Author: S Gurumurthy
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: August 14, 2011
URL: http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/columnists/the-hidden-hand-in-sohrabuddin-case/303967.html
The facts unfolded here reveal a conspiracy-a
hostile political strategy to communalise, thus weaponise, an illegal encounter
killing to demonise a selected state; to oust its leader, outside ballot process.
That state is the least sinner in fake encounters, just one in a hundred.
Yet, its leader is vilified as 'Maut Ka Saudagar (merchant of death)'.
So, the selected state's leader is the target,
not fake encounters as evil. The state selected? Needs no guess. It is Gujarat,
certified as the best governed, most prosperous.
The leader targeted? Needs no mention. Narendra
Modi, known as the cleanest, also the ablest.
The National Human Rights Commission's list
of 440 fake encounters from 2002 to 2007 under inquest shows the share of
Gujarat as just 5, almost the lowest. Uttar Pradesh tops the list with 231,
followed by Rajasthan with 33, Maharashtra 31, Delhi 26, Andhra Pradesh 22,
Uttarakhand 19, Assam 12, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka 10 each, Tamil Nadu
9, West Bengal 8, Bihar and Haryana 6 each. More. At 7.25 am, August 8, the
NewsX channel reported a further 120 fake encounter deaths in UP after 2007!
Yet, from 2006, the 'secular' media has been obsessed with, not the most guilty
in encounter sins, but the least-Gujarat; and with only one of the 440 encounters-
of Syed Sohrabuddin in Gujarat, none from the rest. Baying for Modi's scalp,
the media relentlessly pursued Sohrabuddin's case, charged Gujarat with killing
him (and his wife, Kausar Bi) only because of his religion. It made Sohrabuddin
the poster boy of secularism, insisted on a CBI probe to cover Amit Shah,
then Gujarat Home Minister, and Modi. The judiciary too chose for the CBI
probe only Sohrabuddin's case out of the 440 encounters. Later, when the CBI
misused the court mandate, resorted to patent illegalities to fix Shah and
target Gujarat and Modi, the media even seemed relieved.
Interrogatories to 'secular' media on its
role in the Sohrabuddin case are overdue. Here are some.
Did the media even hint that, like Sohrabuddin's
in Gujarat, there were 435 other encounters outside, being inquired into by
NHRC? No. And did it ever ask for CBI probe into them? No.Did the media ever
tell the true facts about Sohrabuddin, other than about his religion, like
that he was a dreaded criminal, a crony of Sharif Khan, Dawood Ibrahim's Gujarat
head; or that he was an arms carrier for the ISI; or that a huge cache of
24 AK-47s, 22 grenades, 5,250 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, and 81 magazines,
adequate for a 1993 Mumbai blast were recovered from his farmhouse; or that
he served a 5-year jail term under terror law? Never. Did it ever say that
he had 21 big crime cases against him-two, under anti-terror law, and nine
under Arms and Explosives law-in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and
Rajasthan? No. Did it even remotely hint that he had had connections with
LTTE's drug peddlers or that he contract-murdered in broad daylight in Chennai
an advocate who had tipped off the Narcotic Control Bureau about the LTTE
or that he killed a gangster, Karim Lala, in Udaipur in December 2004 and
took over his extortion business in Rajasthan-for which Rajasthan was after
him? Never, ever. In contrast, one magazine even profiled him as a 'Muslim
businessman'! The media hid Sohrabuddin's criminality and sanitised him as
Modi's victim. The Congress party improved it. It made him the main issue
in the 2007 Gujarat Assembly elections, thus adding communal poison to an
illegal killing to make it deadly. Sonia Gandhi, adopting Sohrabuddin as the
party's poster boy, charged Narendra Modi as "Maut Ka Saudagar".
The media even saw the use of Sohrabuddin-an extortionist, arms-carrier, a
murderer and the point man of Dawood-in the elections as strategic.
Now begins the sickening story of how the
CBI subverted the Sohrabuddin probe to suit Congress party's politics.
Not just the BJP governments in Gujarat and
Rajasthan, but the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh, headed by Sonia
Gandhi's pet Y S Rajasekara Reddy then, too was deeply involved in the killing.
Did the media ever highlight this fact? No. If it had, the encounter would
lose its all-BJP-read 'communal'-character; with the Congress-mix, the killing
would become secular! The Gujarat police probe in the Sohrabuddin case led
by Geeta Johri, an honest police officer, showed that seven AP police officials,
including two drivers, were involved in the offence; that one Kalmuddin had
invited the Sohrabuddin couple to Hyderabad; that after their stay Sohrabuddin
couple boarded a bus to Sangli; that AP and Gujarat Police officials, acting
in concert, intercepted the bus, disembarked the couple, took them in their
vehicles; the caravan which included two Tata Sumo vehicles used by the Andhra
Pradesh police reached Ahmedabad where the couple were killed. The Gujarat
CID probe into the encounter in Hyderabad was moving right, but slowly, when
the CBI took over in January 2010. The CBI chargesheet of July 23 2010 itself
admits that the AP Police were party to the offence. But where did the Gujarat
CID probe hit the roadblock in Hyderabad? Geetha Johri, who uncovered the
fake encounter, arrested her own colleagues, had sought the co-operation of
Balwinder Singh, the Commissioner of Police at Hyderabad then, for three purposes:
one, to question the AP police officials who had assisted the Gujarat police;
two, to trace the missing Vehicle Entry Register of the AP IPS Officers Mess
for the period August 2005 to May 2006 that would identify the two Tata Sumo
vehicles, their drivers and the AP officials who went in them all the way
to Ahmedabad; three, to track down Kalimuddin, who hosted Sohrabuddin at Hyderabad.
But Balwinder Singh would not co-operate. QED: the Congress was determined
not to expose its role in the sin. See what it did instead. Who did it choose
to head the CBI probe? Balwinder Singh! The very officer who shielded the
AP police officials now heads the CBI to probe the role of the very AP-Congress?-Police!
Shocked? It is just the beginning.
