As was widely known,
the CBI has charged that the Gujarat cops killed Ishrat Jahaan and three others
in cold blood. The agency hasn’t named Modi, nor Amit Shah the Home Minister of
the state at that time, for now. I was reading a tweet of Subramanian Swamy
(the lapdog of the BJP and Modi), that said that Modi has so far never been
named in any FIR, leave alone chargesheet. So we are to believe that the
Gujarat cops went rogue, acted on their own, and took on a personal task to
cleanse Gujarat of terrorists? And they coincidentally felt this motivated only
after Modi took over as CM?
For Gujarat had not
seen any encounter killings before Modi became CM. Yet, after Modi, and after
Ishrat Jahaan, there were at least two other fake encounters. One of
Sohrabuddin Sheikh in November 2005 and another of his accomplice Tulsiram
Prajapati in December 2006. None of these cases lead directly to Modi, but come
on, let’s not fool ourselves. Is it the BJP’s position that for three long
years, the cops in Gujarat went berserk and kept bumping off people in utter
disregard for the judicial process and the Gujarat CM did nothing? Is it the
party’s position that the “able” administrator who wants to be PM, the only
leader in the country who can provide great “governance”, had no control over
his Home Minister, who in turn had no control over his cops? And that still
doesn’t answer the question: Why did the cops turn rogue only after Modi took
over?
A part of the charge
has to be directed at the BJP Government ruling at the center then. The IB –
under Advani right until the government fell in May 2004 – was complicit in the
Ishrat Jahaan case. The IB official, not charged yet but likely to be in the
future, had worked long enough and hard enough under Advani to fabricate the
kind of fake intelligence that he did to make the encounter look valid. Then in
2005 and 2006 when the BJP government had vanished from the Center, thrown out
by the people of the country for its Godhra-kind of activities, the BJP
governments in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh conspired with Gujarat. Sheikh was
apparently a player in both these states. That’s how he surfaced on Gujarat’s
radar. He was a Muslim and he had to be bumped off. Here is what Wiki reports
about the case: “The state government's
lawyer, KTS Tulsi, later admitted before the Supreme Court that the "gun
battle" in which Sheikh had died had been staged by the Gujarat police”.
Rajasthan’s then Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria, a senior BJP leader, has
also been questioned by the CBI in the same case. Later, Sheikh’s wife, Kausar
Bi, was also killed. Want to know where? At a BJP corporator’s farm house in
Ahmedabad.
So how tenable is it
for Modi to claim that he hasn’t been named in any episode yet? Honestly, for
Modi, the CBI’s chargesheet works to his advantage. Modi gains politically from
such stories of involvement – but only in a few states. The only reason he has
been elected thrice in Gujarat is because the people of the state, apart from
being known for their development fetish, are also known for their hatred of
Muslims. They have virtually “outsourced” the job of “showing the Muslims their
place” to Modi. Rather, Modi has “taken over” that function, as an “able
administrator” of the state.
The BJP itself has
gained politically in some states as a result of this aggressive anti-Muslim
program (or should we say pogrom?). It has ruled in MP/Chhatisgarh for 10 years
on the trot. And it has managed to rule Rajasthan in every alternate assembly
since 1995 (since the days of the Babri demolition). These three states is all
that BJP is all about. Take away these three states, and the BJP goes back to
its pre-Babri status. A little presence in Bihar (courtesy a strong local ally
who has now deserted it), another small presence in Punjab (again courtesy a
strong local partner), next-to-nothing in Maharashtra (despite a strong local
partner), and next-to-nothing in UP as well. Co-incidentally, Gujarat, MP,
Chhatisgarh – the strongest supporters of the BJP – are states where the % of
Muslims is about half the national average. See the connection?
For the party that
staged the Babri demolition, and for a CM whose only defence against the
post-Godhra riots is that he has not been named, Ishrat Jahaan, Sohrabuddin
Sheikh, Kauser Bi and Tulsiram Prajapati are small fries. I remember back then
in those days, the likes of Vanzara and PP Pandey were heroes amongst BJP
cadres in the state. They were much dreaded by a whole bunch of others who
believed in the rule of law. This is Gujarat’s “model” that Modi now wants to
take nationally. This is what Modi wants the Muslims to “forget and move on”.
It’s like Dawood Ibrahim telling us Indians to forget his activities and move
on. Maybe we should welcome Dawood into India. Maybe we should welcome Modi
into Delhi.
And ohhh, I just
remembered. There was one other fake encounter in Ahmedabad before Ishrat
Jahaan. This was the cold blooded murder of Modi’s own Home Minister during the
Godhra days, Haren Pandya. Pandya was a Keshubhai supporter, colored in the BJP
ideology alright (hence the murder of thousands of Muslims in the post-Godhra
period), but belonging to the opposite camp (Keshubhai’s). What happened to
him? He got bumped off too. What was it made to look like? As if some Muslims
had murdered him. Again, Modi’s role has not been established though Pandya’s
family keeps accusing him of it. And now it has been established that the
charges against the Muslims were all false. Pandya was not shot through the
window as claimed by the local cops, but somewhere else. His body was just dumped
in his car after he was murdered. Shame on this icon of governance.
So let the people of
India decide what they want to do with Modi. Make him the PM and spread saffron
terror all over the country or show him the dumpster. They showed their mind in
2004 when they threw out the NDA government; they refused to forgive it even in
2009. 2014 will be no different. Ironically, the same acts that give BJP a
stronghold in Gujarat will be the reason for their failure in the rest of the
country.
The real truth
is that we didn’t need this CBI chargesheet to know what Modi is capable of. We
are to believe that this self proclaimed icon of good governance, this so
called able administrator, couldn’t even control his cops, nor his Home
Ministers (Amit Shah for the fake encounters; Haren Pandya for the post-Godhra
riots). Nor his ministers (Maya Kodnani). Nor party leaders (Haresh Bhatt). And
we are supposed to repose faith in this man and make him the PM???? Are we all
fools????
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