The Congress-dominated Union Cabinet’s decision to order an enquiry into the alleged surveillance of a young woman by the Gujarat Government, suspiciously timed a few hours before the Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate exonerated the Chief Minister Narendra Modi of conspiracy and direct complicity in the Gulberg housing society massacre on February 28, 2002, may have the contrary effect of fuelling Narendra Modi’s prime ministerial juggernaut. Certainly, few view it as an effective speed governor.
Acceptance of the Supreme Court directed Special Investigation Team (SIT) report giving a clean chit to the Gujarat Chief Minister has closed the only riot case that directly named him as a conspirator and accused him of restraining the police so that Hindus could wreak havoc on the Muslims in response to the Sabarmati Express burning the previous day. Zakia Jafri intends to challenge this verdict in the High Court, but the SIT lawyer RS Jamuar has pointed out that legally no criminal case can now be initiated against Narendra Modi and the other 61 accused.
This is a major blow to the army of NGOs and sundry activists who networked with high decibel international bodies and foreign governments to defame and demonise Narendra Modi personally, and portray him as the symbol of a resurgent Hindu India, “bloody in tooth and claw”, where non-Hindus could live only at the risk of their lives. This army of vigilantes kept the coalition government led by the genteel Atal Bihari Vajpayee in so much awe that it was always apologetic about itself and lost the election bid mainly due to loss of nerve.
Despite this, the well-honed killer shark instinct of the Congress and Leftist fellow travellers, while maintaining the offensive for over a decade, has failed to hit target. Far from being indicted, Narendra Modi has slipped through noose after noose, Houdini-like, and jauntily resumed his campaign for power at the Centre in 2014. Some of the finer points of the court order merit attention.
First and foremost, the order states that the Chief Minister made absolutely no delay in calling in the Army; this should knock the bottom out of 11 years of sustained canards by well-funded activists. Equally significantly, the order notes that regarding the telephone call details (the analysis of which Teesta Setalvad and friends made so much noise about and grabbed so much media attention), there are no recordings available. Thus, all allegations are based on assumptions and presumptions; in fact, the order says, if the administration does not contact its officers, how can it maintain law and order?
It further notes that senior police officer RB Shreekumar started making allegations against the Chief Minister and the Government only after he was superseded; hence his testimony was not reliable. IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt was found equally unreliable; it was proved that he was not present at a meeting on February 27, where, he alleged, Narendra Modi asked the police to go slow (in containing a possible reaction to the burning of the train). The order specifically notes that there are no witnesses to the alleged parading of dead bodies in Ahmedabad – the alleged trigger for the riots – and holds that it was proper to bring the bodies to the city. This vindicates the State Government’s steadfast contention that bodies were not paraded, but were brought to the outskirts of the city discretely on the morning of February 28 and handed over to relatives.
The order finds that there was no larger conspiracy behind the riots; which were essentially an outburst of an angry and excited populace. It asserts that what happened in Gujarat during that unfortunate time cannot be termed as genocide or ethnic cleansing, and that there are enough checks and balances in the Constitution to ensure that the executive cannot subvert the judicial process. It has taken 11 years to reach this milestone, and the journey is by no means over. But it is a testimony to the scrupulousness with which the SIT headed by former CBI director RK Raghavan conducted investigations into the nine major cases handed over to it by the Supreme Court in March 2008 that its findings could not be derailed despite puissant attempts by inimical forces.
In these years, the activists’ suffered loss of prestige as the gruesome narrative they had prepared for judicial and public consumption came unstuck. When the Naroda Patiya massacre in which 94 persons died came to trial in 2010 (monitored by the Supreme Court), it was established that the pregnant Kausar Banu died of burns and that her foetus was intact during post-mortem. Yet for eight years the so-called human rights lobby kept chanting a lie that her womb was cut open and the foetus flung out at the point of a sword, unmindful of the agony caused by such false and ugly propaganda. During the trial, it emerged that there were three versions of this fable, with Guddu Chara, Babu Bajrangi, and a third unnamed person described as perpetrator of the same act!
Thus exposed under dispassionate judicial scrutiny, the Left-liberal brigade is saving face by exulting in the Congress-dominated UPA’s new witch-hunt against Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Hours before the vindication by the metropolitan magistrate’s court, the Union Cabinet appointed a Commission of Inquiry under Section 3 1(b) of the Commissions of Inquiry Act to probe allegations of ‘snoop-gate’ levelled by disgruntled IAS officer Pradeep Sharma.
Essentially, the case involves some highly defamatory allegations made by Sharma in a petition before the Supreme Court in 2011, which he promised to delete in an amended petition after apologising to the Court. Thereafter, in an order dated May 12, 2011, Justices Aftab Alam and RM Lodha said, “Colin Gonsalves, learned senior counsel appearing for the petitioner states that he does not wish to retain the averment made on page F of the synopsis in its present form and the elaboration of that statement as contained in paragraphs 15 to 25 of the Writ Petition. In this connection, he states that he will file a supplementary petition making suitable amendments to those averments which tend to cast an unintended and wrong information in their present form. Mr Gonsalves added that neither he nor the petitioner has any intent to make the faintest allegation of any personal impropriety against the Chief Minister”.
Pradeep Sharma, however, did not return with an amended petition throughout 2011 or even 2012. Late in 2013, web portals Cobrapost and Gulail carried extensive stories about the Gujarat Chief Minister and former minister Amit Shah; they aired audio tapes but disowned responsibility regarding the veracity of the tapes; and supported by television channels and the print media, built up a substantial case (from their point of view) about the stalking of a young woman from Gujarat. Despite weeks of controversy, the young woman has not stepped forward to demand investigation of the alleged invasion of her privacy. But Pradeep Sharma used the controversy to return to the Supreme Court with a new petition in November 2013, which condenses but does not remove the old allegations.
Now, the besieged Centre has thrown its weight behind snoop-gate in another attempt to snare Narendra Modi. But the issue has taken on the dimensions of a larger conflict, with the BJP and its State Governments saying that this impinges on the constitutional division of powers between the Centre and the States, and also conflicts with an enquiry already ordered by the Gujarat Government. Clearly the Congress and its UPA partners have run out of political issues on which to confront Narendra Modi who now, far from looking like its quarry, is assuming the aura of a hunter. The countdown to 2014 is well and truly on.
Niticentral.com, 27 December 2013
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/12/27/sit-gate-to-snoop-gate-cant-derail-modi-juggernaut-173256.html