Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/indifferent-at-their-plight-11719.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Indifferent At Their Plight | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Indifferent At Their Plight
-EPW
 
Will the blatant discrimination against Muslims in the administration of justice ever end?

The word secular was inserted into the Preamble of the Indian Constitution by the 42nd amendment in 1976; later on, the Supreme Court, in S R Bommai vs Union of India, held (in 1994) that secularism was an integral part of the basic structure of the Constitution. And yet, it has been a long time coming – Indian civil society and the state should have been infused with secularism decades ago, but tragically, their veins and tissues are largely bereft of it even today, and consequently, of its healing properties. After every terrorist attack, or even in anticipation of a terrorist assault, the security apparatus, conditioned like “Pavlov’s dogs”, picks up a couple of Muslim youth, even when there is no evidence worth the name, either bumps them off in a fake encounter, dubbing them “terrorists”, or alternatively, puts them in the locker, tortures them to manufacture the “evidence”, ..., dumps them in gaol for years on end as prisoners-on-trial. It has been a cynical and discriminatory targeting of ­innocent Muslims, all in the name of “national security”. But are the chickens now coming home to roost?
 
The Special Investigation Team (SIT), appointed by the Gujarat High Court to probe the veracity of the official claim that Ishrat Jahan and three others, ostensibly on a mission to assassinate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, were shot dead in an ­encounter carried out by the Ahmedabad crime branch led by D G Vanzara on 15 June 2004, has concluded that the four were murdered in cold blood. An earlier judicial inquiry of September 2009 by the Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate S P Tamang had also come to the same conclusion. Clearly, a fresh FIR under Section 302 (murder) should be filed. Vanzara and the other perpetrators of the cold-blooded murder are the minions of Gujarat’s proto-fascist chief minister, Narendra Modi. Their impending ­trial under Section 302 is indeed a heartening development.
 
The other comforting turn of events has been the grant of bail to nine Muslim youth accused in the 2006 Malegaon bomb blast case, five years after they were arrested and jailed. Both Hemant Karkare (head of Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad who was killed in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks) and Shahid Azmi (a lawyer and human rights activist whose work centred on seeking to redress the injustices suffered by Muslim youth falsely implicated in ­criminal cases but whose life was cut short when he was killed on 11 February 2010 in Mumbai) would have been very pleased. On 8 September 2006, in Malegaon, a town in the Nashik district of Maharashtra, bomb explosions killed 37 persons and injured many more in a cemetery adjacent to a mosque at around 13:15 hours (local time) ­after the Friday prayers on the occasion of Shab-e-Bara’at. The nine Muslim youth were falsely implicated in the case and had to spend the next five years in jail, bearing not only the hardships and pain that go with such confinement, but both the indignity and torture that are routinely meted out to such captives who are grossly discriminated against on the basis of their religion.
 
It is utterly outrageous. How could devout Muslims, those who rigorously abide by the timings of the namaz, kill their fellow brethren – that too, on the day of Shab-e-Bara’at – in order to provoke a Hindu-Muslim riot? But these are the kind of charge sheets that are taken seriously by the courts, and serve the purpose of keeping the victims in jail for years. It was the so-called hriday parivartan (change of heart) on the part of Swami Aseemanand, a significant conspirator in the Hindutva terror network, and his confession in December last year of the planning of the terror attacks at Malegaon (8 September 2006), on the Samjhauta Express (18 February 2007), at Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid (18 May 2007) and at Ajmer Sharif (on 11 October 2011 outside the dargah of the Sufi saint Moinuddin Chisti) by members of the Sangh parivar that forced a change of course in the investigation.
 
The swami has since retracted his statement, but his confession has provided certain leads and it is now up to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to uncover as to who planted the bombs in the cemetery and under whose direction. Interestingly, it was the investigation led by Hemant Karkare into the 29 September 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts that uncovered evidence of the involvement of Hindutva terrorists. If those leads had been pursued with the same degree of professionalism and integrity, the Hindutva terrorists would have been exposed sooner. The Hindutvadis, of course, called Karkare a “traitor to the nation”. The NIA, which is now in charge of the investigation into the 2006 Malegaon bomb blasts, will have to file its status report, and Hindutvadis such as Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and lt col Srikant Purohit will ­figure as part of the accused.
 
Aseemanand has named a number of co-conspirators; among them is Indresh Kumar, who is said to be a national executive committee member and sahprachar pramukh of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Now, given the fact that the RSS is a hierarchically structured authoritarian organisation, the creation of the ­Hindutva terror network could have possibly been clandestinely sanctioned at the very apex of the outfit. But given the wretched politics of expedience being practised by the Congress Party and its utterly cynical and discriminatory targeting of innocent Muslims in the name of “national security”, one cannot be very hopeful about when truth and justice will come to prevail. The blatant discrimination against Muslims in the administration of justice that we are witnessing is a national disgrace. Indeed, it makes a mockery of the tall claims about the country’s secular credentials. Tragically, apart from a few honourable exceptions, the majority of the social networks that comprise Indian civil society have displayed near total apathy. Even the civil liberties and democratic rights movement has remained largely indifferent to the plight of young Muslims at the hands of the security apparatus.