Some Questions for the Maharashtra ATS Chief

The Maharashtra ATS claims to have cracked the 13/7 blasts case. Its chief has revealed in a press conference that Indian Mujahideen was behind the Mumbai blasts. And yet, the Ministry of Home Affairs remains far from impressed—indeed, it appears rather irritated. And the press, also unusually, has been circumspect about his revelations. The ATS Chief says that he did not want to call a press conference.

Shri P. Chidambaram,
Hon’ble Minister,
Ministry of Home Affairs
Delhi.

Subject: Arrest of Naquee Ahmed and the competition between investigative agencies

Dear Shri P. Chidambaram,

We are writing to you in response to a series of recent events which has led to the arrest of a youth, Naquee Ahmad by the Maharashtra ATS on 10th January 2012. Naquee Ahmad was enlisted by the Special Cell, Delhi Police to help them solve a terror case and tracking down two suspects from Mumbai. Two officers of the Special Cell, Mr. Lalit Mohan Negi and Mr. Hriday Bhushan, were in touch with him. Their phone records will easily attest to this. In connection with their investigation,

Mr. Chidambram,

You say there shall be no re-visit of the Batla House encounter. You are of course absolutely right. All those agencies who conducted the encounter have already given themselves a clean chit. What further proof could be required of the genuineness of the encounter than the fact that no less than Karnail Singh, Joint Commissioner of Police, Special Cell, Delhi, (who by the by, was also trying to derail the probe into Ishrat Jahan encounter) wrote to the Lt Governor and the NHRC vouching for the innocence of their gallant heroes. Speaking of gallant heroes, we are sure it has been brought to your notice—or maybe it hasn’t—that some of the brave hearts of the Delhi Police Special Cell have been indicted by the courts in the past couple of years for scripting and executing fake encounters. These are the very men whom you have been felicitating with gallantry awards and Presidents’ medals. But Sir, rest assured, we are not asking what sort of democracies fete and glorify killers. Our kind, of course.

In 2005, the Delhi Police claimed that they had arrested six Kashmiri terrorists after a fierce encounter on the NH 8 (near the IGI airport). The police claimed that the arrested men were terrorists who were coming to Delhi from the Jaipur side to plant bombs at the Palam airport. They claimed to have recovered a fake army uniform, hand grenades, AK 47s and cash from the men. Earlier this year, a lower court in Dwarka acquitted all of them of every charge and instead noted that the accused were falsely framed.

JTSA condemns the killing of Koteshwar Rao (also known as Kishen ji) by joint forces. There are already strong allegations that Kishen ji was arrested and tortured prior to being killed.  The truth must be unearthed through a free and fair judicial probe. At a time when peace talks are on, and interlocutors have been appointed, the state has chosen to use encounter killings as state policy. This only exposes the government’s lack of any genuine commitment towards the peace talks.

Stung by the SIT report which concluded that Ishrat was executed in cold blood, former Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai—hard-pressed to defend his affidavit to the Supreme Court that Ishrat was a Lashkar operative—has stooped to now slandering the girl’s personal life suggesting that her checking into different hotels with “another man” was definitely suspicious. Perhaps, Mr. Pillai wishes us to believe that all those young women who travel and work independently are ‘suspicious’ and could have terrorist links.

JTSA welcomes the SIT report which has concluded that the teenaged college girl Ishrat Jahan and her three companions were killed in cold blood—and were not terrorists on way to kill Narendra Modi.

JTSA condemns the attack on Prashant Bhushan by Hindutva xenophobes. We call for the political and social isolation of those who believe in the perverse ideology espoused by the attackers and their ideological brethren who have repeatedly shown disdain for the Constitution by attacking women, bringing down mosques and churches and targeting those who have resolutely stood for justice and secularism.

The NIA has finally put the official seal on what many activists, the families of the accused and the people of Malegaon had been saying for long: that the arrest of nine Muslim men for the 2008 Malegaon blast was a result of a communal witch-hunt, which passes for investigations into terror charges. As a consequence of the investigating agencies' hubris and prejudice, nine innocent men had to spend five long years in jail, while their families suffered and they were stigmatized.