[Reader-list] Swami Aseemanand’s Confessions: Its time for an apology

[Javed]

9th January 2010

Swami Aseemanand’s Confessions: Its time for an apology
Manisha Sethi

Swami Aseemanand’s confession before the metropolitan magistrate of
Tees Hazari Court has finally put the seal of legal validity over what
had been circulating for months now, since the surfacing of the audio
tapes seized from Dayanand Pande’s laptop. That Hindutva groups had
been plotting and executing a series of bomb blasts across the
country—including Malegaon (2006 and 08), Samjhauta Express (2007),
Ajmer Sharif (2007) and Mecca Masjid (2007).

For the past several years however, dozens of Muslim youth have been
picked up, detained, tortured, chargesheeted for these blasts—with
clearly no evidence, except for custodial confessions (which unlike
Swami’s confessions have no legal value). Report after report has
proved that the Maharashtra and Andhra police willfully refused to
pursue the Hindutva angle preferring to engage in communal
witch-hunt—or as in the case of Nanded blast—where the evidence was so
glaring as to be unimpeachable—weakening the prosecution of these
elements.

What is striking today is not the revelation contained in Aseemanand’s
confessions but that it should have taken the country’s premier and
pampered security agencies this long—four years after the Malegaon
serial blasts, and even longer since the explosions elsewhere in
Maharashtra—to unravel the Hindutva terror networks. Especially so,
when Maharshtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare had, as far back as 2008,
communicated to the Hyderabad Police the sensational claim by Col.
Purohit that he had procured RDX from an army inventory when he was
posted in Jammu and Kashmir in 2006. While the Hyderabad Police having
conveniently arrested over 70 Muslim youth, tortured them at private
farmhouses and extracted confessions, refused even to seek Puroshit’s
custody; the Haryana ATS investigating the Samjhauta Express blast
questioned Dayanand Pande but then pleaded that the trail had turned
cold, thus washing its hands off. The use of RDX in the Samjhauta
blast was touted as proof enough of Pakistani involvement in the
Samjhauta blast; the crucial piece of evidence, the suitcase carrying
the bomb was traced to Kothari Market in Indore, but the Haryana ATS,
possibly under pressure or simply incredulous about the possibility of
Hindutva terror appeared paralyzed.

Amnesia about Narco-Analysis?

What is one to make of the reports of the Narco-analysis tests
conducted on SIMI activists, including Safdar Nagori his brother
Kamruddin Nagori and Amil Parvez in April 2008, which claimed
expediently that SIMI activists “had helped carry out the Mumbai train
bombings of July 11, 2006 and the Samjhauta Express blasts of January
2007...with the help of Pakistani nationals who had come from across
the border.” India Today magazine had proudly claimed in an
‘exclusive’ that the Narco-tests revealed “SIMI’s direct links with
not only the Mumbai train bombings which killed over 200 persons but
also links with the Samjhauta Express blast of February 2007 which
killed 68 persons.” The reports of the Narco test on Nagori claimed
that he had revealed that “some persons from Pakistan” had purchased
the suitcase cover at Kataria market, Indore, while a SIMI activist
“helped them to get the suitcase cover stitched”. Nagori is said to
have named Abdul Razak and Misbah-ul-Islam of Kolkata as key people
who provided crucial support to SIMI’s Indore unit in executing the
Samjhauta train blast.

As for the Malegaon blasts, Nagori is said to have ‘admitted’ during
the Narco test that some Muslim members were involved and he was aware
of it; and he attributed the Hyderabad blast to one Nasir—who
according to Nagori disliked the owner of the Gokul Chat stall—who was
arrested a few months’ prior to Nagori’s arrest.

Other important information revealed in the exclusive story is the
Nagori claim that “most of the SIMI activists knew about other bomb
conspiracies across the country” and the presence of sleeper cells in
Hubli.  (Sandeep Unnithan, India Today, 19 September 2008)

So why did Nagori decide—even if in a drugged state—to take credit for
the blasts that have now been proven to be the handiwork of Sangh
offshoots? To boost SIMI’s sagging image? Or maybe to score brownie
points over rival factions within SIMI?

Or perhaps, as several scientists, jurists and civil rights activists
have been pointing out, Narco-analysis not only robs the suspect’s
rights and dignity—amounting to third degree—but is also highly
unscientific, dubious and undependable as evidence in investigations.
It is entirely possible for the investigator to induce, communicate
his/ her ideas and thoughts to the suspect, thereby eliciting a
response favoured by the investigator and the police theory—whatever
it happens to be at the moment.

Media or Hand Maiden of the Police?

What India Today was trying to disguise as a scoop was the result not
of any painstaking investigation, but the patronage of security
agencies. This is sadly becoming too routine in supposedly
investigative stories about blasts and terror strikes: security
agencies pass on dossiers and reports such as the Narco tests to
favoured journalists, who dutifully reproduce the police version. The
public naming of individuals and groups as suspects—with little
credible evidence—is usually a prelude to detentions, arrests and
torture of ‘suspects’. No doubt, claims that SIMI members in
Maharashtra were in the know of the bomb conspiracy then afford
greater freedom to the police to launch manhunts for former SIMI
members (even when the organization was still not banned) as
co-conspirators. Mass arrests following Mecca Masjid blasts were
accompanied by stories which implicated local youth from
Muslim-dominated localities such as Moosaram Bagh (“Behind the Mecca
Masjid Bombing: Communal Violence, Organised Crime and Global Jihad
Intersect in Andhra Pradesh’s Capital” by Praveen Swami, Frontline,
May 23, 2007).  Such stories lent a veneer of legitimacy to the
subversion of due processes of law—where the hype surrounding the
threats of Islamic terrorism justifies the shortcut methods of
investigation—namely illegal detentions, torture, custodial
confessions, narco-tests and the like.

On October 11, 2007 the Union Home Ministry claimed that the Ajmer
Sharif blast was the handiwork of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which was
opposed to Sufi Islam, whose prime symbol was the Ajmer Sharif dargah.
And the very next day, Praveen Swami served up “The War against
Popular Islam” (The Hindu, October 12, 2007), wherein he claimed that
the bombing of the Ajmer dargah—as well as blasts at Mecca Masjid and
Sufi shrine in Malegaon—reflect a “less-understood project: the war of
Islamist neoconservatives against the syncretic traditions and beliefs
that characterise popular Islam in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.” It
turns out now that Swami’s profound understanding has been turned on
its head: it was not rabid Islam’s war against popular Islam but
Hindutva’s revenge on the inherent syncreticism of India. Aseemanand
is said to have told the magistrate: “Since Hindus throng the Ajmer
Sharif Dargah we thought a bomb blast in Ajmer would deter Hindus from
going there.” (in Tehelka, 15 January, 2011). Again screaming
headlines about HUJI link created an atmosphere in which the Rajasthan
SIT could detain a dozen Imams, maulvis and madrasa teachers, without
producing the suspects in court, plucking them from their native
places and bringing them to Ajmer for interrogation without even
bothering to obtain transit remands.

More recently, the Varanasi blast occasioned yet another rash of
stories based on ‘sources’ in the Indian intelligence agencies about
Indian Mujahideen men on the run, in hideouts abroad, but whose
associates still live in places as predictable as Azamgarh and
Bhatkal. (For a fairly standard story see, “Indian Mujahudeen: The
Hunt Continues” by Vicky Nanjapa.
http://vickynanjapa.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/indian-mujahideen-the-hunt-continues/)

Gear up for more arrests, shall we?

An apology? And some compensation?

Though the Mecca Masjid blast case was transferred to the CBI, the
Hyderabad Police registered three cases related to conspiracies in
order to retain control over the investigations and indeed to push for
its line of investigation based on forced confessions extracted under
torture. This is clear demonstration of the high stakes Special
Investigation Teams (SITs) and Special Cells attach to cases such as
bomb blasts and terror attacks: terror investigations are lucrative
means of earning quick medals, promotions and awards—as long as
scapegoats (read Muslim youth) can be produced and paraded as
masterminds, conspirators and accomplices.

The Home Ministry must release a White Paper on the total number of
those arrested and in jail currently for the blasts now in every
single the blasts named by Swami Aseemanand as the handiwork of his
organization and associates. Those still languishing in prisons must
be released without any further delay.

Those whose lives have been destroyed, those psychologically scarred
and socially stigmatized by these false charges and imprisonment
deserve surely a public apology, from the state governments as well as
the Home Ministry. The former Home Minister Shivraj Patil had
expressed his satisfaction at the direction of the Ajmer bomb probe—at
the time when maulavis and madrasa teachers were being picked up—and
in 2009, P. Chidambaram had pleaded that the investigations in the
Mecca Masjid blast case had reached a dead end with the death of the
mastermind of the blast, Shahid Bilal (the same Bilal whose house
appeared prominently in Praveen Swami’s article). More recently, when
a Hindutva angle was suggested by the Maharashtra ATS in the Pune
Bakery blast, The Maharashtra Home Minister, RR Patil threatened
action against the ATS Chief.

Even the exceedingly low levels of political propriety in our country
can be no excuse for not tendering an apology to the victims of the
witch-hunt. The Andhra Chief Minister has announced grandly on the
floor of the state assembly that he would tender an apology if it was
proved that Muslim youth had been deliberately harassed by the police
in the aftermath of the Mecca Masjid blasts. The AP Chief Minister
would do well to read the reports of the National Minorities
Commission and the AP Minorities Commission, both of which laid bare
the gratuitous violence committed by the Hyderabad police on suspects.
The CM appears to be waiting for the report of the Justice Bhaskara
Rao Commission before offering an apology (newspaper reports on 17 Dec
2010). Except that he forgot that the Commission was appointed to look
into the police firing after the Mecca Masjid blasts and not into
accusations of torture and illegal detention—and the Commission
already submitted its report to the CM three months ago, in October
2010!

While we need to be vigilant that the investigations are now not
derailed by prejudice of security agencies and state governments; the
issue of compensation to those unjustifiably arrested and tortured
needs to be addressed urgently. Dr. Haneef’s case in Australia—where
the Australian government apologised and paid undisclosed large sums
of money as compensation for wrongful terror accusations and
detention—should serve as a model for us here. The Andhra Pradesh
Government’s offer of rehabilitation package of Rs 30,000 –Rs 80,000
as loans (!) to those  who suffered arrests and torture can only add
insult to the already inflicted injury (“Andhra’s ‘Healing Touch’ to
‘innocent’ Muslims”, Indian Express, 14 Nov 2008). Just for the sake
of record, even these loans have not materialsed. On the other hand,
the state government is contesting the damages of Rs 20 lakhs each
being claimed by the victims in the Hyderabad City Civil Court.

Finally, all those who colluded and covered up these sham
investigations need to be brought to justice: those in the
intelligence agencies, officers of the police and security agencies,
political bosses et al.  The Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police
(Administration) Harish Gupta—who presided over the Mecca Masjid
custodial confessions, torture and narco-analysis tests—must be held
accountable. As must be each and every police officer who participated
in this charade of investigation; in this large scale violation of the
rights of the accused by subjecting them to brutal torture, and in
doing so, undermined their own office. Police officers must be charged
and tried for their criminal acts of violence against the youth—whom
they knew to be innocent—as well as gross dereliction of duties for
deliberately building their investigations on falsehoods in so serious
a crime as bomb blasts.

We shouldn’t have had to wait for a change of Swami Aseemanand’s heart
to reach this far.

Sd/-

Manisha Sethi, Sanghamitra Misra, Ahmed Sohaib, Adil Mehdi, Tanweer
fazal, Ghazi Shahnawaz, Arshad Alam, Farah Farooqi, Azra Razak,
Ambarien Al Qadar, Anwar Alam, Shakeb Ahmed, Haris ul Haq for JTSA.

www.teacherssolidarity.org