Sunday 30 December 2012

New Twist to Parliament Attack Case



CRIME

Targeting Geelani
SIDDHARTH NARRAIN
in New Delhi
S.A.R. Geelani, the Delhi University lecturer who was acquitted in the Parliament House attack case, is shot at and injured in mysterious circumstances.
R.V. MOORTHY

S.A.R. Geelani with his lawyer Nandita Haksar after his release from Tihar Jail in October 2003.
THE focus of the national capital once again shifted to the December 13, 2001 terror attack on Parliament House. S.A.R. Geelani, lecturer at the Zakir Hussain College of Delhi University, who was acquitted by the Delhi High Court in October 2003 of conspiracy and terrorism-related charges in the case, was shot at and injured outside the house of his lawyer, Nandita Haksar, at Vasant Enclave on the night of February 8. The unidentified assailant fired five shots, of which three hit Geelani.
In December 2002, a special Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) court had sentenced to death Geelani, who was arrested soon after the December 2001 incident, along with Mohammad Afzal, Shaukat Guru and his wife Afzan Guru. The Delhi Police relied mostly on an intercepted telephone conversation in Kashmiri between Geelani and his half-brother to establish the conspiracy angle. Geelani appealed in the High Court in January 2003. In December that year, the court acquitted Geelani and Afsan Guru. The court held that there was nothing in the telephone conversation to implicate Geelani in the attack case. The Delhi Police then moved the Supreme Court, where the case is pending.
Angry scenes were witnessed outside the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) where Geelani was admitted in a serious condition by Nandita Haksar and her husband Sebastian Hongray. The police refused to allow anyone other than the doctors to see Geelani. Friends of Geelani, fearing the worst for his life, demanded that his immediate family members be given access to him. A large number of media personnel, students, and friends of Geelani, who had gathered outside the hospital, suspected that the Special Cell of the Delhi Police had masterminded the shooting.
The crowd heckled the police officials and demanded to know why Geelani was not given special protection.
Joint Commissioner of Police Ranjit Narayan said: "Geelani had never approached the police with a request to provide him security because of any threat to his life. There is no truth in the charge that the lecturer had been kept under surveillance." He dismissed the allegation that the police had masterminded the attack as a figment of imagination. The police alleged that Geelani's brother, Syed Bismillah Geelani, did not hand over the blood-stained sweater and jacket to the police.
S. SUBRAMANIUM

Students and supporters of Geelani staging a protest demonstration outside the police headquarters in New Delhi.
The Crime Branch has been entrusted with the investigation into the shooting. At the request of the police, the Delhi government has constituted a team of two doctors, one a surgeon and the other specialising in forensics, to examine the `nature of injuries' sustained by Geelani, conduct a ballistic test of the bullets that got embedded in the body and compare the bullets with the empty cartridges found outside the lawyer's residence.
This is not the first time that Geelani has been attacked. In March 2004, he had filed an affidavit before the High Court saying that he was being shadowed by the police and intelligence agencies ever since his acquittal. He said he feared he might become a victim of a false encounter as several attempts were made on his life when he was in jail. Although the All India Defence Committee for S.A.R. Geelani filed a petition before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), no investigation was ordered into the charges.
In a statement to the press, Geelani said that although he could not know for certain whether it was policemen of the Special Branch who tried to kill him there were facts that pointed to their involvement. He said: "The only people who seem to be determined to harm me are the police in the Special Cell of the Delhi Police. They picked me up on December 14, 2001, and brutally tortured me in an effort to make me give a false confession saying I was involved in the conspiracy to attack Parliament House. They ran a vicious campaign through the media against me. They were visibly delighted the day I was sentenced to death by the Designated Court."
Geelani raised some crucial questions that the police have not answered so far. He said that apart from Nandita Haksar nobody had any prior knowledge about his visit to her house that evening. He said that since the only way of tracking his movements was by tapping his or his lawyer's telephones or monitoring his movements, the question the investigating agency should be asking is who could have access to this technology.
The police complained that Nandita Haksar informed them about the incident an hour after it occurred. The lawyer maintained that at that point her first priority was to save Geelani's life. Since there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, the police, clueless as they were, wanted to question Geelani as soon as possible. Doctors at the AIIMS did not give the police permission because Geelani was not fit enough to see them. In a statement issued six days after the incident, Geelani described his assailant as a man of medium height, wearing pants and shirt, of wheatish complexion, trimmed hair, unshaven and not wearing spectacles.
Geelani said: "I never had any intention of not giving my statement. But until February 13, my wound had still not been stitched up. I was feeling very weak. Moreover, I did not feel like giving any statement after the police gave out the news that I had `refused' to give a statement." He said that the police had been harassing his family. "They had taken away my car, PAN card and bank documents. They have even seized the computer I presented my children on my acquittal," he said.
Vijay Singh, member of the Delhi University Teachers Association's (DUTA) executive body, said the police had not even cordoned off the area where the shooting took place. In a letter to the NHRC, the Delhi University Teachers in Defence of S.A.R. Geelani said that the police actions "not only show the failure of the police to launch a serious investigation into this massive crime, there is an attempt to personalise what is clearly an enormous political crime".
The Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices P.V. Reddi and P.P. Naolekar hearing the Parliament attack case (State v. Mohammad Afzal and others), sought a report from the Delhi Police about its investigation into the attack on Geelani.
"We are dismayed by this incident," the Judges said, after Geelani's counsel Ram Jethmalani briefed the court about the shooting. The court directed the state's counsel, Gopal Subramanium, to submit a status report. Jethmalani reminded the court that Geelani had filed an affidavit on April 13, 2004, in the apex court saying he apprehended danger to his life. Geelani has filed an application asking for the case to be handed over to an independent investigating agency.
The Delhi Police have tried to link the attack on Geelani to Mohammad Afzal and Shaukat, a suggestion that Geelani was quick to dismiss. "I am saddened to read that the police have tried to blame Mohammad Afzal and Shaukat. It was Afzal who told the media that I was being framed and the police told him not to speak about me. They expressed their happiness at my acquittal," he said.

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http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-12-28/india/36035664_1_ramchandra-kalasangra-samjhauta-blast-malegaon-blast


Samjhauta blast accused plotted Geelani attack

Deeptiman Tiwary, TNN Dec 28, 2012, 02.05AM IST
(It was something that Samjhauta…)
NEW DELHI: Even though the Hindu terror module responsible for several blasts from Samjhauta Express to Malegaon was allegedly stitched up under the aegis of organizations such as Abhinav Bharat, Jai Maa Vande Mataram and support from certain RSS functionaries to avenge Hindu deaths in terror attacks, the order to shoot dead S A R Geelani did not flow from the top.

It was something that Samjhauta blast accused Lokesh Sharma and Rajender Chadhary, recently arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), decided on their own in consultation with slain Hindu terror suspect Sunil Joshi, sources said.
The trio was convinced of Geelani's guilt in the 2001 Parliament attack case and was incensed at his acquittal by Delhi high court in October 2003, sources added.
Interestingly, it was in 2004 during the Ujjain Kumbh that 2008 Malegaon blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur allegedly met Sunil Joshi, Sandeep Dange, Ramchandra Kalasangra alias Ramji, Lokesh Sharma and others and brought them under one umbrella and motivated them to retaliate against Muslims who were perpetrating terror against Hindus.
In February, 2005, Lokesh Sharma riding pillion on a bike with Rajender Chaudhary shot at Geelani in Vasant Vihar in Delhi, investigations have revealed. Sources, however, said the Ujjain Kumbh camp was merely an act of motivation and no concrete plans were drawn. "Pragya's name has as yet not cropped up in the Geelani case," said a source privy to investigations. In any case, until the Ujjain Kumbh camp, all the accused were acting independently.
Meanwhile, investigations into the Sunil Joshi murder have thrown up some fresh facts. While Rajender Chaudhary is suspected to have shot Joshi while riding pillion on a bike in Dewas in 2007, his interrogation revealed that the decision to kill Joshi was not taken out of the fear of him being caught by police and leading to unraveling of the entire Hindu conspiracy.
According to sources, Chaudhary said that Joshi was killed merely because he had attempted to sexually harass Pragya Singh, drawing the ire not only of the sadhvi but the entire group. The group believed that Joshi had strayed and his actions showed that he had relinquished the "pious" ideological mores that drove the group. His act was considered anathema to ultra-nationalistic right-wing Hindu ethos that the group subscribed to. That is why, sources said, the group decided that his elimination was important.
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SAR Geelani  is not Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the Kashmiri Separatist leader.
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http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-12-27/india/36021846_1_modasa-blast-malegaon-blast-samjhauta-blast

Man held for Samjhauta blast also behind bid on Geelani's life: NIA

Deeptiman Tiwary, TNN Dec 27, 2012, 12.34AM IST
NEW DELHI: Rajender Chaudhary alias Samunder, recently arrested by National Investigation Agency (NIA), is turning out to be the biggest catch so far in the agency's attempt to unravel the Hindu terror conspiracy.
He has not only confessed to his role in Samjhauta Express and Mecca Masjid blasts and given vital clues of right-wing involvement in the 2006 Malegaon blast, Sunil Joshi murder case, 2005 attack on SAR Geelani and 2008 Modasa blast, but even revealed his involvement in a Jammu mosque blast that was until now blamed on Kashmiri militants.

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System was unhappy with my acquittal: Parl attack accused

December 27, 2012 12:01 IST


Alleged Samjhauta express bomber Rajendra Chaudhary has 'confessed' that it was he who fired at S A R Geelani, who was acquitted in the Parliament attack case in 2001. But Geelani alleges that Chaudhary was just a pawn and says that the system was behind it, since there were many others who were unhappy with his acquittal. Vicky Nanjappa reports.
According to the National Investigation Agency, Chaudhary has confessed that he had shot at Geelani at Delhi's [ Images ] Vasant Vihar on February 8, 2005. Chaudhary told the investigators that he was upset over Geelani being acquitted in the Parliament attack case.

Geelani was acquitted in 2003, and Chaudhary has said that the attack had been planned the same year. He said that he, along with Lokesh Sharma, an accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid case had shot at Geelani.

When asked, Geelani said, "If Chaudhary is to be believed, he was upset over my acquittal. But then my acquittal had upset the people within the system. So, I feel that there was a bigger hand involved," Geelani said.

"Justice would only be done if the people within the system are punished and brought to book. Since they always seem to get away, there is so much of disgruntlement among many in the society. After this attack I was never contacted by the police. I was also never told about the suspects; these names are new to me," he added.

Geelani alleged that after the shooting, the police harassed him and even confiscated his laptop and seized his car apart from giving his family members a hard time. "I don't want to say more about this probe now," he said.

The NIA, on the other hand points out that this information emerged only after Chaudhary's arrest.

"This is the first time that this information is coming out. The Delhi police has been handling this case, and so we have passed on this information to them. They would question these accused separately and further their investigation," an NIA official said.

Earlier, the Delhi police had drawn a blank on this investigation. They picked up two persons in 2005, but they were never able to prove their involvement in the case. However, now with this confession, they hope to make some inroads into the case.

Chaudhary who is being probed for his role in the Samjautha and Mecca Masjid blast cases reportedly told the NIA investigators that the plan to shoot Geelani was devised in 2003 and on the instructions of Sunil Joshi who was considered to be the ring leader.

Joshi was however killed under mysterious circumstances and this matter too is being investigated by the NIA.
Picture: National Security Guard commandos take up positions outside Parliament House, in New Delhi, following the terrorist attack.
Photographer: Ranjan Basu/Saab Press

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http://m.indianexpress.com/news/samjhauta-accused-claims-he-shot-at-delhi-prof-geelani-in-05/1050223/
Samjhauta accused claims he shot at Delhi prof Geelani in ’05
FP

Rahul Tripathi 


Alleged Samjhauta Express bomber Rajender Choudhary has “confessed” to being behind the firing on Parliament attack accused S A R Geelani. Choudhary, who is currently in NIA custody, has reportedly told investigators that he along with Ajmer dargah and Mecca Masjid bombings accused Lokesh Sharma shot at Geelani on February 8, 2005 in Delhi’s Vasant Vihar, where Geelani had gone to meet his lawyer. The Delhi University teacher had suffered serious injuries.

Choudhary is learnt to have also confessed that the attack was carried out on the instructions of slain RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi. They reportedly started planning the attack in 2003, soon after the Delhi High Court acquitted Geelani in the Parliament attack case of 2001.

Geelani told The Indian Express that Delhi Police had never contacted him after the attack. “They never told me who were the suspects. Instead they always treated me as a suspect. My family was harassed. They also confiscated my car and laptop.”
The Delhi Police Crime had drawn a blank in the case despite several years of probe.

The National Investigation Agency has informed Delhi Police about Choudhary’s “confession”. Delhi Police is now expected to seek custody of Lokesh Sharma, who is currently in Jaipur prison in connection with the 2007 Ajmer blasts.

According to Choudhary, Joshi and other members of the group were angry over Geelani’s acquittal in the Parliament attack case and wanted to avenge the incident. Lokesh Sharma and Choudhary travelled to Delhi several times reportedly to keep a watch on his movements. After the shooting, both had managed to escape.


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Home page > 2007 > August 11, 2007 > Human Rights in the Time of Patriotism
MAINSTREAM, VOL XLV, NO 34

Human Rights in the Time of Patriotism

BY SURENDRA MOHAN
Framing Geelani, Hanging Afzal: Patriotism in the Time of Terror by Nandita Haksar; Promilla & Co. Publishers in association with Bibliophile South Asia, New Delhi; pp. 348; Rs 450.

Nandita Haksar, human rights activist, who has confronted the Union and several State governments in Courts of law in cases of unspeakable atrocities, particularly in the North-Eastern parts of India, has authored an extremely engaging and challenging book. Although the two individuals who are its main objects belong to Jammu and Kashmir and were accused of taking part in the ‘Attack on Parliament’ case, she has discussed human fights and the civil liberties of the entire people in J&K State. But, in the discussion, she has commented on the role of the Courts, the legal fraternity, teachers of law in the Universities, the print and electronic media including cinema and governments and their agencies. She has raised awkward questions and has focussed on the utter insensitivity of these institutions to democratic and human values. She has pointed out that ‘patriotic’ frenzy blinds our governments, the security networks, the academic community and the media to the basic rights of the common citizens of the country.

Haksar contrasts the insouciance of all the above sectors, highly influential and important as they are, with individuals in India as well the United States of America. The attitudes of several citizens of the USA after the ‘Nine Eleven’ in 2001, that is, a few months before the Attack on Parliament in our country, clearly demonstrated their refusal to get swayed by either enmity with or fear from the so-called ‘terrorists’, mainly the Muslims. At home, stories of those courageous human beings who, in the face of bereavement of a dearest son or daughter, expressed fortitude, tolerance and the desire to serve even those who were responsible in bringing tragedies in their families.
The individuals accused of joining the Attack are Prof S.A.R. Geelani of the Delhi University and Mohammad Afzal, a surrendered militant. When the case of Gilani came up, a prominent leader of the Peoples’ Union of Civil Liberties and a dedicated lawyer, N.D. Pancholi, met the accused in the jail. He took up his brief and approached Nandita to join him in defending Geelani. They set up a ‘Prof S.A.R. Geelani Defence Committee’ with the distinguished academic and social intellectual Prof Rajni Kothari as its chairperson. The two lawyers involved some criminal lawyers of repute, particularly the parliamentarian Ram Jethmalani. The Defence Committee launched a vigorous campaign of mass contact in some metropolises of the country and also concentrated on the people in the J&K State. The reason for it was that it had sensed the deep concern that the people there had for the accused whom they had started to identify as martyrs in their common cause.
THE book contains several undelivered letters. They have been brought together in the volume under review in order to expose the larger public to the issues involved which are seminal to the defence of their human rights. The addressees range from the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to the director of a cinematic film on the great martyr Sardar Bhagat Singh. Others are Prof Upendra Baxi, who was Nandita’s teacher of law, and enjoys an international reputation as a fighter for human rights, and Prof Bipan Chandra of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, JNU who was also her teacher and who specialises in modern Indian history. Their silence on the entire episode of the framing of some innocent citizens of India is the centre of her criticism of these scholars. Baxi explained later on the occasion of the launching of the book that he was out of India during those fateful years Barkha Dutt, a socially aware journalist, who too was swayed by the tide of patriotism and threw herself in the whirling current, is also an addressee and Haksar has picked on her for her several failings in reporting the two cases, as is typical of her tribe.
One of the accused, Geelani, who had been sentenced to execution by the trial Court, was later acquitted by the High Court as well as the Supreme Court. Mohammad Afzal, however, has been waiting in the Tihar Jail of Delhi to be executed. It was an utter travesty of justice that while sentencing Afzal, the Supreme Court observed that the public sentiment against the accused was running very high and that letting him off with a lighter punishment would be mocking that sentiment. It was the highest Court of justice in the country and its attitude was sufficient in blunting any meaningful response by any executive institution to human rights. With such a deeply ingrained prejudice at the level of the Supreme Court, no citizen of the country can feel secure against the miscarriage of justice.
Nandita points out in her several letters that the High Court had observed in Geelani’s case that there was not even a prima facie case against him. Yet, no lawyer was willing to come to his defence and they included even those whom she could rely upon. They said that they could not swim against the current. So strong was this current that the authorities in New Delhi, the national Capital, refused her permission to hold a public meeting. When the prosecution put Afzal before the media even a charge-sheet had not been framed against him, there was no outcry at all. A virulent public opinion had, nevertheless, to be conscientised to the requirements of natural justice for the Indian citizens. Hence, a persistent campaign was conducted for months together with the help of pictures, slides, excerpts from news reports, and the sayings of great people. The main focus was on the details of the case and on the thinness of the evidence. It was an excellent collage.
This effort was thwarted by the authorities on several occasions and in several places. The Delhi University was unhappy and did not allow the exhibition to be shown. Sadly, the Teachers’ Union, DUTA, was no less opposed to it though Geelani was one of its members. Teachers of Geelani’s own Dr Zakir Hussian College were with the DUTA. It was ridiculous that the latter was then dominated by the Students’ Federation of India, SFI, the student outfit of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, a party with which Nandita herself had worked. In fact, the prejudice was not confined to one party. The Hindu communal elements of the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were the most obnoxious, administering open threats and writing the crudest possible letters to Geelani and Afzal.
The book details the background of Geelani’s family and his own activities in Delhi. His father was a confirmed secular-minded person and a devout Muslim. But he was tortured by the police even in his old age. Geelani was an enthusiastic participant in the meetings of the PUCL and other human rights groups and moved in liberal circles. Even when he witnessed the most brutal torture of an urchin, he kept his balance. The leaders of the DUTA were aware of these facts. The USA’s propaganda in the wake of ‘Nine Eleven’ was bought wholesale by the Indian elite whose Islamophobia used to be oiled every now and then by media reports about the extremists’ activities in J&K and the frequent riots in the country. Then, there is Pakistan across the western border. In the aftermath of the Attack on Parliament, a state of war was created by India which continued for several months on the Indian demand for the extradition of twenty Indian terrorists whom Pakistan had given shelter.
THE book relates the prosecution of Afzal also in detail. It brings out not only how the judiciary functions. His harassment by the police and the jail authorities has angered the author so much that she has spared no words of contempt against them. After Geelani was acquitted by the Supreme Court, he was shot and wounded by some unidentified gunmen. The occasion was an intended visit to his lawyer Nandita Haksar. He knocked at Nandita’s door while bleeding profusely, and had to be rushed to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at some distance. On such occasions, Nandita’s and her husband’s sense of timing and refusal to be overwhelmed by such gruesome tragedy has served her well This is the well known state of ‘Sthit Prajnya’. The government let the criminal incident pass without any follow-up. Nandita and her husband retired to Goa in order to have peace of mind and to help soothe her frayed nerves. The intelligence agencies, however, took the fullest care of them and there could be no rest.
An acute confusion in Nandita’s mind was why the CPI-M, the party she had admired, had repulsed all thought of assisting Geelani and Afzal. How could an international and humanist ideology become so utterly insensitive as to become blatantly nationalist, to the extent of justifying even a judicial murder, which will come about when Afzal is hanged? Her discussions with several persons who had thought over this perplexing phenomenon and particularly Geelani’s brother Bismillah, a graduate student, helped to find some answers. Marxists had always thought of religion as part of the ‘superstructure’ which stood above the ‘structure’ and was determined by it. The ‘structure’ consists of the means and the relations of production. Religion, as such, like art and literature, has no independent existence. Therefore, no event can be judged on the basis of religion shorn of the ‘structure’ which determines it.
This attitude was not much different in its effect from the attitude that the leaders of the freedom struggle had adopted then that the Hindu- Muslim problem which had been created by the imperialists in their policy of ‘Divide and Rule’, would evaporate after India won her freedom from them. The same was their approach to the caste issue, although Gandhi had suffered from an acute sense of shame owing to the practice of untouchability. The aetiology of caste or religion worked out by Dr Ambedkar was not acceptable to the Marxists or the nationalists. Had they delved deep into these phenomena, possibly they could have saved India from being partitioned. Ethnic identity and pride are similarly dismissed by these intellectuals. Haksar cast off that attitude and decided on a broad-based humanistic under-standing of religion, caste and ethnicity. Possibly, close working with the Nagas taught her all these things.
The total lack of understanding of their cultural heritage by the people of her generation had also started to worry Nandita. She herself knew nothing of Kashmir’s history or its culture and traditions. Among Kashmiris, her own community, she looked like a stranger. She felt that the issues of an appropriate understanding of religion and ethnicity, and the deep insight into a community’s culture etc. were bound together. Yet, while she grasped the need for developing such holistic understanding and respecting religion as such, she found that all religions, which propagated a noble moral code, had lost their way into obsolete and obscurantist ways of thought and practice. She abhorred these distortions in the religions, and also felt that they had stagnated overtime. However, it was not left to her to free these religions from such evils, but to leave them to the reformists in respective religious communities. Any attempt in this direction by an outsider would be interference and the State’s effort as imposition from above.
The book includes a poignant letter to Bismillah in which Haksar discusses all these issues and bares her heart. Another letter is to the younger generation by which she tries to transmit her new understanding to them. While all these chapters show rigour of analysis, compassion is never far behind. Allusions to the teachings of the Upanishads, the Koran, Buddhism and the Bible can be found every now and then. They help the reader in going forward in the debate. References to literary writings from Kalidasa, Shakespeare or some Urdu poets will also be found which the author uses to buttress an argument or to help illuminate an insight. That an activist, who has struggled in the defence of human rights for the Nagas and the Kashmiris and who is now concerned with 34 Burmese freedom fighters locked up in a Kolkata jail since 1998, should have found time to study the scriptures and literary works of old and new authors boggles the mind.
But, in spite of a stressful life and worries of a whole world, Nandita retains an obsessive optimism. The book ends with a song which invites the reader to travel with her into a world where there are no sorrows and tears and where only love prevails.

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