Haren Pandya Killing: Time to Blow the Lid Off
By Rana Ayyub
With fresh demands for reinvestigation and startling claims in the Haren Pandya murder case, a breakthrough could be in sight. Rana Ayyub joins all the dots
TRUTH WILL out, they say. In the case of the sensational murder of former Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya on 26 March 2003, the adage could well prove true. Especially after the arrest of suspended IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt, who filed an affidavit in the Gujarat High Court last week stating that former minister of state for home Amit Shah and Chief Minister Narendra Modi asked him to destroy important evidence he had collected pertaining to the case.
It was Bhatt who alleged that important state functionaries were involved in Pandya’s murder and that it was not Asghar Ali, who was named as accused. Instead, Bhatt said, the man who had pulled the trigger on Pandya was Tulsi Prajapati, acting on the orders of some police officers. Bhatt stated that none other than Ali, then an undertrial, revealed this secret to him while he was the superintendent of Sabarmati Jail in 2003.
Whether Bhatt’s statement can be given credence is a matter of debate. He could be asked why he kept mum for eight years. Moreover, what is the value of a statement made by a prisoner to a jail official? Even if Bhatt’s allegations were to be brushed aside, there have been a number of revelations in the past year to cast doubts on the CBI probe. In fact, it was these bits of evidence and finally the acquittal of all 12 accused in the case that pushed Pandya’s widow Jagruti to approach the HC and the Supreme Court for a reinvestigation.
The investigation was mired in controversy ever since the CBI took over the case in 2003. Pandya’s father Vitthal had outright accused Modi of having conspired to kill his son and misleading the CBI probe with help from then deputy prime minister LK Advani. Pandya had taken on Modi publicly by not vacating the Ellisbridge seat and had also deposed in front of an independent team of judges probing the 2002 riots case, making statements that could indict Modi.
The web is quite tangled. The CBI probe into the fake encounter that killed Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi saw the arrest of Shah for his alleged connivance with the cops. Now the agency, on the orders of the SC, is investigating the encounter that took the life of Sohrabuddin’s associate Prajapati.
Last year, Deputy Commissioner Abhay Chudasama was one of the first officers to be arrested in the case. This was when a henchman, Azam Khan, said that Chudasma had told him to convey to Munna, Sohrabuddin’s brother, that he (Chudasama) had saved Sohrabuddin from getting involved in the Pandya murder case. Within days, Khan retracted it. He later said he was coerced into retracting the statement at the behest of Anti-Terror Squad SP Girish Singhal.
Khan was later shot at in Udaipur — some say he got himself wounded. But before this rumour could gain ground, IPS officer Geeta Johri filed a curative petition in the SC. Johri, who was monitoring the Sohrabuddin case before it was taken over by Rajnish Rai, has been accused of going slow on the investigation at Shah’s behest. Johri was indicted for hiding the fact that the third person travelling with Sohrabuddin was Prajapati.
Johri had said, “Nayeemuddin of Hyderabad, who is one of the absconding accused in the Pandya case, is none else than Kalimuddin, a known People’s War Group leader-turned-police informer. Kalimuddin was an associate of Sohrabuddin. If the Gujarat Police had known that Kalimuddin and Nayeemuddin were the same person, we would have arrested him earlier.”
This statement was further grist to the suspicion mill that there were indeed cover- ups in the Pandya investigation by the administration. It was for this reason that Jagruti wrote a letter to the CBI director on 16 September 2010 seeking a reinvestigation under Section 173(8) of the CrPC. She cited 16 points that should have been looked at by the CBI. The CBI officials TEHELKA spoke to said that there was no precedent for a reinvestigation.
However, the government’s discomfort soon became obvious as Jagruti approached Modi and Advani during the former’s sadbhavana fast, close on the heels of her approaching the Union Home Ministry for a reinvestigation. Advani later met her in Delhi and sought to placate her. However, what soon followed was a witchhunt as a team of IB officials allegedly followed her and searched her house in her absence, questioning her teenaged son and her bedridden father. She has now sent a legal notice to the state home department as well as the police for harassing her so that she does not seek justice.
“When I called (Commissioner of Police) Sudhir Sinha, he refused to accept that the men who had come to search the house were from his department. So I’m now approaching the Gujarat home department with the statements from these alleged IB guys. Why have they launched a witch-hunt against me when all I’m trying to do is piece together the mystery of my husband’s death? What is it that the state fears?” she asked.
If one were to keep aside the statements and the revelations that have been popping out in the past year, going by sheer facts of the case, one can easily see glaring loopholes in the investigation done not just by the CBI, but also the initial police probe:
First, the curious case of Mufti Sufiyan, the cleric from Lal Masjid in Ahmedabad and the alleged mastermind of the Pandya killing, who escaped within days of the murder. This, when the police was keeping a tab on his house. Moreover, while the police and the CBIwere grilling his family on his whereabouts, his wife and daughter also managed to abscond within a year. Why is it that Sufiyan’s father praises Chudasama, who was then with the Ahmedabad Crime Branch? Why did Chudasama promise the family, if his father is to be believed, that no harm would come to them? While the CBI, which was handed over the initial probe by the Crime Branch, claims it had a watertight case, a logical question that could be asked is: Why could the CBI team investigating the case not send a letter rogatory for tracing Sufiyan?
Second, the CBI investigating officer claims that Pandya’s call records of March 2003 could not be found, while those of the two previous months were provided. These records, a copy of which is with TEHELKA, show 40 calls made by a female journalist from Ahmedabad. Surprisingly, neither the CBI nor the police quizzed her.
Third, prime witness Anil Yadram, who runs a food cart near Law Garden and had allegedly witnessed the murder, has given contradictory statements. He told the police that he was too confused to react but an hour later called the owner of his cart, who in turned called Pandya’s associate — but not the police. When TEHELKA met Yadram, he gave three contradictory statements on all three days. On Day 1, he said Ali came on a bike; Day 2, he said he saw him walk towards the car; Day 3, he did not remember the chain of events.
Fourth, as per the forensic report, there were six holes in Pandya’s kurta. But only five bullets were found in his body. If he was sitting behind the steering wheel and the weapon was fired from the right window, which was part-open, he should not have suffered any wound in the scrotum. The prosecution explained and the judge accepted that he fell sideways on the passenger seat, but this seems improbable.
And fifth, an FIR filed by the police control room log showed confusion or delay.
With these loopholes and the changing stance of witnesses, it was only natural that the HC, in a shocking move, acquitted all 12 accused in the case last month and also ruled that there was no evidence to prove that Ali had shot Pandya. With new revelations cropping up by the day, it becomes imperative to clear the air over this sensational murder of a politician.
Rana Ayyub is an Assistant Editor, Mumbai with Tehelka.
Source: Tehelka
URL: https://newageislam.com/war-terror/haren-pandya-killing-time-blow/d/5651