ML Update, 1-7, May 2007.
Every BJP Manifesto boasts of “Shuchita” (probity in public life) as a fundamental principle of its party. But the Hawala scam, the Tehelka expose of corrupt defence deals by NDA Government, the sight of BJP President Bangaru Laxman caught taking bribes on camera in a defence deal, the massive scam by BJP in allotment of petrol pumps, the cash-for questions scam in which most of the MPs were from the BJP – and now a BJP MP from Gujarat being caught red-handed in human trafficking have made a mockery of those pious claims of “Shuchita”.
As BJP MP from Dahod (near Godhra) Babubhai Katara was one of prominent figures who led the attacks on Muslims in tribal areas during the Gujarat genocide. His son still faces charges of having killed several people during the 2002 pogrom. Recall that this is the same BJP whose Gujarat Government in 2003 slapped false charges of human trafficking on Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi danseuse Mallika Sarabhai in 2003, in order to harass her for becoming party to a petition filed in the Supreme Court demanding speedy justice for the 2002 genocide victims.
It appears that Katara is part of a huge human-trafficking ring of national, maybe international dimensions, and has committed the same offence before. The unfortunate woman he was smuggling is from Punjab – one of hundreds of women abandoned by their husbands who marry them, take huge dowries, and then dump them at home and go abroad. And what was the 14-year-old minor boy being taken abroad for without a guardian, on the pretext that he would be educated abroad, is anyone’s guess. Is this ‘Gujarat Gaurav’? Is this the ‘Suraksha’ that BJP promises in its manifesto?
Katara’s crime isn’t just one of corruption – it’s a crime against humanity to exploit the desperation of such individuals to milk them for lakhs of rupees. We must demand immediate dismissal of Katara from Parliament, and a thorough probe into the links of the BJP as a party as well as other parliamentarians in the human trafficking racket. However much the BJP and Indian Parliament dismiss Katara as a ‘bad apple’, the fact is that both the cash-for-questions scam and the human trafficking racket are signals of the ever-plummeting standards in Parliamentary practice.
Even more disturbing are the reports of the spate of fake encounters that the Gujarat police has been involved in. “Lashkar-e-taiyyeba (LeT) man involved in a plot to kill Narendra Modi – killed in encounter.” This was the Gujarat Police’s claim when Sohrabuddin Sheikh was killed in 2005. Now evidence has surfaced that three senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officers – including DIG DG Vanzara who is reportedly very close to Narendra Modi – murdered Sheikh and faked his ‘encounter’, murdered his wife Kauser Bi and burnt her body, and also killed a third person, a witness – petty criminal Tulsiram Prajapati. Sheikh and his wife were abducted by police from a bus, and then killed; later the grand claim of having ‘encountered’ a deadly terrorist was concocted.
Sohrabuddin Sheikh is not Vanzara’s first victim by a long shot. Ever since he was appointed DCP Crime Branch in Ahmedabad after the 2002 genocide, he shot dead at least 10 ‘terrorists’ (not counting others like Kauser Bi or Tulsiram Prajapati, casually eliminated in order to silence the truths they might reveal). Each time, his claim was that the ‘terrorist’ was involved in a plot to kill Modi or Pravin Togadia or some other top BJP leader. Vanzara’s track record includes the incident where four persons including the 19-year-old college students Ishrat Jehan were shot dead and said to have been plotting to kill Modi.
But the encounter killings in Gujarat are just the tip of a very large iceberg – one that the entire Indian polity condones. Encounter killings (as well as custodial torture) have become a routine fact of life, resorted to on a daily basis by the Indian State as part of anti-insurgency operations in Kashmir and the North East, and anti-Naxalite operations in Andhra Pradesh or Chhattisgarh. In Delhi, a sensational ‘encounter’ took place at Ansal Plaza – but later, persistent enquiry by human rights activists revealed that the ‘encounter’ had been staged just prior to Diwali to create the bogey that shoppers were to be targets of terror attacks.
Fake encounters as well as custodial torture are not exceptions; they have become the norm and draw sustenance from the belief that most ruling parties bolster up: that human rights need not apply to ‘terrorists’. Naturally, ethnic and religious minorities, political dissenters, tribals and the poor – all are fit candidates to be branded as ‘terrorists’ and stripped of rights on the strength of their identity alone. Such practices are unfortunately not the monopoly of the Sangh or the BJP or Narandra Modi’s Gujarat: Congress-ruled Maharashtra continues to pick up a frame innocent Muslim youths for the Mumbai blasts and even the Malegaon mosque blasts, while West Bengal CM Buddhadeb announced on World Human Rights Day that ‘human rights are for ordinary citizens, not for terrorists and Naxalites’. The disturbing thought presents itself: if the State can stage ‘encounters’ so readily, is it really far-fetched to believe that it might just as easily stage fake ‘terror attacks’?