[Reader-list] Ghost of the Middle Ground 4

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

(contd. from previous posting, this is the last in this series)

Marionettes and Puppetteers

In their all too hasty celebration of their investigative prowess, the 
mandarins at CNN IBN have exposed themselves more than they might have 
wanted to. They have demonstrated that sometimes when you do 'whatever 
it takes' to break the neck of the news, the hands that aid you to do 
the breaking also tie you down to an unwritten contract that makes you 
do their bidding. And so, the hands that make an offer for an 
'exclusive' tape that a TRP hungry channel cannot refuse, also tie the 
channel down (knowingly or unknowingly) into becoming their mouthpiece. 
The channel executives think that they have just pulled off a coup, not 
realising, or not willing to realize that it is in fact they who have 
been used for purposes that are far beyond their ken. But the 
marionettes who 'break the news' on the channels and their invisible, or 
barely visible, puppeteers forget that this shadow play is too full of 
all kinds of odd traces and patterns,  (I say barely visible because 
nowadays one sees distinguished gentlemen from the intelligence 
community making their discreet presence felt with a degree of 
regularity on television panel discussions on the 13 December issue) 
Perhaps none of them take into account the fact that some of us might be 
able to read a lot more into camera positions, angles and the 
orientation of subjects within the frame than they might have calculated 
for. Time for critical media studies and film analysis to be made a part 
of the education of the intelligence professional.

The Theatre of Confession

What is true for the CNN-IBN exclusive is sadly true also for the NDTV 
India 'vishesh' (special) report that was aired on the 16th and 17th of 
December for around one and a half hours. The smugness of the anchor 
Abhisaar Sharma on being able to air footage taken in police custody of 
a five year old confession that was disallowed in court as evidence, is 
beyond belief. Nothing that Afzal says in this recording, as he tries to 
blink to shield his eyes from the glare of strong lights that we see 
reflected in his spectacle frames, is new information. This is the 
substance of the police charge sheet with regard to Afzal, and we have 
seen much of this dramatized before, on Zee News.

[ See 'Parliament Plotter Statement Released' , an exclusive report by 
Neeta Sharma on the NDTV website at
http://ndtv.com/template/template.asp 
fromtimeline=true&id=98054&callid=1&template=Parliamentattack ]

However, there is still something especially repellent about the 
exhibition of a coerced confession. See it had the same chilling quality 
on me as I have had whenever I have read accounts of Bukharin's 
'confession' at the climax of his show trial in Stalin's Soviet Union 
The squinting to avoid the glare of lights is a telling detail. Afzal 
does not use his hands to shield his eyes, but keeps moving his head in 
a nervous manner to avoid the glare. The frame reveals only his chest 
and head in a mid close up. One wonders what happenned to his hands, 
were they tied, or handcuffed? Are we to view this disgusting exhibition 
of a person in confinement as a credible testament by any stretch of 
imagination? The report does indicate that Afzal went back on this 
statement, and that this was not allowed as evidence in court, but the 
time taken to deliver this information is a fraction of the footage 
given over to the exhaustive details of the confession, and their 
repetition, in order to emphasize certain key points.

Perhaps the most cogent analysis of this footage comes from N.D. 
Pancholi, an advocate who is currently acting in the capacity of the 
legal counsel for Mohammad Afzal. His letter to the NDTV Managing 
Editor, dated 26 December makes for compelling reading, and I reproduce 
a substantial part of this text here.

[See http://www.sacw.net/free/pancholitoNDTV.html for the full text of 
this letter]

-------------------------------
Excerpt from the Letter of N.D. Pancholi to The Managing Editor, NDTV, 
26/12/2006

Sub: Your repeated news bulletins on Hindi channel on 16th & 17th 
December, 2006 displaying Afzal’s statement video-taped by the Special 
Cell of Delhi Police when AFZAL was in police custody.

This is with reference to your aforesaid news reports repeatedly 
telecast in the news bulletins on your Hindi channel on 16th and 17th 
December, 2006, wherein your reporters claimed to have got exclusive 
possession of a video tape in which Mohd. Afzal Guru, who is facing the 
death sentence in the Parliament attack case, is shown making 
self-incriminatory statements.

Around 3 PM on 16th December, 2006, when I was in the High Court, I 
received a phone call from one of your reporters, Ms. Sunetra Chaudhary, 
asking whether I had seen the news about Afzal on NDTV. I expressed my 
ignorance. She told me that the police had given NDTV the video tape of 
a statement given by Afzal in police custody and that the said tape was 
being broadcast by NDTV. I told her that any statement given by an 
accused in police custody has no value and is inadmissible in law and 
that the alleged confession of Afzal made in police custody had been 
rejected by the Supreme Court. I also told her that media conference 
organized by the police in December 2001, in which Afzal was shown 
admitting to his involvement in the Parliament attack, was also strongly 
disapproved of by the High Court and the police were reprimanded for 
having conducted such an unlawful exercise. But she said that the said 
tape was not of the media conference but of the statement which Afzal 
had given to the police at the time of interrogation -- and which NDTV 
has brought out for the first time. I told her that before producing 
Afzal in the media conference he was several times made to rehearse his 
statement as tailored by the police, and that the said tape must be a 
recording of one such rehearsal. She told me that she would send a 
reporter to me to get my comments. She also requested me to provide her 
with a copy of the statement made by Afzal in the Court under Section 
313 Criminal Procedure Code, which she said she would juxtapose along 
with his recorded statement in the news. She also told me that Ms. 
Barkha Dutt had sent her a copy of the letter written by Afzal to Shri 
Sushil Kumar, Senior Advocate, who had argued his case in the Supreme 
Court, and if the "313 statement” of Afzal was not available with me, 
she would use the contents of the said letter in the news bulletins. She 
also asked me to see, on the news bulletins, the tape which was being 
repeatedly shown by NDTV.

I came home and saw the news bulletins. An NDTV reporter also came to my 
residence at about 5.30 PM and recorded my statement, both in Hindi and 
in English. My statement was to this effect:

"The statement in the tape is a tutored rehearsal which Afzal was 
coerced to make under threat and after torture, that such statements in 
police custody have no value, that the High Court had reprimanded the 
police for organizing a media conference where Afzal made 
self-incriminatory statements, that the Supreme Court had also rejected 
his so-called confession made in police custody, that the police had 
never produced such a tape during the trial, that it was the defence 
lawyers who had had the tape of the media conference of Afzal produced 
in the Court to show how the conference was organized and manipulated 
under the dictation of the ACP Rajbir Singh."

However, my aforesaid comments were not broadcast. All that was shown 
was a small part of my statement, in a manner which distorted my stand, 
while the tape was repeatedly telecast. The reporter said: "Advocate 
says that the tape was not produced by the police in the court". All of 
my other aforesaid comments were suppressed by your reporter. It was 
obvious that your reporter, by producing only that small part of my 
statement in a manner which removed it from its context, wanted to 
convey to your viewers that non-production of the tape was only a minor 
negligent act, a small mistake on the part of the police -- which 
mistake was being rectified by your "investigative journalism" for the 
sake of those who wanted the prompt hanging of Afzal.

The display of the tape was followed by suggestive comments by your 
reporter such as, "You have seen the tape. See how natural, how 
truthful, how fluent his statement appears!" ".Who can believe that such 
statement can be given under torture?" The news was captioned "Afzal Ke 
Badalte Hue Bayaan (Changing statements of Afzal)". In a discussion of 
the tape your anchor declared, "If such a statement of Afzal was made 
under coercion, then he must be a good actor."

In the morning news of 17th December, 2006, I saw that the families of 
security men killed during the attack on Parliament had been brought on 
the programme and, after showing the tape to them, your reporter asked 
their opinion about the hanging of Afzal. Their expected reply was duly 
telecast. Your reporters stationed in some cities were shown gathering 
the opinion of the public about the hanging of Afzal in the light of the 
tape telecast by NDTV. These telecasts were repeated many times during 
the day and viewers were asked to send SMS messages to NDTV.

I met Afzal in jail on 20th December, 2006 and told him about the tape 
and the repeated performance of NDTV. He was amused. He told me that 
there was not one such tape but several, as before producing him at the 
media conference the police had forced him to rehearse his "Bayaanâ" 
(statement) five or six times. Before that he had been brutally tortured 
for about two days. Urine was forced into his mouth. He was given 
repeated beatings. Once he was kept completely naked throughout the day, 
and on that day one of the public witnesses who was to give evidence 
against him later in the Court also participated in the beating. He was 
also hung by ropes. The next day he was given a written statement and 
was made to rehearse it five or six times. Rajbir Singh, ACP, instructed 
him,"Iske Aage Nahin Batana, Iske Peechhe Nahin Batana (Do not add 
anything to or remove anything from this statement)". Afzal was told 
that his brother Hilal was in the custody of the STF in Kashmir and that 
if he wanted the safety of his brother and family, he should speak in 
the media conference on the lines of the "Bayaan" tailor-made by the 
police. Each rehearsal was video-recorded.

However, the portion in the "Bayaan" relating to co-accused S.A.R. 
Geelani created a problem. The police wanted Afzal to implicate Geelani 
in his statement before the media, which Afzal found himself unable to 
do. He faltered at the Geelani point in each rehearsal. So ACP Rajbir 
Singh instructed that he should keep silent if the issue of Geelani 
cropped up in the media conference. But a deviation occurred when a 
reporter asked Afzal about the involvement of Geelani in the attack. 
Afzal replied that Geelani was innocent. This angered Rajbir Singh, who 
shouted at Afzal ordering him not to say anything about Geelani. Rajbir 
Singh also requested the media persons to delete this part of the 
statement while presenting it to the public. By and large, the media 
obliged the police in a truly nationalistic spirit.

But the media conference ultimately misfired. There was an unintentional 
leak by the "Times of India", and after a couple of months the TV 
channel "Aaj Tak" telecast the complete conference -- without realizing 
that this would be to the detriment of the police case. The defence 
lawyers of Geelani were quick to pounce upon such lapses of the media 
and had the entire video tape of the conference produced in the court. 
Shams Tahir of "Aaj Tak" was summoned on behalf of the defence lawyers 
to give true account of what happened in the conference, and his 
evidence earned for the police a strong reprimand from the High Court 
for organizing the media conference. It also contributed to the 
acquittal of Geelani.

I am narrating these facts in detail as your reporters seem to be 
ignorant of various salient features of the Parliament Attack Case.Your 
repeated news bulletins over two days reduced the issue of the hanging 
of Afzal and his Mercy Petition pending with the President to a very 
simplistic solution "Show repeatedly the video tape (an unlawful piece 
of evidence) of the alleged confession of Afzal recorded in police 
custody as breaking news, convince the viewers that it has brought out 
the ultimate truth, ask them to send SMS messages to NDTV conveying 
their opinions about the "˜Phansi" (hanging) of Afzal, and then pour out 
the "˜collective opinion" gathered in this manner to pave the way for 
the prompt hanging of Afzal."What a simple, quick solution of an issue 
involving the life and death of a citizen!

...I have taken the consent of Afzal before writing this letter to you, 
and on his behalf I request you to faithfully present his side also to 
your viewers, without any suppression or distortion.

I hope that the above contentions on behalf of Afzal, on facts and law 
both, will be truthfully presented by you to your viewers to enable them 
to make a responsible judgement on the issue.

N.D.Pancholi
Counsel for Mohd. Afzal, lodged in solitary
confinement in the High Security Ward of
Jail No.3 of Tihar, Delhi.

------------------------------


Needless to say, NDTV, neither in the form of NDTV24X7 nor as NDTV-India 
has thought it necessary as of now to produce or air any  programme that 
truthfully presents the 'above contentions...on facts and law both'. Nor 
has it thought it necessary to apologize to its viewership, which it has 
insulted with this gratuitous exhibition of something that was not even 
accepted as evidence in court.

A Dead Man's Identity Crisis

But the material of the 'confession' merits scrutiny even on its own 
right. Once again, we find that it is the breathless over-enthusiasm of 
the rhetorical flourishes that undermines the credibility of this sordid 
episode of attempted opinion management on prime time television. A 
great deal is made of the fact that Afzal 'identifies' one of the slain 
'terrorists' who is named Mohammad as Sunny Ahmed Qazi alias 'Burger', 
who slit a passenger's throat during the hijacking of the IC-814 Indian 
Airlines plane from Kathmandu to Kandahar. The 'dead Mohammad' equals 
'Burger' theory was an important part of the Delhi Police version during 
the early days after December 13.

The CBI, which had filed the charge sheet when the Hijacking took place, 
naturally took an interest in ascertaining whether or not the "dead 
Mohammad = Burger" theory had any basis. In fact, on December 19, 2002, 
CBI officials stated that samples of handwriting found on the body would 
be compared with those that the CBI knew were taken from Burger, 
further, photographs of the dead body were being sent to the Central 
Forensic Science Laboratory for Electronic Skull Imaging tests.

We know that by the 14th of January, 2002, the CBI had completely 
rubbished the "dead Mohammad = Burger" theory. Here is an extract from a 
story tiled "The Ham Burger-Did Delhi Police sleuths jump the gun with 
the wrong one?" by Davinder Kumar, datelined 14th January 2002, which 
was published on page 12 of the Outlook issue of January 21, 2002

"After a week of action and frequent media briefings following the 12/13 
strike, silence has gripped the investigation agenices, particularly the 
Delhi Police. The initial euphoria of having cracked the case within 72 
hours has now made way for discernible restraint. Suddenly, no one in 
the Delhi Police wants to crow about the progress of the investigations.

What has come as a blow to the Delhi Police investigations is the CBI 
rubbishing the claim that Mohammad - the man who led the fidayeen attack 
on Parliament-was the 'Burger' of the IC814 hijack two years ago. The 
CBI, which is investigating the Kandahar case, has written to the Union 
home ministry dismissing this claim as baseless.

CBI officials dismiss the assertion that the terrorist killed in the 
Parliament attack was Sunny Ahmed Qazi alias 'Burger'. The investigating 
agency reached this conclusion after a team of experts from the Central 
Forensic Science Laboratory were called in to ascertain the identity of 
Mohammad whose body, along with the bodies of other members of the 
fidayeen squad, is kept preserved at Delhi's Lady Hardinge Medical 
College mortuary. "

In fact, the CBI website to this date hosts a 'wanted' notice (Interpol 
notice control number A - 563/6-2000) for Sunny Ahmed Qazi alias Burger 
at http://cbi.nic.in/qazi.htm

So if we have more than reasonable grounds to believe that the "dead 
Mohammad = Burger" part of the testimony is a fabrication, on what 
grounds must we accept that anything else that Afzal says in this tape 
is true. As stated earlier, Afzal entirely repudiated the contents of 
this confession in the statement he made under section 313 of the 
Criminal Procedure Code to a magistrate, which is in fact something that 
is admissible as evidence in court because it dose not carry with it the 
baggage of being obtained in police custody.

"But Life Goes On"

What, if anything can explain the desparation that drives elements 
within the police apparatus to offer a false testimony to a premier news 
channel, and what can justify that TV channel's airing it. Barkha Dutt, 
in the concluding paragraph of "Death of the Middle Ground" had stated.

"But life goes on. As I write this, NDTV has received a CD of Afzal’s 
so-called confession to the police; a “confession”, he later said, that 
was induced by torture, and then retracted. We spent hours debating what 
the fairest way to use the contents of the CD was, and finally, decided 
that we would use his “confession” only in juxtaposition with the 
statement he finally submitted in court. The idea was to highlight the 
many ambiguities and contradictions of the case."

A completely quantitative analysis of the amount of screen time lavished 
on the confession seen in proportion to the amount of screen time given 
over to the qualifying statement that Afzal made in court is adequate to 
demonstrate the token nature of this so called 'fair' juxtaposition. And 
one of the key contradictions in the case, which the report conveniently 
omits to mention is that the man known to us as "dead Mohammad" is not 
"Burger".

I can understand what made Mohammad Afzal sing, what made him into a 
horrible and sad caricature of Sceherazade, who had to tell a thousand 
and one stories to save her neck and the neck of her sister from the 
executioner's sword in the frame story of the Arabian Nights. It is not 
necessarily a brave thing to have done, (though Afzal was brave when he 
said to the media in the other 'confession' footage, that SAR Geelani 
was innocent). But how many of us would be brave when faced with 
torture, and naked threats to the safety of our immediate families. 
Afzal sang as he was told to sing, as many of us would, given the same 
circumstances. We would do this to survive, perhaps to get out of it all 
with a sliver of dignity and sanity intact.  Afzal's conduct falls in 
this regard falls squarely within the pale of what any human being might 
have done, and it is for this reason that confessions in police custody 
are not admissible as evidence in a criminal trial.

We can understand what made Afzal do what he did, but how do we explain 
NDTV's conduct, and the preposterous suggestion that the airing of this 
contaminated fabrication was the result of hours of debating what would 
be the 'fairest' thing to do under the circumstances. I can only marvel 
at the debating skills on offer in NDTV offices which enable otherwise 
intelligent people to rationalize and justify to themselves the act of 
stooping so low in front of the dirt dished out to them by the shadowy 
operatives who crawl out of the crevices in the underbelly of the 
intelligence apparatus.

Neeta Sharma and The Strange Case of Stationary CCTV Cameras

The story concludes with the only substantive response to have emerged 
from the media to any of the 13 questions presented by Arundhati Roy in 
her introduction to '13 December, A Reader'. This is the answer to the 
question about whether there were five, or six men who attacked 
parliament and whether this can be deduced by looking at the 
surveillance video of the precincts of parliament that day.

[ See 'Parliament Attack: Questions Raised over CCTV Footage' by Neeta 
Sharma on the NDTV website at 
http://ndtv.com/template/template.asp?fromtimeline=true&id=20971&callid=0&template=Parliamentattack]

In this episode, the answer takes the form of an extended playing of 
split screen surveillance camera footage of the white ambassador car 
travelling towards, and then entering parliament, and some shots of the 
occupants of the car (we see four of them) running about. The 
correspondent who has been part of the team which put together this 
story, Neeta Sharma, says, as we see this footage, that the question of 
the 'sixth man' cannot be answered by the CCTV footage simply because 
the CCTV cameras are fixed, immobile and cannot take in the spot where 
the car stopped, and the occupants alighted.

Firstly, it is reasonable to expect that there are not one, but several 
CCTV cameras in the vicinity of the parliament, that between them, 
comprehensively cover the space. Secondly, even, as the correspondent 
offers us her 'immobile' camera theory on the commentary, we can see the 
frame moving, as the camera pans, tilts, zooms, exactly as CCTV cameras 
are programmed to do. So much for the immobility of the CCTV camera.

But the curious details of the production of this story do not end here. 
Neeta Sharma, the key correspondent in this story is the same person, 
who in her earlier avatar as a reporter for the Hindustan Times, wrote 
some of the patently planted stories about SAR Geelani and 13 December 
(with a 'script' identical to the one that has been rehashed exactly 
five years later in the NDTV India Report)

[ See 'Case Cracked: Jaish behind Attack' The Hindustan Times, Dec 16, 
2001 by Neeta Sharma and Arun Joshi, and 'Pak Uses Fanatics to Spread 
Terror in India' a six column piece by Neeta Sharma on December 21, 2006 
in the Hindustan Times, which puts out a series of fabrications about 
SAR Geelani. See also, 'The Media and December 13' an analysis of 
reporting on December 13 by Nirmalangshu Mukherji at 
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6332 ]

She also wrote patently planted stories, again in the Hindustan Times, 
about  Ifitkhar Geelani, the journalist framed in a false case under the 
Official Secrets Act.

[ See 'Iftikar Geelani Admits ISI Link' by Neeta Sharma, Hindustan 
Times, June 11, 2002. This text, which Ifitkar Geelani has called the 
'mother of all mischievous reports about me' is still available online 
at 
http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/archives/archives2002/kashmir20020610f.html. ]

Neeta Sharma is clearly one of the select club of journalists in Delhi 
who has a  long and distinguished history of association with the 
'information management' wings of the intelligence and law enforcement 
agencies that come out to play with the media on certain occasions.

Her re-appearance as one of the architects of the NDTV India's telecast 
of Afzal's confession in custody is itself something that needs to be 
decoded with care. How did the channel allow a reporter with a known 
track record of fabrication in the same case to fashion yet another 
incompetently put together tissue of lies. I wonder how many hours of 
honest debate must have gone into this decision. Were the senior 
management of NDTV aware, are they aware that their correspondent has a 
track record when it comes to planting stories. Are they managerially so 
incompetent that they do not look at a person's professional history 
when they take them on, or do they choose to look the other way, 
calculating instead the benefits of the informal intimacy between 
'intelligence' and 'journalism' that such individuals bring with them to 
the organizations they join.

Blowback

In the end, this is not just about the individual who happens to be 
Neeta Sharma, or any other individuals, or about CNN-IBN or NDTV India 
or NDTV 24X7 or even the shenanigans of any other news channels . This 
is about a cornered beast that is the nexus between sections of the 
media, elements in law enforcement and intelligence, the political class 
and the judiciary flailing and making mistakes, reacting in uncontrolled 
nervousness and fear to the possibility that the house of cards that is 
the official story of December 13 might come crashing down. It is this 
panic that is causing the kind of hysterical programming that we are 
witnessing on television. Some people have a lot to lose if we keep 
asking questions about December 13, and they will do 'whatever it takes' 
to confuse the issue. I cannot see any other rational explaination for 
the manner in which a lot of the skeletons are crawling one by one out 
of the December 13 closet.

Sometimes, the methods used for 'crisis management' create their own 
blowback effect. The methods of our intelligence apparatus, and the 
collective enigma that we have begun calling the 'Deep State' in India 
are an indication of what happens when the attempt to control 
perceptions starts spinning out of control. The more they do this, the 
more they expose themselves.

Voices of the 'Deep State'

There are voices that emanate from within the depths of the 'Deep State' 
  that seem to point in exactly this direction. Only yesterday, (31 
December, 2006) Ajit Doval, former director of the Intelligence Bureau, 
wrote an article in the Hindustan Times on a page that was headlined. 
'Terror or Order'. Perhaps it would have been more apposite if the 
headline had been 'Terror and Order'. In his text, titled, 'Intelligence 
- Brave New World - Transform not Reform' Doval writes -

"the modern state operates under a complex regimen of national and 
international laws, media gaze and vigilant public opinion, which limit 
its power. When the state’s objectives are not met by the legitimate 
instrumentalities, it is tempted to use covert action. This leads to use 
of intelligence not only as a knowledge provider for policy formulation 
but also as a deniable tool of policy execution."

Notice the key phrase, 'deniable tool of policy execution'. Remember 
this is not me offering a conspiracy theory, it is a recently retired 
director of the Intelligence Bureau, intimately involved incidentally, 
with the investigations of 13 December, who is talking about the 
necessity of deniable tools of policy. What does 'deniabilty' mean other 
than the erection of masquerades ? What conclusions can we draw from 
this tacit admission that the state does things that it finds necessary 
to deny.

The Street Theatre of Terror

This is about as sophisticated as the theory of the practice commonly 
known as the 'fake encounter' in india gets. We find another reflection 
of this theory in another remarkable text, published, once again, in 
Hindustan Times, on June 28, 2006, written by Manoj Joshi, Editor 
(views) Hindustan Times, while he was a member of the National Security 
Council Advisory Board, an apex body that advises the ministry of home 
affairs on matters relevant to internal security. This text, which 
offers an analysis of the 'attack' in May on the RSS headquarters in 
Nagpur is called 'The Bigger Picture - Terror’s street theatre'.

Manoj Joshi begins by asking -

"Was the Nagpur encounter of June 1 that led to the killing of three 
Lashkar-e-Tayyeba ter rorists staged? All the signs seem to suggest that 
it was: a terrorist ‘strike’ at 4 a.m., an hour of the day in a small 
town when any movement occasions suspicion; a gunbattle with no 
eyewitnesses in which all the bad guys get killed and the only bullets 
to hit the police strike their bulletproof vests; terrorists’ grenades 
fail to explode and their bodies are removed before the media arrive; 
finally, a diary providing their names and addresses is fortuitously found.

As for the media, the less said the better. In sharp contrast to the 
scepticism over the last such major event — the Ansal Plaza incident in 
New Delhi in 2002 — they seemed determined not to see anything that the 
police did not want them to see. The questions that have been raised 
since follow from investigations by a team associated with the People’s 
Union for Civil Liberties and other civil rights groups, led by B.G. 
Kolse-Patil, a retired judge of the Mumbai High Court, and Suresh 
Khairnar. The report has a number of details, including the numbers of 
bullets fired and the angle of their entry into the police vehicles, 
that indicate that the police version of the encounter is not easy to 
believe."

So far so good, but it is here that Joshi's true intent reveals itself 
in a remarkable way. He goes on to offer us a remarkable insight into 
why he thinks that 'staging' terrorist incidents is a valid instrument 
of policy.

Joshi says -  "...Unlike the aim of the factfinding mission, ours is not 
to berate the police or seek a Supreme Court inquiry. It is to draw 
cautionary lessons about the war against terrorism, which looks to be 
getting worse, before it gets better.No tears need to be shed for the 
execution of terrorists...the aim of the execution was to send a macabre 
message to their handlers, and to eliminate ruthless killers whose 
detention could endanger the police personnel who dealt with them, or 
lead to more terrorist actions to secure their release, as in the case 
of the IC814 hijack. There also seems to be another peculiarly Indian 
need for staging such events. When terrorist conspiracies are quietly 
terminated, as indeed many are, people tend to get complacent, and the 
reaction to a major strike can be destabilising. Staging such a grisly 
theatrical is , in a sense, inoculation to reduce the virulence that may 
result from an actual terrorist strike later."

'Grisly Theatricals' and a growing list of questions

Reading these lines in juxtaposition with what we know, and what we do 
know that we do not know - about December 13, 2001 and the Attack on the 
Red Fort in 2000 leads to the drawing of certain unavoidable conclusion. 
It needs now to be proven that these 'grisly theatricals' were not 
staged, were not the kind of 'inoculations' that act as 'deniable 
instruments of policy'.

If those who are speaking loudly today in favour of Afzal's hanging have 
nothing to fear, then they should also not have any difficulty in 
ensuring that at the very least, a thorough enquiry and investigation be 
carried out into the affair of December 13.

If nothing else, it might yield valuable information about who else was 
involved, who actually got Afzal to the place where he is now, so that 
they too may be punished (with him, if that is necessary) for their 
actions. For all we know, we might find that there exist people whose 
culpability with regard to December 13 is far greater than what has so 
far been demonstrated in the case of Mohammad Afzal. If this be true, 
and if we are to take the question of getting to the bottom of what 
happenned, and apportioning blame seriously, then it is imperative that 
stay alive, at least until such time that the investigations are 
satisfactorily concluded. The only conclusion that can be drawn from the 
intensity with which the demand that Afzal be killed, and immediately, 
is that those who are making that demand have reason to be worried about 
what might be revealed in the future, should Afzal stay alive to 
participate in a free and fair trial, and in a rigourous investigation 
of the truth.

Once again, in the absence of a better explaination, we must continue to 
ask why the critics of our position are not responding to the questions 
that we are actually asking and are instead occupied in going about day 
in and day out in the task of constructing a straw man of Afzal's so 
called 'innocence'. A generous explanation would be (and I am willing to 
consider this to be the truth in the case of Barkha Dutt, whose 
analytical skills have never quite had the edge of her enthusiasm) that 
this is being done because those doing it do not have the intelligence, 
patience or diligence to actually consider what we are saying. A less 
generous explanation would be that this is being done with some 
deliberation, so as to confuse and delude the public into believing that 
we, the critics of the official line on December 13 are either naiive 
pro-Kashmiri 'limousine liberals and publicity mongers' who do not know 
have a clue about what we are talking about, or, that we are actually a 
'subversive jehadist conspiracy'.

[The first of these is the Suhel Seth position, as elaborated in the 
Asian Age of December 18 , in 'The Laws of Activism' 
(http://www.asianage.com/presentation/columnisthome/suhel-seth-/the-laws-of-activism.aspx) 
and the second is the Arun Jaitley line, as spelt out on NDTV India on 
December 16th and 17th.]

Either way, both of these arguments do not actually engage with any of 
the points that we are trying to make. In their dismissal lies a careful 
but nervous evasion of the questions that have been raised by  Arundhati 
Roy and by several others who have been arguing against the death 
penalty for Mohammad Afzal.

[See '13 Questions for 13 December' by Arundhati Roy, Published in 
Outlook, December 18, 2006 and posted by me at 
http://www.kafila.org/2006/12/08/13-questions-for-december-13/]

It is of course entirely possible that in the end it is the high pitched 
volume and vituperation of the carefully orchestrated 'Hang Afzal' 
campaign that will carry the day. Alternatively, there could also be the 
possibility that the questions we are raising prompt everyone to think a 
little more for themselves about what they have been told and are being 
told about December 13. The questions are not going away, nor are we. It 
is also possible that the 13 questions give rise to many more, as more 
skeletons begin to crawl from the 13 December closet. We are prepared to 
wait out this winter of our discontent, even as Mohammad Afzal gets 
ready to wait it out in his cell in Tihar Jail.

END
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Thank you for your patience for reading through to the end of a long 
text. Apologies for the lenght. But there was a lot that needed to be 
covered.
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