aziz Center for National Dialogue (KACND), underlining the importance of dialogue in communities.

Abdullah Al-Mutlaq, KACND chairman and member of the Council of Senior Ulema, made his observation at the Abha forum on Thursday as part of the nationwide dialogue on extremism and its effects on national unity.

He said KACND seeks to get from these meetings various points of view to determine the root cause of extremism and ways of overcoming the challenge.

Al-Mutlaq urged the participants to promote the culture of dialogue and spirit of moderation to confront the phenomenon of extremism.

The Abha meeting was attended by various representatives of the community, including scholars, academics and media representatives. Fahd Al-Sultan, KANCD deputy secretary general, read out the resolutions. Participants reaffirmed that extremism in Saudi society has manifested itself in religious, sports and social affairs and stressed the need for a comprehensive approach to deal with the risk to the individual and society

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Yemen’s Brotherhood reject Houthi declaration

Yemen’s Al-Islah Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in the country, on Saturday rejected a constitutional declaration announced by the Shia Houthi group on Friday.

The party called for abolishing the declaration, which dissolved the Yemeni parliament, formed a national assembly instead and created a presidential council to run Yemen during its transition.

Al-Islah Party described the declaration in a statement on its website as a “unilateral step” saying it did not recognise the consequences of this move.

“There can be no way out without abolishing all unilateral moves and returning to dialogue,” the party said.

It accused the Houthis of staging a “coup” against a United Nations-sponsored dialogue among Yemen’s political forces.

Yemen’s Shia Houthis, who have controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa in September of 2014 and extended their control to other provinces, on Friday took an additional move to consolidate their power in Yemen by forming a presidential council and dissolving parliament.

There are fears that the growing power of the Houthis would open the door for more violent confrontations in Yemen.

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The Law Is Under Trial Here

“If the government does not do anything in the next few days, I will do what even Damini did not do. I will set myself and my sons on fire in the middle of Muzaffarnagar city,” says S on the phone, two days after two rape accused in her case were granted bail. When I had met her in July, S was about to start her ‘Stitching Training Centre’ along with her husband, determined to fight her case till justice was hers.

The Damini she refers to you may know as Nirbhaya, or more baldly as the “Delhi gangrape victim”. S was gang­raped by three men from her village in Lankh on September 8, 2013, in Shamli district (see Outlook story Shadow Lines, Aug 4, 2014), but her ordeal, as well as that of hundreds of women sexually abused and gangraped, was subsumed within a broad category that came to be called ‘the Muzaffarnagar riots’. It was a madness that—according to the ‘official’ record of the Uttar Pradesh government—led to 60 deaths, seven rapes and the displacement of 40,000 people. Never mind if we could actually be looking at some 200 deaths, 1,20,000 people displaced and hundreds of unreported mass rapes.

S’s trajectory has crossed the Nirbhaya case in several ways. The Criminal Amendment Act, 2013, drafted by the Verma Commission set up in the wake of the protests following the December 16, 2012, Delhi gangrape, came into force in February 2013. While the Act introduced multiple amendments in laws related to sexual violence, lawmakers for the first time also took cognisance of the systematic violence against women during communal riots in India. As a result, a crucial amendment—Section 376(2)(g)—­was included in the Indian Penal Code

Among other things, the section states, “Whoever commits rape during communal or sectarian violence shall be punished with rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than ten years, but which may extend to imprisonment for life, which shall mean imprisonment for the remainder of that person’s natural life, and shall also be liable to fine.”

The Muzaffarnagar riots broke out five months after this vital addition to the law. The violence erupted on September 7 and continued well into the next day. Seven women, all gang­raped on the morning of September 8, filed cases. These would be the first in Indian history to be tried under Section 376(2)(g). The legal trajectory of these cases needs to be examined in the light of its precedent-setting import.

FIRs: The first information report for five out of the seven petitioners was filed within three weeks of the gang­rapes. The sixth case was filed on October 9, 2013, while the seventh case, that of S, took the longest to register. S had sent her FIR on October 22, 2013, five weeks after the incident, to the Fugana police station in Muzaffarnagar through registered post in which she also named the three accused. The police neither filed the FIR nor ack­nowledged receipt of her complaint. It was only when her counsel, Vrinda Grover, who is representing the seven women in court, handed over a copy of her complaint to the lawyer representing the UP government that the FIR was filed on February 18, 2014.

Medical examination: The law mandates a medical examination within 24 hours of filing the complaint. All the seven women were gangraped on Sep­tember 8, 2013. Their medical examination, however, was conducted bet­ween September 29, 2013, and February 22, 2014. It is because of this gap between the dates of the incident and the tests that the medical reports remained inconclusive in ‘proving’ rape.

The Allahabad High Court made the delay in the filing of FIRs and medical examination to grant bail on October 15, 2014, to the gangrape accused in the case of Fm, one of the seven women. It did so on grounds that “there was an inordinate delay of 14 days in filing FIR and that her testimony could not be accepted as it was not corroborated by medical evidence in the marks of injury on her body”. The state authorities chose not to appeal against this order.

Compensation: The Supreme Court, on March 26, 2014, while responding to several writ petitions related to the Muzaffarnagar communal violence, including one by Vrinda Grover and Kamini Jaiswal on behalf of the seven women, directed the UP government to pay compensation to all the seven gangrape survivors within four weeks, before April 26, 2014. The seven women had filed applications for compensation on April 9, 2014.

This compensation amounted to five lakh rupees in addition to other benefits. While five of them received the compensation on May 8, 2014, the sixth got it on May 22, 2014, and the seventh only on October 25, 2014, more than a year after the incident when counsels Grover and Jaiswal filed a contempt of court petition in the Supreme Court on September 15, 2014.

The apex court had, in addition to this compensation, also asked the UP government to provide financial and other assistance to these women to help them rehabilitate themselves. The state government, however, provided the same blanket compensation for loss of moveable and immoveable property that it provided to all families who were victims of the communal violence

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A Padma award from Modi government has reopened an old rift in Ayodhya

By: Dhirendra Jha

The conferment of a Padma Vibhushan award on Chitrakoot-based Swami Rambhadracharya has reignited an old feud among the ascetics of the Ramanandi order, a sect that was founded by the 14th century philosopher Ramandacharya and accounts for the largest number of Hindu sadhus in India.

The feud had erupted in 2005, when Rambhadracharya, a blind Ramanandi preacher known for his leanings towards the Vishva Hindu Parishad, published a critical edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas.

His book greatly incensed Ramanandi sadhus, who worship Lord Ram as their titular deity and consider the Ramcharitmanas as their most sacred text. They accused Rambhadracharya of committing “blasphemy” by changing the wording of several verses. Ever since, they have not allowed Rambhadracharya to enter Ayodhya, which is considered the birthplace of Lord Rama and is therefore the nerve centre of the Ramanandi order.

“Ramcharitmanas is like mantra (sacred words) for us,” said Satyendra Das, chief priest of the Ramjanmabhoomi temple, who was incensed at Rambhadracharya getting the Padma Vibhushan. “How can anybody dare to play around with it?”

Rambhadracharya told Scroll.in that he had merely edited Ramcharitmanas. “Nothing in it has been altered,” he said. “The sadhus of Ayodhya are fools. They want to malign me and extort money.”

’Appropriate lesson’

In November 2009, the sadhus of Ayodhya asked him to withdraw the edited version of the Ramcharitmanas. Rambhadracharya refused, though he expressed regret for any annoyance or pain caused by the book.

The feud peaked during the Haridwar Kumbha Mela of 2010. There, one morning, while Rambhadracharya was preaching to his followers, a group of Ramanandi sadhus entered into his camp and assaulted him badly. They removed his tents, threw out his belongings and debarred him from the Ramanandi order.

“He later acknowledged his mistake and sent an apology,” says Baba Hathyogi, a Haridwar-based Ramanandi sadhu, who was part of the group that taught Rambhadracharya “an appropriate lesson”. “But we didn’t allow him to return to the Ramanandi order till he gave us a bhandara (community feast) of [Rs] 5 lakh.”

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Muzaffarnagar riot accused dies of injuries

Written by Manish Sahu

A riot accused who surrendered before police and was sent to the Muzaffarnagar district jail barely a week ago has died of head injuries. His family alleged that jail officials assaulted him and delayed medical treatment, causing his death. But the jail officials said the injuries were self-inflicted — he banging his head on the walls. They, however, failed to explain why he would do that.

Brijpal Malik (47) sustained the injuries on Wednesday morning, but was referred to Meerut hospital next day only after his wife visited the jail and came to know about the injuries. She created a ruckus over the delay in medical treatment following which Malik was sent to hospital. He was declared brought dead by doctors at Meerut hospital on Thursday.

Malik, a resident of Hasanpur village in Shamli district, surrendered at a police station on January 30 in a riot case lodged against him on September 8, 2013 at the Phugana police station in Muzaffarnagar. His 17-year-old son is also an accused in the case; he is absconding. The two faced charges of arson and dacoity, said Malik’s lawyer Chandraveer Singh.

Inspector General, UP Prisons Department, R R Bhatnagar said, “According to information, there was no delay in providing treatment to him as the jail doctor had stitched his wounds and given him medicines soon after he was brought to the jail hospital. Malik complained about severe pain next morning following which he was referred to the district hospital from where he was shifted to Meerut hospital.”

He said Malik appeared disturbed since he came to jail. Other inmates had seen Malik banging his head on the wall in the barrack, he said, dismissing the allegations of his family. However, Bhatnagar said an inquiry would be conducted by DIG Jail, Meerut range, Raghubeer Lal.

Muzaffarnagar District Jail Superintendent Seva Ram Choudhury said that on February 4 morning Malik suddenly started hitting his head against the iron grills and the walls. Some inmates tried to stop him but he ran out of the barrack and banged his head against a tree on the jail campus. By the time the jail staff arrived, he had suffered injuries on his head.

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