The Batla House Deception

Yesterday evening, after the Batla Encounter verdict, Congress spokie Abhishek Singhvi came out and stated the verdict should not be politicised. Ahem! He demonstrated the hypocrisy of his party like no one else could have done. For 5 years some Congressmen have done nothing but politicise it. Digvijaya Singh called the encounter fake many times and even visited Azamgarh to rake up the issue politically. Salman Khurshid during the UP 2012 campaign said there were tears in SoniaG’s eyes on seeing Batla House images. All of them thoughtlessly tarred the reputation of a police officer, Mohan Chand Sharma, who was killed in the encounter. This continued even after former Home Minister P. Chidambaram maintained the encounter was not fake and even NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) shared their agreement on it.

So let me lay out the story which I presume the hacktivists and professional agitators would have us believe. On the fine morning of September 19, 2008 Mohan Sharma and members of his Special Unit were at their station chatting over tea. For days they were idle with nothing much to do. One wiseguy suggested “why don’t we go kill some people, we need to test our guns”. Another guy said “we haven’t got medals for a long time it’s time we did something”. So they wrote the names of 5 localities with some addresses in pieces of paper and one of them picked the lucky draw. Well, the unlucky winner in the draw was ‘108 Batla House’. So the guys strapped their guns in the holsters and drove up to Batla and stared shooting and killed a few and some escaped. They were smart not to arouse suspicion this was a fake encounter. So Mohan Sharma took his gun, stretched and turned his arm 180 degrees and shot himself in the back; twice. This is the story the hacktivists would have you believe. The only change they offer is that another cop shot Sharma. So you have two options on how Sharma died.

I remember a scene from the movie “Analyse That” where the shrink asks the mafia wiseguy how he got out of jail and what happened to the strong witness. The wiseguy explains to him: “Oh the witness, he was frustrated… he stabbed himself in the back, twice, and then threw himself over a bridge into a river”. Yeah, frustrated people do stab themselves in their own back, not once but twice, and jump off a bridge. Quite plausible, isn’t it?

Arnab Goswami, in his usual style, let out a tirade against certain Human Rights hacktivists on their wrongful defence of potential and actual terrorists who shot dead a cop. On Times Now Ravi Shankar Prasad made an important and startling comment. He stated that some Delhi cops of the special unit mentioned to him that if Mohan Sharma hadn’t died they would have all been in jail because of the highly connected HR hacks claiming fake encounter and the Jamia Milia agitators. Does that shock anyone? It is probably true if you can see shades of the Ishrat case where the cops are in jail or on bail. Yes, if Mohan Sharma hadn’t died the cops would have been charged for a fake encounter by certain activists, bounty-hunting lawyers and political bitches. That is the level and reality of how the Congress-UPA has brought the country’s fight against terrorists. And they’ll scream “don’t politicise” when they have egg on their faces. It’s a very dangerous sign.

NDTV, true to their profession, were asking if encounters were justified and if the Batla verdict would impact other encounter cases pending in courts. This was a programme by Sunetra Chaudhury in the evening on July 25. What particular case could NDTV be referring to? Umm… Let’s see! If I were to make a wild guess I’d say the Ishrat case on which another political campaign of the Congress and assorted hacktivists rests heavily. The Ishrat verdict is not likely to come any time soon so Singhvi can hold the “don’t politicise” Ishrat verdict for the future. On TimesNow a certain Mrs. Ramalingam, another of those HR hacks, screamed “What about the rights of the common man”? Well, even if there are police raids I wonder if common men pull out guns and start shooting. I tweeted stating I would rather see people like Shahzad dead. They are not common by any stretch of imagination. If terrorists shoot and are caught the courts exist to deliver justice and it doesn’t go by the frivolous opinions of these HR morons.

Now, since the verdict held Shahzad, the lone captured terrorist, guilty of killing Sharma the hacktivists and his lawyers started a new tune. They claimed the court did not judge him as an IM (Indian Mujahideen) terrorist nor has it judged the encounter to be genuine. Okay, weeping venals, we will get to that part soon! There is something shocking that I learned only yesterday. It seems ANHAD (Act now for harmony & Democracy) the NGO run by Shabnam Hashmi and Harsh Mandar had filed a petition in the SC through lawyer Prashant Bhushan to seek a judicial probe as the Batla encounter was against a particular “Community”. Wow! So hate-engineer Shabnam Hashmi thought terrorists shouldn’t be countered if they are from a particular community. The SC naturally dismissed this bogus petition and even admonished the gang for trying to link the case to a particular community. They didn’t say it and the SC didn’t say it but ANHAD is clearly implying the Muslim community is being victimised. I call ANHAD: “Act now for hatred and disharmony” and I make no bones about it.

Now that the verdict is out the hacks, the defence lawyers and sundry agitators from Jamia Milia claim the court had neither judged Shahzad to be an IM terrorist nor has it called the encounter genuine. This is the deception that they are peddling to fool the nation. Here are a couple of tweets that @Spread_Law made on the case:

Mind you, I am only quoting SpreadLaw, a helpful handle which tweets on legal issues and provides clarity on judgements, and it is not part of any debate or controversy in the Batla case. So the question is why would a court pass a judgement on whether Shahzad is an IM, LeT or JuD terrorist when there was no such specific petition and no one asked the court for such a judgement? The case before the court was whether Shahzad killed Mohan Sharma in the encounter and the circumstances leading to it and not the flavour of his terrorist connections. Secondly, there was no petition in the court challenging the genuineness of the encounter except probably in the defence of Shahzad by his lawyers, so the court also did not have to adjudicate on that. The murder of the cop was the key issue in the prosecution. So the claims that the court did not pass judgement on these issues are frivolous and meant to deceive the public. Fact is there was no legal challenge on the encounter being genuine and therefore the court does not need to rule on it.

Courts usually rule on the petition before them. They don’t have to rule on petitions that were never made. And until someone specifically challenges Batla as fake, as the hacks have done in the Ishrat case, the encounter will stand as genuine. Period! As SpreadLaw points out, the court has made an “observation” which is substantial but even that was not necessary. Shahzad is indeed a terrorist of IM and the encounter is genuine unless someone legally challenges that position. If Digvijaya Singh felt the encounter was fake he and his gang should have challenged it in the courts. They did not because they too know there is no merit in their claim which is only for “political” gains.

The fake claims of the hacktivists are equivalent to claiming Al Capone was never a bootlegger and never a murderer because no court has ever pronounced him so. He was sentenced to prison for tax evasion which is the case the prosecution brought against him. That’s the nature of law. But everyone knows Capone was a mass murderer and a bootlegger. The campaign of lies and deception by the HR hacks and some politicians is not out of any sympathy for the likes of Shahzad. It is a larger design to weaken the country politically and compromise its security for enemy forces. These people and their deceptions are as dangerous as the terrorists themselves.