By Faraz Ahmad,
Ever since it has come to light that the Special Investigative Team (SIT) of Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) has found substantial evidence to nail IB Deputy Director Rajendra Kumar in the Ishrat Jahan and other fake encounter cases of Gujarat during the period 2002-2004 including that of Sadiq Jamal Mehtar, a persistent campaign at the behest of the BJP is on to discredit the findings and label these as biased before these are examined by the rightful authority, the courts, guided by competent lawyers of both the prosecution as well as Defence.
First the Headlines Today came up with the fantastic tapes about Ishrat Jahan just to buttress the charge that she was actually a terrorist and therefore by implication killing her in an encounter was justified. The purported tape was then run on several other Hindi channels and a couple of newspapers, both English but more widely the language newspapers ran front page stories of how Ishrat Jahan was actually a terrorist, implying thereby that the CBI trying to expose the nexus between the IB officer, the Gujarat Police and chief minister Narendra Modi and his then MoS Home Amit Shah was not just being unfair and unjustified, prejudiced by the Congress attempt to somehow implicate Hindu Hriday Samrat and BJP’s poster boy Narendrabhai but in effect positively unpatriotic and anti-national.
The campaign started with the Headlines Today, whose ownership pattern raises questions about its reasons to carry items which tend to show the current UPA government in bad light. As for the Firstpost, it is the news portal extension of CNN-IBN of Rajdeep Sardesai and most of the pieces by its Editor Jagannathan as well as the selective highlighting of the reaction comments show how blatantly it is tilting towards the saffron brigade.
The latest in the arsenal is Times of India Legal Editor Dhananjay Mahapatra’s piece on page 10 of the Times of India, July 1, 2013 titled ‘Stop fantasies creeping into Ishrat Jahan investigations, clearly imputing that the CBI-SIT investigators into the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case were introducing fantasy into their probe when they indicated that both Modi (white beard) and Amit Shah (grey beard) were in the know of Ishrat Jahan encounter before hand. There are very few journalists for whom Former Law Minister and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, a legal luminary himself, has a good word. Dhananjay Mahapatra is among those select few. All those regularly attending Jaitley’s darbar know that most of the prominent members of that exclusive club also belong to the Times of India. Therefore when Dhananjay Mahapatra is making such a forceful nee blatant and unabashed defence of Narendrabhai, we know which BJP leader is marking up his score card to endear himself to BJP’s undeclared PM candidate.
But in the process Dhananjay has taken it for granted that most present day readers must have forgotten or at best may have a very hazy idea of what transpired in the grand Hawala case of the 1990s in which not one accused was eventually indicted even though a whole range of politicians including several ministers of Narasimha Rao regime had to resign because their names also appeared in the Jain diaries, which led with L K Advani and not for an amount of Rs 25 lakh as Mahapatra has most graciously mentioned but Rs 65 lakhs. And through covering the courts for several years now Mahapatra must be aware that Justice Mohammad Shamim who discharged Advani for lack of evidence (and not acquitted) was properly looked after even after his retirement throughout the six years of NDA regime with all the ministerial perks including a bungalow at Feroze Shah Road and the attending paraphernalia and if I am not wrong he is still earning a “consultancy” allowance from a BJP enterprise called Greenfield or Urban Improvements Limited, which had a Jaitley stamp because throughout the NDA rule Jaitley’s nominee used to be appointed its government administrator.
So if Justice Mohammad Shamim let off Advani it was no great feat of Ram Jethmalani as Mahapatra would have us believe. It was a quid pro quo. Besides, the credit for ensuring the debunking of the Jain diary as evidence goes more to the CBI than the great expert of criminal jurisprudence, Ram Jethmalani who always presented his arguments before an awestruck junior judicial officer in the lower courts with all the flourish. This reporter had witnessed and reported the lower court proceedings in the Antulay case of the 1980s which Jethmalani was arguing but lost totally by the time the matter reached the Supreme Court of India. The credit went to the CBI for saving Advani’s skin and in the CBI to the well known Delhi Police officer then in the CBI, Amod Kanth, who while investigating the Hawala case had noted in the file that the diary is not complete evidence and needs corroboration. Even a layman like me can tell you that once the prosecuting and probing agency raises doubts about the evidence collected Jethmalani arguments and Shamim’s discretions are a mere formality and that is why the apex court had pulled up the CBI. The legal eagles may also do well to recall that in most hawala cases the prosecution finds only chits of paper, backside of a cigarette wrapper or some other such flimsy material to arraign an accused.
The CBI then argued that the corrboration can only be done by a Bombay-based Hawala dealer Amirbhai who was absconding and living then in Dubai. The CBI pleaded that it made all efforts to extradite Amirbhai but failed and since now there is no corroboration the evidence is insufficient to indict Advani and one the apex court accepted that the diary did not make sufficient case against Advani it had to accept it was also insufficient evidence against V C Shukla, Madhavrao Scindia, P Shiv Shankar, Sharad Yadav, Balram Jakhar, Madan Lal Khurana, Chahdury Devi Lal and many others. The basis on which Advani was discharged became the basis for similar discharge for others as well. So there is no need to poke fun at Kaali Dadhi and Safed Dadhi, as if Mahapatra is not aware of the kind of codes adopted by the Police fraternity.
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Faraz Ahmad a senior Delhi-based journalist, with leading English daily He can be contacted at [email protected]