Ishrat Jahan - Dead But Not Dead

As expected all the TV channels broke into a song and dance about the CBI charge sheet in the Ishrat Jahan case. The new line that every made-up anchor; Arnab, Chaubeji, Nidhi Razdan, Sreenivasan Jain, Rajdeep etc., is with a very juicy question: “Is the political establishment not responsible for the actions of the accused policemen”? In other words, once again, should Narendra Modi not hang? Please… At least Amit Shah? Suddenly, all these crooks discovered and used the uniform line that the political establishment should be responsible for actions of the cops. This is clearly a line “planted” in the media by you know who since all the channels and all the anchors asked the same question like parrots. They didn’t ask this question when the cops cracked down and killed Rajbala at the Ramdev protest in June 2011. They didn’t ask this question in the encounter killings in UP or NE and I can make a long list. By this measure I doubt any state would have a Chief Minister for more than six months and the country a Prime Minister for more than 21 days.

There was nothing in the CBI chargesheet that wasn’t on predictable lines. The only story missing was the stupid “Beard story” that Tehelka and Sreenivasan Jain so peddled. Oh yes, that brings us back to Jain. This guy discovered his “Streisand” moment on June 30. The Streisand effect as you know is the unintended consequence of a larger population discovering what was intended to be hidden. Jain had loudly claimed the HC had already accepted the Ishrat encounter as fake and then edited, deleted the relevant videos and claimed he never made that statement. The video eventually surfaced and was put up on Youtube and the lies of Jain were called. Unfortunately, that trivial gaffe exposed a bigger lie from Jain. He had also stated in the video that the CBI had claimed that Ishrat and others had gone to Gujarat to do some “Chota mota bomb blasts”. Either CBI is lying or Jain is, because if the CBI had ever made that statement (of which there is no record) then it implies CBI recognises Ishrat as a terrorist. Now you know how anchors make idiotic statements without thinking twice. They did exactly the same after the chargesheet was filed too.

Therefore, there was absolutely nothing new in any of the day and night-long discussions over the CBI chargesheet that we haven’t seen in the past many years. There were some outrageous statements though. Since the CBI usually leaks its papers to all channels before submission to the courts, as it appears, Rajdeep Sardesai grandly screamed that Modi and Shah had got a “reprieve”. Now, a reprieve is used when a known guilty person’s punishment is deferred or when he is let off without punishment. Obviously, Rajdeep’s Oxford education didn’t explain to him that Modi not being named and being given a reprieve are two very different things. The media can twist it as much as they want but the simple fact is that there is no evidence with the CBI to connect Modi to the encounter. But the Congress can claim “Mission Accomplished” since people like Rajdeep, Sreenivasan and others kept screaming Modi in trouble for the last seven days. They should sign off their “Death to Modi” campaign with the line... “To be continued”.

It’s again only Meenakshi Lekhi who made some interesting points. On TimesNow she narrated how the CBI failed to file a chargesheet in the required 90 days which led to bail for some of the accused cops. Then she added ominously that a 90-day period is enough to offer “inducements” to some of the accused to provide testimonies. She the lashed out at Arnab Goswami stating the media itself had lost its credibility by focussing on just 1 or 2 encounter cases in Gujarat while there were other states like UP with over 140 encounter cases. This is true and anyone can look up the number of encounters in India on the net. There have been at least 8-10 encounters in NCR alone right under the nose of Congress govts. In response, Arnab sermonised “No Indian can be ‘fixed’ and shot at”. Really? Guy lives in Mumbai and probably needs some history lessons, so we’ll provide him with some. Here’s an excerpt from a Wiki page on the Mumbai gang-wars and encounters:

Gang Wars in Mumbai

The Encounter Squad came into prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, when they started dealing with Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company gang. The 'encounter’, was a euphemism for a situation in which a gangster was cornered, asked to surrender, ostensibly attacked the police or tried to escape, and was shot dead in retaliatory action. As the encounters increased, so did the popularity of the ‘encounter specialist’. Daya Nayak, Valentine Fernandes, Pradeep Sharma, Ravindra Angre, Praful Bhosale, Raju Pillai, Vijay Salaskar, Shivaji Kolekar, Sachin Waze and Sanjay Kadam became cult figures, mythologised by the media… The famous killing of Maya Dolas in the Shootout at Lokhandwala bought focus on this unit for first time. More than 400 criminals from different gangs were killed by this squad… The squad was dissolved after rival dons Dawood and Chota Rajan fled India, but revived after the 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings.The end of the squad came with the departure of Waze and Nayak from service, and death of Vijay Salaskar killed in a gun battle with the Taj Hotel terrorists.

Many encounters of this ‘encounter squad’ have been popularised in Bollywood movies. The cops who specialised in encounters are heroes for the public. Daya Nayak (Portrayed in the film Ab Tak Chappan) alone has over 60 encounters to his credit. He was suspended from the Police force not for the encounters but for disproportionate wealth and has since been reinstated when the cases were quashed. Nobody ever raised a hue and cry then about the responsibility of the “political establishment” for all these encounters. Mythologised by Media and more than 400 criminals were killed by this squad it says. So Arnab, as usual, is just peddling a load of rubbish in his sermon. And if Arnab believes all those Mumbai encounters were genuine then he should be selling VadaPav at Valsad and not pretend to be an editor at a news channel.

So the question: Was Ishrat Jahan a terrorist? Every intelligence unit in the country, top bureaucrats, statements from David Headley and even affidavits by GOI in the courts have established her as a terrorist associate of LeT. Her family may claim she is not because terrorists don’t go around bragging to their families and relatives about their terrorist associations. But the CBI didn’t find any evidence it seems. Naturally, it would be damaging to the cause of Congress so I summarise it in a rehashed tweet in response to the news by NDTV. Nothing more needs to be said. Ishrat is not a terrorist in the limited technical sense that she didn’t actually carry out an attack. By that token no one is a terrorist unless s/he carries out an attack, in which case most terror-prevention mechanisms would fall flat. Post the filing of the chargesheet the family of late Ishrat Jahan came out in full strength to address the media. They were chaperoned by NCP member Jitendra Ahwad. First Ishrat’s sister Nusrat spoke, then her mother spoke, then her uncle spoke, then Ahwad spoke and then Nusrat spoke again. 

There was drama too, Nusrat first spoke with a veil which is very Muslim but no good for TV and the second time around she spoke without it. Take a look, the pic on the left is from the presser itself and the pic on the right picked up separately though.The media kept feeding her questions so that she could finally nail the politician whose name they wanted to hear. She didn’t name him but is quoted as clearly saying: “Don’t want to name anyone, but any big politician involved in the murder of my sister should be killed”. Hmm… I wonder who that big politician could be. In other words, where many believe Ishrat had failed, Nusrat has innocently sent out an invitation to others to make an attempt.

A word about the CBI. They have the poorest record of successfully prosecuting any case where state machinery or politicians have been involved. In the last decade they have been faster in giving clean-chits especially to politicians of the “secular” variety. Your guess is as good as mine on how long the Ishrat case will linger too and it’s only just begun. The CBI has also promised a second chargesheet after investigating some more. They will keep trying and keep the chase boiling. I guess that should at least take till the next elections in 2014 or whenever it is. The media screamed its head off as if the filing of chargesheet by itself proves the guilt of those accused. CBI’s chargesheets and cases are known to be torn to shreds during trial. Time will tell.

One can sympathise with her family but Ishrat Jahan is the perfect poster for the Congress and NCP regardless of how the case turns out to be. Ishrat was a woman, she was young and she was a Muslim; a perfect combination for vote-bank sympathy. There is no political purpose served in proving she was a terrorist which is what CBI has avoided. She is better off dead as an "innocent" for political milking. She has been more useful to the Congress and other “secular” parties dead than alive as a potential terrorist. In all the Gujarat cases trying to implicate Modi since 2002 Mukul Sinha has been a constant thread as a lawyer. Only Teesta Setalvad has been replaced by Vrinda Grover in the Ishrat case. There have been hundreds of encounter killings in this country. Some genuine, some fake but never has a dead woman from an encounter come in so handy for political reasons. This may not be the only one though, it looks like a couple more encounters from Gujarat are the ones that will be politically most used. Ishrat Jahan is dead but she’s not dead.