DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI analyses the disquieting situation in which Muslim youths are arrested and tortured at the whim of Police and Intelligence personnel, and urges the powers-that-be to implement constructive recommendations of various commissions that strongly underline the need of reform of Police and Intelligence.
Is there just a need, or an urgent need of reform of Police and the Intelligence apparatus?
Are the two important agencies free from bias, prejudice and motivated attitude – a must in a plural, vibrant democracy – while dealing with the Muslim minority affairs?
Are the two organs officially allowed or permitted to use torture as a tool for confession? If not, have the erring been ever punished by the heads of the respective departments or the courts of law?
And finally, since which date it has become obligatory for the citizens of our plural polity to oblige the Intelligence if any one of their personnel asks them to bring certain documents from Pakistan?
Since 1947, there already happens to exist a big taint on the khaki and the spotless white safari of the Intelligence apparatus. Now each passing day is widening the borders of the taint.
In the light of the uniform statements of the aggrieved from various states one wonders if there is really any set criterion of arrest. More often than not, they pick up any Tom, Dick and Harry from the Muslim community and want the nation to believe that the accused has been trained in Pakistan, and is a mastermind of several bomb blasts in the country. Had Aseemanand not confessed to the crimes of Abhinav Bharat and the elite terrorist bodies, owing ideological allegiance to the RSS, things would have worsened to the extent of ‘not curable’.
UNHINGING & OUTRAGEOUS
From time to time, we have been reporting and commenting upon such painful incidents. But a 360-word story, in The Hindu, (Mar 7, 2012) by Vidya Subramaniam is unhinging and outrageous. In brief, when one Muhammad Aamir, was arrested in 1998, he was just a teen and had no record of crime. But his chargesheet said he had committed murders, he was a terrorist of A category and he had also waged a war against the nation. He was accused in 20 low-intensity blasts. According to the police, between December 1996 and October 1997 he had executed blasts in Delhi, Rohini, Rohtak, Sonipat and Ghaziabad. In all, alleged the police, he executed 20 bomb blasts. Kamran, Imran, Abu Aksa, Arif and Omer were the names given to him by the Police to show him as a dreadful terrorist. Now 32, he walks free, and has been absolved in 18 of the 20 terror cases. In each judgement of the case, the trial court invariably said: there is absolutely no incriminating evidence against the accused.
An agonising sidelight of the case is that the accused served more than the maximum prison term of 10 years for offences made out in each case. When he was in jail, his relatives stopped visits to his ailing parents, perhaps out of fear of Police and Intelligence personnel. His father passed away taking the grief with him to the grave that because of chill penury he could not get his son out of the prison. The mother had haemorrhage and cannot talk now.
The seeds of police action perhaps lie in Aamir’s refusal to oblige the Intelligence personnel posted on that day at the Pakistan High Commission. The accused wanted to see his sister in Pakistan. To quote Vidya Subramaniam: When he went to the Pakistan High Commission for visa, he was approached by two men from the Indian Intelligence – a fact that he claims he learnt later – who asked him to get some documents from Pakistan in return for a small money reward. Tempted, he agreed but only to renege on the deal. Aamir left for Pakistan on Dec 12, 1997 and returned on Feb 13, 1998. A fortnight later he was arrested. Interestingly, Aamir was charged with execution of bomb blasts subsequent to the training in Pakistan. The last of the bomb blast was said to be in October 1997 – two months before he went on his first and last trip to Pakistan.
TAINT OF INCARCERATION
The Muslim youths’ and their parents’ agony is not confined to the frivolous arrests and fictitious cases thrown out by the learned judges. It is the taint of incarceration.
Let us see the issue in wider perspective: Throwing caution and commonsense to the winds of the Rajputana deserts, the State chief minister, Mr. Ashok Gehlot announced in a national conference on internal security in New Delhi a few years ago that the horrifying case of serial blasts in Jaipur on May 13, 2008, in which 69 persons were killed, stood resolved with the arrest of radical youths in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh as well as some Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) members in Rajasthan. He gave credit to the State Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) for cracking the case.
Now note: a fast track court in Jaipur absolved 11 of the 14 so-called SIMI members of all charges and declared them innocent. Additional Sessions Judge, Mr. Nepal Singh held that the acquitted persons had no links whatsoever with the banned SIMI and were not promoting hatred between different communities, far less being involved in any terrorist activity.
Recall here what the Union Home Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram had said in Jaipur in 2009. He had said that the Jaipur blasts case was linked with the Batla House encounter of September 2008. When the jailed Muslim youth asked for permission to say Eid-ul Fitr prayer, the day following Mr. Chidambaram’s visit, the security personnel dragged the arrested Muslim youths from their cells and thrashed them. Narrating their traumatic experiences to journalists, Suhail Modi and Azam Gajdhar said the torture and humiliation they suffered first at the hands of the ATS officials and later the jail staff was something they could never forget. Similar feelings – particularly their branding as anti-national – had been expressed by the Muslim youths after their release from the Hyderabad jail.
As referred to above briefly, the fundamental point involved in the uncalled for arrests and unjustifiable torture, both physical and mental, is related to the citizens’ dignity, their self-respect and self-esteem. No apology, no compensation and no gesture of graciousness can undo the hurt. Have our police chiefs, state chief secretaries, state ministers, the Union Home Minister and the Prime Minister ever given a serious thought to the question of Muslim dignity? Dignity is like virginity. Once lost, lost forever.
URGENT REFORM NEEDED
Reform of Police and Intelligence is long overdue. Now please stop sitting on the files of several constructive recommendations of various commissions. The bill on the subject has been hanging fire for years. The bias, the prejudices and the tendency of double-deal must go sooner than later from the said two important wings of the Government. Torture is prohibited by law. It is counter-productive also. At the end of the day, torture multiplies criminals.
It is also necessary that the derelict, the biased and the motivated elements are not defended by the Government. They must face justice. Citizens, particularly Muslims, should never be used by the Intelligence apparatus for the espionage purposes, particularly in the Indo-Pak context. It is illegal as well as immoral.
Some officers, who unfortunately do not think so, do not know that when a Muslim is caught in this ignoble profession, the entire community feels plagued and tainted; and the majority, understandably, not only laughs at them, but considers them untrustworthy. This is a bigger loss from the national point of view.