Ishrat case: Something’s odd about cops in Modi’s Gujarat

After Ishrat Jahan, a Mumbai college girl, was killed in an encounter on the outskirts of Ahmedabad with three of her friends on June 15, 2004, the Gujarat police claimed they were members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistan-based terror outfit, out on a mission to kill chief minister Narendra Modi. The police said they chased down the Tata Indica car in which the four were travelling before getting into an encounter situation. Obviously, they were lying. In September 2009, Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate SP Tamang, heading a judicial probe into the case, had said that encounter story was cooked up by the police and the four were killed in police custody. Now, a high court-appointed Special Investigation Team says the quartet was killed prior to the supposed encounter. When Sohrabuddin Sheikh, a petty criminal, was killed in an encounter on November 26, 2005, the police had also claimed that he was an LeT activist on a mission to kill Modi. It was revealed subsequently that he was in police custody a day before he was killed and he was finally eliminated at Vishala Circle near Ahmedabd in a staged extra-judicial murder. [caption id=“attachment_136336” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A file photo of Ishrat Jahan, lying on a road in Ahmedabad. AFP”]  [/caption] It is not established yet whether Ishrat and her group and Shorabuddin had anything to with LeT or they really wanted to kill Modi, but suspicion on both these counts seems good enough reason for someone killed in Gujarat. It defies reason why somebody who is already in police custody must be killed in staged encounters — there have been many such encounters between 2001 and 2007. In both the cases the person heading the encounter was deputy commissioner of police DG Vanzara, close to then home minister Amit Shah, who in turn was a close confidante of Modi. Today’s development, where the high court ordered filing of murder charges against the 10 police officials, is likely to bring the chief minister and his equations with the police force into discussion again. Something is really fishy about the Gujarat police and its relation with Modi. All this goes back to the 2002 riots. Not long ago, amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran had proposed criminal action against senior police officers for causing death by negligence during the riots. There appears to be enough on record to prove that these officials were not doing what they were supposed to during the riots. And there is suspicion around the death of Haren Pandya, a potential political challenger to Modi. If a whole lot of police officials were working suspiciously during the riots, it could not be by pure accident. There had to be some political influence guiding their action. Bits of what happened during that February 27, 2002, meeting between Modi and senior police officials are out in the public domain. However, so far there’s no clear proof. Modi’s political career — he has national ambitions — would depend much on whether or not his connection with the police is established. By the look of it, the police force is clearly divided into pro and anti-Modi groups and there’s battle of wills going on in the state. IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt, who was the deputy commissioner of intelligence, state intelligence bureau, from December 1999 to September 2002, claims he was present at the 27 February meeting and is in possession of proof of what transpired there. Senior IPS officer Rahul Sharma, is already in the dock for passing on call records of senior police officials during the riots to the Nanavati Commission — he has been charged under the Official Secrets Act by the government on four counts. Former Gujarat DGP RB Sreekumar is also out in the open against Modi for his role behind the riots. There have been others too. Clearly, something does not add up. Cases like that of Ishrat Jahan, complicate the matters. It’s possible that there are efforts to damage Modi’s political career. It is also possible that some officials have taken advantage of Modi’s name for their own selfish interests. But he does not appear in the clean yet. Any understanding of the riots and Modi would depend a lot on how his relationship with the police brass is deciphered by the courts. For now, the news for him is not good.