[Reader-list] In Cold Blood

[meena menon]

Sarai 2007 seventh posting



Hi everyone,

This is my seventh posting for the Sarai Independent Fellowship 2007. I wish
to clarify that the last time when I wrote about Farooq Mapkar's case it was
my sixth and not fifth posting. While I have been writing on specific cases
of people, I have also gathered material about people leaving their homes
after the riots and going to live in different places. One such ghetto is
Naya nagar in Bhayander outside Mumbai and the other one is Mumbra, both in
Thane district. I hope to write on that soon. I also find that there is no
specific pattern to this change of residence as in some places people have
stayed back even though they are in a minority while in other cases, they
have moved out en masse. However, there have been changes in a variety of
ways in perceptions and the levels of fear and insecurity have increased.
The anger is mostly directed towards the police and in the story below, it
is clear why. There is also a feeling of deep rooted injustice and
widespread skepticism that little will come of reviving the riot cases. Many
Muslims who chose to live in cosmopolitan areas now prefer to live with
their own community and this has happened to Hindus too. However, that is
not a universal theory as there are some people I met who are not happy with
staying in a ghetto.



While people have been very helpful and cooperative in my research, they
always ask if anything will come of this. They tell me that I am wasting
their time and making them remember their unhappy past. But at the same
time, they are ready to share their experiences because that is still
uppermost in their minds. Most of them are struggling even now to come to
terms with what has happened and when they speak about the incidents, it was
as if they happened yesterday.



This posting is on Tahir Hasanmiya Wagle who lost his son in the riots.

Best

Meena

meenamenon at gmail.com



In Cold Blood

As you enter Tahir Wagle's pink- walled house, the photograph of young
Shahnawaz stares at you from the corner of a framed calendar. He was an
eleventh standard science student of Elphinstone college when he was shot
dead, watched by his mother and sister below his house at Pathan Chawl
behind the Ehle-e-Hadees Masjid in Mazagaon in South Mumbai.



His father Tahir Wagle has spent the last 14 years trying to file a case
against the policemen who killed his son.  Wagle stands in his balcony on
the second floor and points down. "See this is where he was shot. My
daughter could see the whole thing from here," he says.  Below there is a
narrow passage between his building and the mosque. The passage curves down
to the main road.



 "In this country, those who shoot deer get punished, not those who kill
human beings. *Insaan se jyada hiran ko keemat hai* (Deer have more value
than human beings). My son's status is lower than that of a deer.  I have
yet to get any answers from the police after all these years. They say my
son was a terrorist and was indulging in rioting," says Wagle.



Wagle wanted his son to join the merchant navy, like his grandfather. "I had
told him go to London and appear for his exams," he says. He had two
daughters, one of them died in 1983 in a drowning accident in Ratnagiri. The
other daughter Yasmin was eye witness to the killing of her brother. Wagle
was away on the day the incident happened. On the morning of January 10,
1993, a huge posse of policemen entered Pathan chawl and rounded up 70 odd
men. Shahnawaz was pulled out of his house and taken down by the police.
Yasmin, then 18, and her mother screamed for help and from their balcony,
they saw the police putting a bullet into the boy. They ran down but by then
the van had moved away, leaving behind a pool of blood. Wagle on his return
went to Byculla police station and claimed his son's body. "They had dredged
out the bullet from his head, so that there is no evidence," he says.

He went repeatedly to lodge a complaint but no one was willing at Byculla
police station. "They always fobbed me off saying my son was a rioter," he
recalls. "Would they have given me 14 hours if I had killed a cop?"

Now, with the revival of the riot cases, Wagle has submitted a letter to the
Mumbai police which called him recently to record his statement in August
end. "I know all the policemen who were there. They have all been promoted,"
he says. "At least their promotion should be stopped and a case should be
registered against them," he demands. He is determined to fight for justice.
"I know some day there will be a decision on this case. I have nothing else
to do but carry on my struggle," says 58-year-old Wagle.



The Srikrishna Commission's report on the Mumbai riots has this to say about
the incident: "There is one incident which is very serious in the view of
the Commission and amounts to cold blooded murder by the police. Between 11
to 11.30 hours on January 10, 1993, after having arrived at Pathan Chawl,
the police forcibly entered the premises of the Muslims and started picking
them up. They entered the residence of one Hasanmiya Wagle (Tahir),
terrorized the wife of Hasanmiya and his daughter Yasmin at the point of
rifle, picked up Hasanmiya's 16-year-old son Shahnawaz and dragged him out,
all the while kicking him and assaulting him with rifle butts. Yasmin Hasan
Wagle saw Shahnawaz being taken towards the police vehicle, when once of the
constables standing behind him shot him from behind, almost at point blank
range. Immediately, the policemen dragged the body by the feet and dumped it
in the vehicle and took it away. Yasmin and her mother came down later and
saw that the spot where Shahnawaz was shot down has a pool of blood."



The Commission later accepted the evidence of Yasmin and also directed the
Commissioner of Police to make an inquiry into this "grisly" incident.
However, the Commission says that despite the overwhelming evidence which,
in the opinion of the Commission clearly indicts the police for cold blooded
murder of Shahnawaz, the Deputy Commissioner of Police assigned to conduct
the inquiry, has adroitly white washed the affair and recorded the finding
that the statement of two or three witnesses could not be safely relied on
and that Yasmin or other witnesses had never reported the incident to the
police. The inquiry report also said the evidence of Muslim witnesses was
unreliable.



Calling it a brazen cover up of what is virtually a cold blooded murder of a
young boy, the Commission strongly felt this was a matter of which the
government must take a very serious notice and have it investigated by an
impartial agency and take strict action against the guilty persons. However,
all these years after the submission of the Commission's report, the police
did nothing. It is only now that Wagle's statement was recorded by the
Byculla police station.



Wagle's case is another classic example of inaction by the state government.
Meanwhile on Friday September 14, the police have submitted a charge sheet
against Farooq Mapkar about whom I wrote last time, in the Hari Masjid
firing case. They have within a short span reinvestigated the case, got
statements of witnesses and submitted all the statements to the lower court.
Now the case will come up in October. Mapkar has also filed a writ in the
high court demanding that a charge sheet be filed against the policemen
involved in the Hari Masjid case, which will be heard on September 18. It is
interesting to note that all those charged in the Hari Masjid case were
acquitted except for Mapkar whose trial was separated.



The government which was trying to keep mum on the riots is faced with all
sorts of demands to revive, reopen and re investigate cases. In Wagle's case
not even a first information report was registered despite repeated
attempts. Where then is the question of investigation? The Commission has
said that in the Hari Masjid case, the version of the police is unbelievable
and has been fabricated to support the unjustified firing of large numbers
of rounds which resulted in killing six Muslims. It also held a policeman
Nikhil Kapse of unjustified firing and inhuman and brutal behaviour during
the incident. Yet Kapse was given a clean chit by his senior officer and is
still in service while Mapkar is facing the flak today.



ENDS//








-- 
Meena