The Many Deaths of Ishrat Jahan
Instead of asking whether the guilty have been punished, the questions around the Ishrat Jahan ‘encounter’ continue to be about if she was an LeT operative.
In the early hours of a midsummer morning, at the outskirts of Ahmedabad near the city’s waterworks, on June 15, 2004, the Gujarat police shot dead four occupants of a car. One of those killed was a young 19-year-old woman. Her name was Ishrat Jahan.
After the killings, the Gujarat police maintained that all the people who had been done to death, including Ishrat Jahan, were operatives of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, one of the largest terrorist organisations in South Asia based out of Pakistan. The First Information Report filed by the police claimed that it had received intelligence reports that a fidayeen attack on then-chief minister Narendra Modi was planned to avenge the Gujarat massacre of 2002 and that three men – Amjad Ali Rana, Zeeshan Johar and Javed Sheikh (Pranesh Pillai) – were charged with this mission. The first two were ‘Pakistani fidayeens’ traveling from Kashmir to Ahmedabad to ‘attempt a suicidal attack’ (sic) on Narendra Modi. The third, Javed Sheikh, was allegedly ‘arranging their local network.’
Interestingly, the FIR did not mention by name the fourth occupant of the car, Ishrat Jahan. It just describes her as a ‘female terrorist’, but does not explain what intelligence, if any, the police had about her at that time. The teenage girl was later identified as Ishrat Jahan, a college student from Mumbra, a suburb of Mumbai in Thane district.
According to the version of the police, it received information on the night of June 11, 2004 that three men were travelling from Mumbai to Ahmedabad in a blue Indica car with ‘firearms and explosives’. The car was intercepted when it reached Ahmedabad, but tried to escape, leading to a car chase. Its occupants began shooting at the police, firing over 50 rounds from two revolvers and two Kalashnikovs. The police were forced to respond in defensive fire, as a result of which the four occupants of the car were killed. The police did not explain why not a single policeperson was even injured in this alleged shootout.
An unknown junior metropolitan magistrate, S.P. Tamang, responsible for conducting what is almost always an utterly routine statutory enquiry into encounter killings, stood tall, bravely affirming justice and truth. He examined the forensic reports and statements, and in a lucid and tightly argued report on September 7, 2009, stunned everyone by concluding that the police version of how the killings occurred was an “absolutely false and concocted story”.
Ahmedabad metropolitan judge Tamang, in a 248 page hand-written report carefully analysed the post-mortem and forensic evidence to conclude that Ishrat and the three men were actually killed several hours before the alleged shoot-out from a close range, as the entry points of the bullets wounds on the body were smaller than the exit points. The post-mortem report also supported the conclusion that the police killed the four people earlier and later placed them at the scene of the crime. The police fired on their police jeep themselves and planted explosives in the car that carried those who were killed. The police had then taken their bodies to the isolated roadside near the waterworks and planted an AK 47 weapon in the hands of one of the dead men. Forensic tests found no remains of ‘exploded ammunition’ on the victims, supporting the conclusion that the police planted the guns found on them. The report pointed to several other discrepancies in the police version: police said they fired 70 bullets, but no bullets were found on the scene. According to them, they shot at the car’s left side and burst a tyre after which it hit the divider on the right, but if that were the case, the car would have swerved left and not right.
It was cold blooded murder by the police, including of an innocent 19-year-old college girl. The police cover-up was clumsy and ham-handed, the forensic evidence crystal clear, but no court had until then chosen to look this ugly and explosive truth in the face. This is what Tamang did.
After Tamang’s brave and sensational report, the Gujarat high court constituted a Special Investigation Team, with two Gujarat police officers Satish Verma and Mohan Jha, to be headed by a police officer from outside Gujarat. But a series of policemen refused to undertake this responsibility. Finally in November 2011, the SIT completed a thorough investigation and submitted its report, and Satish Verma filed an affidavit in the high court that the ‘purported encounter’ was not ‘genuine’. Many police officers in Gujarat protested against the report, and the court finally agreed to have a fresh probe by the CBI. The CBI in turn presented its findings in July 2013.
Both the SIT and the CBI concluded that the four people killed were in the custody of the police before their killing, that they were shot at close range, their bodies placed in the location and weapons planted on their bodies later. The CBI charged 20 police officers with murder, kidnapping, criminal conspiracy and several other offences. A range of senior police officers were indicted, including P.P. Pandey, D.G. Vanzara, G.L. Singhal, Intelligence Bureau officer Rajendra Kumar and two IB junior officers. In the course of 2013, Pandey, Vanzara and Singhal were arrested. The CBI report pointed to evidence of the possibility that the fake encounter had the prior approval of the then home minister Amit Shah and even the chief minister, Narendra Modi.
The winds changed course after a BJP-led government was sworn in at Delhi in the summer of 2014. Pandey, for instance, was released on bail in February 2015 and in three days was reinstated and given charge of a probe against Satish Verma, the police officer whose SIT probe had led to Pandey’s indictment. In April 2016, he was appointed Director General Police, a first in the country for a police officer charged with murder (even if out on bail) to be given this high responsibility. All seven indicted police officers – many charged with other fake encounter killings as well, such as that of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi – are out on bail. Three have retired, the remainder have been promoted. Retired police officer Vanzara returned to Gujarat on bail to a hero’s welcome. On the other hand, Satish Verma was denied promotion and faces several probes. Although years have passed since the CBI completed its probe, there is no sign of the trial commencing.
The evidence that the ‘encounter’ was fake is so strong that it is clear that it would be difficult to establish the police version that the killings were a genuine incident of police firing in self-defence in a shoot-out against armed militants. The attempt then shifted to establishing that the persons killed were terrorists, including Ishrat Jahan.
For Ishrat Jahan’s family, the journey into the long dark night that started in that midsummer dawn on June 16, 2004 seems to have no end. Her mother in a public statement in 2013 declared: “I have a right to know the complete truth – who killed my daughter Ishrat Jahan, who masterminded her murder, who stood to gain from the cold blooded killing of a young Muslim girl. I have a right to complete justice and for that it is necessary that the entire conspiracy is unearthed and all those responsible for eliminating my innocent daughter are indicted, charged, prosecuted and punished”.
But today it is not enough for her to prove that Ishrat was killed in cold blood by police and intelligence officers. Her mother is determined to fight to prove that her daughter was innocent of the charges of being a terror operative. “My daughter was not a terrorist. We had run into very hard times, she stepped in and took responsibility for the whole family. I cannot let her be pronounced a terrorist”.
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The Many Deaths of Ishrat Jahan
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ghulam muhammed
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Re: The Many Deaths of Ishrat Jahan
The death of Ishrat Jahan and the coverup that followed
As for the alleged terrorist links in Ishrat Jahan encounter case, no conclusive evidence has been produced in court apart from rumours based on hearsay and unsubstantiated claims in the media.
Over the years, various investigations have been conducted by magistrates, Special Investigation Teams (SITs), and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). All of these have concurred that the encounter was not genuine. At the same time, a number of cases have been filed by Jahan’s mother Shamima Kausar, Pillai’s father Gopinath Pillai, and the policemen involved.
“The incident happened on a dark road, before sunrise during a moonless night.” He went on to list the various discrepancies in the police account based on an analysis of the bullet trajectories, firing positions and blood spatter forensics. Two of the nine millimetre (mm) bullets recovered from the bodies, and “eight empty cartridge cases of nine mm ammunition recovered from the Indica car,” did not match with any of the guns that had supposedly been used by either side. Upon subsequent analysis, the “gunny bag containing 17 kg of yellow powder” that was seized from the car was not found to be “an explosive mixture.”
In December 2015, I visited advocate Vrinda Grover in south Delhi. Grover has represented Jahan’s family since 2008. She told me that, based on the statements of the policemen who had witnessed the abduction and detention of the deceased, the CBI chargesheet had enough material to indicate that the murders had political sanction. “It was within the knowledge of the present PM, Narendra Modi, as well as the present president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Amit Shah. But that trail of evidence was never pursued by the CBI,” she alleged.
In his resignation letter, dated 1 September 2013, Vanzara—who was incarcerated in 2007 for his involvement in four fake encounter cases, including those of Jahan and Sohrabuddin, and had received bail in February 2015 after spending eight years in various jails of Ahmedabad and Mumbai—validated Grover’s assessment. Vanzara stated, “We, being field officers, have simply implemented the policy of this government, which was inspiring, guiding and monitoring our actions from very close quarters.” In the same letter, he also claimed that Modi was under the evil and misguiding influence of Amit Shah, and that Shah’s “unholy grip over the state administration is so complete that he is almost running the government of Gujarat by proxy.”
- See more at: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/i ... xkaWW.dpuf
As for the alleged terrorist links in Ishrat Jahan encounter case, no conclusive evidence has been produced in court apart from rumours based on hearsay and unsubstantiated claims in the media.
Over the years, various investigations have been conducted by magistrates, Special Investigation Teams (SITs), and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). All of these have concurred that the encounter was not genuine. At the same time, a number of cases have been filed by Jahan’s mother Shamima Kausar, Pillai’s father Gopinath Pillai, and the policemen involved.
“The incident happened on a dark road, before sunrise during a moonless night.” He went on to list the various discrepancies in the police account based on an analysis of the bullet trajectories, firing positions and blood spatter forensics. Two of the nine millimetre (mm) bullets recovered from the bodies, and “eight empty cartridge cases of nine mm ammunition recovered from the Indica car,” did not match with any of the guns that had supposedly been used by either side. Upon subsequent analysis, the “gunny bag containing 17 kg of yellow powder” that was seized from the car was not found to be “an explosive mixture.”
In December 2015, I visited advocate Vrinda Grover in south Delhi. Grover has represented Jahan’s family since 2008. She told me that, based on the statements of the policemen who had witnessed the abduction and detention of the deceased, the CBI chargesheet had enough material to indicate that the murders had political sanction. “It was within the knowledge of the present PM, Narendra Modi, as well as the present president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Amit Shah. But that trail of evidence was never pursued by the CBI,” she alleged.
In his resignation letter, dated 1 September 2013, Vanzara—who was incarcerated in 2007 for his involvement in four fake encounter cases, including those of Jahan and Sohrabuddin, and had received bail in February 2015 after spending eight years in various jails of Ahmedabad and Mumbai—validated Grover’s assessment. Vanzara stated, “We, being field officers, have simply implemented the policy of this government, which was inspiring, guiding and monitoring our actions from very close quarters.” In the same letter, he also claimed that Modi was under the evil and misguiding influence of Amit Shah, and that Shah’s “unholy grip over the state administration is so complete that he is almost running the government of Gujarat by proxy.”
- See more at: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/i ... xkaWW.dpuf