Author: S Gurumurthy
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: August 11, 2011
URL: http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/columnists/sohrabuddin-interrogating-the-media/303033.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 'Mauth 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 33, Maharashtra 31, Delhi 26, Andhra Pradesh 22,
Uttaranchal 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, on 8.8.2011,
the NewX 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 CBI probe to cover Amit Shah, Gujarat Home Minister then, and
Modi himself. The judiciary too chose for CBI probe only Sohrabuddin's case
out of the 440 encounters. Later when 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 it 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 arms carrier for ISI; or that a huge cache of
24 AK-47s, 22 grenades, 5250 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, and 81 magazines,
adequate for a 1993 Mumbai blast were recovered from his farm house; 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 day light in Chennai
an advocate who had tipped off the Narcotic Control Bureau about 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 "Mauth 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 BJP governments in Gujarat and Rajasthan,
the Congress government in AP, headed by Sonia Gandhi's pet YS 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 Geetha 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 the 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 AP police reached Ahmedabad
where the couple were killed. The Gujarat CID probe on the encounter in Hyderabad
was moving right, but slowly, when the CBI took over the case in January 2010.
The CBI charge sheet of 23 July 2010 itself admits that 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 also 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, with more shocks to come.
