A Rope That Divided A Nation

Death or not? Yakub’s execution has sparked off a debate about the justice system in the country. Photo: Vijay Pandey

The sky was changing hue and day was turning into night. On 29 July, the clockwas ticking like a time bomb for Yakub Memon, one of the convicts in the 1993Mumbai bomb blasts case. Published accounts tell that Yakub looked calm and composed standing at the edge of life and death. However, those seeking clemencyfor him in Delhi and elsewhere were anything but calm.

Restlessness was etched on the face of those who had started flocking at Jantar Mantar at around 7 pm. Gatherings at Jantar Mantar, the nerve centre of protestsin Delhi, are a daily occurrence devoid of novelty. However, demands for clemencyfor a ‘terrorist’, convicted for killing hundreds of innocents was unprecedented. It was indeed historical.

While the protesters raised slogans demanding mercy for Yakub, a section of India waited impatiently for the clock to strike seven in the morning, when the killings of innocents in Mumbai blasts could be avenged. In the midst of this, some asked, who will avenge the killing of the thousands of innocents killed in the Mumbaicommunal violence, 1993 and the Gujarat anti-Muslim Pogrom, 2002?

In a sudden turn of events, news started flashing that lawyers have submitted a fresh mercy petition to the President seeking leniency for him. At around 10 pm, this too was rejected after the recommendations by the home ministry.

When all legal channels shut down, a few activists and lawyers knocked on the doors of the Chief Justice of India, HL Dattu. It was decided then that a Bench of three judges will hear a petition for stay on Yakub’s execution for 14 days. It is interesting to note that the bench of three comprised the same judges who had earlier rejected his mercy petition. The rush was now at the Supreme Courtgate where the protestors arrived with placards and banners both seeking and opposing mercy.

It was the first time in independent India that a court had opened its door at midnight. Fingers were crossed and eyes were fixated on the media updates. By four in the morning it was clear that Yakub’s life would come to an end in a couple of hours. The three-member Bench had rejected the stay petition and preparations for his hanging were already carried out in Nagpur central jail. Yakub was thus executed at 7 am in the morning and his death, confirmed by a team of doctors half an hour later.

What followed his execution had been predicted weeks beforehand. India was polarised on his death penalty. Daily newspapers carried columns with opinionson his execution. On one side of the divide, was liberal and secular India, standing by the Muslims that was engulfed in a feeling of betrayal. The general feeling among the community was that if Yakub could be hanged, why are the ‘saffron terrorists’ accused for butchering hundreds of innocents in different communal riots and acts of terror given differential treatment? On the other side, there were many who believed that justice had been served by hanging Yakub.

Adding fuel to fire was Asaduddin Owaisi, the leader of mim (Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) who said, “Yakub was hanged because he was a Muslim.”Far from trying to reassure the Muslim community, Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Parliament advocated for not using the term ‘Hindu terror’ and argued that this term has softened India’s stand on terrorism.

For Shams (name changed), who participated in the funeral of Yakub, the slain man was no hero but a symbol of ‘injustice’ against Muslims at large. His words resonate the feeling of thousands of other people who had participated in the gathering. These people were referred to as ‘potential terrorists’ by the Tripura Governor Tathagata Roy.

“I am not here because I have sympathies for Yakub nor do I give him a clean chit. But, I am here to mark my protest against the government and system in India which is selective and has a dual approach in dealing with terrorists and hate mongers. On one side, we have people like Balwant Singh Rajoana who was part of the conspiracy to kill former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh. If his death penalty can be stayed and others like Bhullar can be given mercy, then why not Yakub? Was it because he was a Muslim?” asks Shams, before remarking that he does not feel safe now in his own country.

Ironically, the same argument was used by Owaisi, who had pointed out that there was no political party supporting Yakub, while for Rajoana, Akali Dal had actively campaigned against his death penalty. It seems the community could be heading towards a radical Muslim centric political leadership, something which senior journalist Saeed Naqvi also suggests. “In this situation, almost by default, the man on the white charger happen to be Owaisi. He pulls no punches and is more articulate than most political leaders and tv panelists. For his opponents, he is flawed because he holds his ground firmly with expert references to the constitution,” writes Naqvi, referring to dearth of any secular platform.

Though, Arun Jaitley reassured the community that the rioters implicated in different cases would also meet a similar fate, his assurance does not inspire much confidence considering all that has happened in the past. So far, no government inMaharashtra has been able to implement the findings of the Justice Sri Krishna Commission report which had clearly pointed out the role of late Shiv Sena leader,Bal Thackeray and others who had orchestrated the 1992 communal violence inMumbai. Further, there has been very few convictions in the riot cases that led to the inhumane Mumbai blasts in 1993.

Many political analysts are also of the opinion that the haste shown in turning down the mercy petition by the governor of Maharashtra and the President of India, on recommendation of the home ministry, hint towards an electorally motivated political angle.

“There are cases where the President and governors have sat on mercy petitions for a long time, then why was such haste shown here? Considering the nature of the BJP and its electoral calculations, one can sense that there was a political angle involved in this haste and it was not because of their desire to execute a process of law in hurry. This was also pointed out by Yakub’s lawyer Anand Grover,” says Apoorvanand, a Delhi University professor. “Any kind of communal polarisation has always helped bjp to sail its electoral ships, so why wouldn’t polarisation as an outcome of Yakub’s hanging help them? Bihar elections are not far away after all and hence the timing of his hanging becomes crucial,” he adds.

Unlike the neglected case of Afzal Guru, Yakub’s judicial killing has far reaching consequences. The nature of judicial pronouncements and the correlation between a convict’s social and religious identity with that of the punishment awarded by the court has now been exposed. Voices from within the system have already started registering their protests. Kurian Joseph, the veteran Supreme Court judge has been vocal against the judgement. Anup Surendranath, the deputy registrar(research), Supreme Court, has resigned calling the execution ‘judicial abdication’. A former judge from Gujarat, Himanshu Trivedi has revealed that he resigned because there was anti- Muslim bias in the courts of Gujarat.

In lieu of such an atmosphere, the Muslim community will look out for a ventilating space that might upset the electoral calculation of the secular parties. Electoral politics from here will be interesting to watch on.

asad.ashraf@tehelka.com

Photo: Vijay Pandey

It was the last Friday of the holy month of Ramzan, seven years ago on 19 September 2008, when gun shots broke the eerie silence at the time of Juma(Friday prayers) in Batla House, a predominantly Muslim ghetto located in the banks of Yamuna in south Delhi. Even before the residents could enquire, TV channels started flashing news that an encounter was ongoing between allegedIndian Mujahideen (IM) operatives and the special cell of Delhi police.

It was soon declared that two terrorists, Atif and Sajid, were gunned down by the police. It was reported that some were arrested while others managed to flee. The common thread linking them all was that they belonged to Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh. This one incident was to set a precedent. Azamgarh, once known for its literary heritage, would now be commonly known as Atankgarh(terror hub).

Seven years later, there is no physical reminiscence of the alleged encounter; the flat in the building L-18 no longer has blood stains on its wall, the area is no more cordoned off and people are no longer scared of wandering at night. However, the memories are still fresh and many consider it as cold-blooded murder. This keeps them going in their demands for a free and fair judicial enquiry into the alleged encounter despite National Human Rights Commission giving a clean chit to theDelhi Police.

This year again, on 19 September, the narrow lanes of Batla House echoed with slogans demanding judicial enquiry into the allegedly fake encounter. In the fading light of the evening, the flame of torches as well as the hope of the protestors kept these alleys bright. However, for many otherresidents, it is just a ritual that is being carried out for the last seven years, ever since the alleged encounter killed inspector Mohan Chand Sharma and the two ‘terrorists’.

Similar protests were also organised in Lucknow by civil right activists, who, like the residents of Batla House, doubt that encounter was fake and demand a judicial enquiry. But hundreds of kilometers away from Batla House and Lucknow, there was a stirring silence in Azamgarh. The evening was like any other and there were no torches in sight.

Azamgarh and Delhi are separated by a distance of more than 500 km. But if there could be a mechanism to measure the distance in time, it could well go into decades, if not centuries. Unlike the glittery nights of Delhi, the ones in this town are empty. It is past 8 pm and the shops have already shut down.

This correspondent met the father of one of the alleged Indian Mujahideenoperatives, Mohammad Saif, who now languishes in a jail in Delhi on many terror charges that fall under the UAPA (Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act). His house looks like a small villa by metro standards. Mohammad Shadab, Saif’s father, welcomed us with a cup of lemon tea and tales that do not fall in the mainstream narratives of the encounter. He claims that his son was as innocent as any other boy of his age and he has still not been able to comprehend the reason why things went so wrong.

In an attempt to stop himself from breaking down, he passes a smile that is barely visible in the dim light of the lantern, lights up a smoke and hums the famous Dev Anand song, har fikr ko dhuein mein uda ta chala gaya… (I blew away all my worries in smoke… ). Our conversation moved on from the specific case of Saif to others involved in the encounter and eventually to the fate of the whole city.

“People once recognised Azamgarh as a centre of culture, art and academics. People such as Shibli Nomani (Islamic scholar), Maulana Wahiduddin Khan(Islamic scholar), Kaifi Aazmi(poet), Shabana Aazmi (actress), Ram Naresh Yadav (Governor of Madhya Pradesh) and Frank F Islam (US-based entrepreneur) belonged to this place. But the media has stereotyped this place as a terror hub. They did not even wait for the courts to pronounce their judgments in the cases of our kids. Instead, they ran stories on how this place is breeding terrorists,” he says.

Shadab does break down when he narrates the story of two brothers, who had gone to meet Salman (another terror accused) in Jaipur. He says the duo, who were brothers, were also arrested and cases under IPC 109 and 151 were registered against them. “Now does that mean that we can’t even meet our kids languishing in jails?” he asks.

“We were once proud to be a resident of Azamgarh, to be associated with a place that has been a part of the ancient Kosala kingdom. It was known as the land of sage Durvasa, whose Ashram was located here. What a pity that people have started recognising it as a place that breeds people who indulge in anti–national activities. Somehow, State agencies relate every act of terror to here or Darbhanga in Bihar,” says another resident who joined us in the conversation.

“Residents of Azamgarh have for long been known for migrating to the Gulf and other countries to earn and send money back home,” Shadab says. “Initially, a lot of people shifted to Pakistan during partition and later to Bangladesh. The trend of migrating to the Gulf started in the 1980s. And this kept the city prosperous despite the lack of industries and educational opportunities,” he adds.

However, in the 1990s, Indian market was opened to the world and jobs were created along with a boom in the education industry. Students from Azamgarhstarted migrating to other cities for jobs and education rather than going to African and Gulf countries. However, this didn’t continue for long.

The Terror Of The Terror Label

No prospects at home. The fear of moving out. Discrimination and stereotyping. The branding of Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh as a terror hub leaves its beleagured youth in despair.

Cordon Police presence at Batla House, New Delhi, in the aftermath of the encounter

Following the ban imposed on Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and subsequent arrests of students from Azamgarhfrom different parts of India in early 2000s, the youth started to fearventuring out. Things got worse after the 2008Batla House encounter, after which the entire town and surroundingvillages were popularly termed as Atankgarh. “One of the first persons to use the term was controversial BJP MP Yogi Adityanath,” observes Masiuddin Sanjhri, a social activist based in Sanjarpur, a neighbouring village of the Azamgarh town.

Many other families from Sanjarpur as well as the nearby Saraimir have their sons in jails on terror charges. There are long lists of those who were arrested ordeclared as absconding.

According to most of the residents of the town, the worst nightmare comes when there is a bomb blast in any part of the country. The Intelligence, the UP Special Task Force and the other agencies comb the town in search for suspects.

“Whenever there is a blast, we are advised to not move out of our madrasas by aalims, since police can trap us in the case,” says a madrasa student refusing to disclose his name out of fear.

Our next destination was the house of Shahid Badar. Badar was the president of the banned Student IslamicMovement of India (SIMI). The DelhiHigh Court had lifted the ban on the organisation in August 2008, only for the then UPA government to obtain a stay order from the Supreme Court.

A half an hour drive on roads full of potholes took us to the residence of Badar. He was among the first terror accused to be arrested from Azamgarh after the ban onSIMI. However, in March this year, a Delhi court acquitted him of the chargesagainst him.

Recalling his fate Badar says, “I was arrested and tortured in police custody because I belonged to SIMI. The matter of the ban can be contested. But the graver concern is the many innocent students picked up on charges of terror who lost the chance to lead a normal life.

“The label of terror has fallen on this place precisely because of people like me on whom fake charges were slapped. I feel guilty about it without there being any fault of mine. My beloved city had to bear the tag of a terror hub and our children who wanted to pursue their beautiful dreams outside the city had to suffer unnecessarily.”

Badar recalls a couple of instances which shows the levels to which the fears about the place has escalated. “A few years ago, a doctor while passing through the Sanjarpur Village fainted in distress because he had landed in a terrorist zone,” Badar says. “But later, people from the same village helped him regain his calm. A reporter who once came from Delhi to meet me confessed that before reaching the place that he was panicking and his colleagues had asked him to be extra cautious.”

Second life Shahid Badar, former president of SIMI, was acquitted of charges against him by a Delhi Court this year. Photo: Vijay Pandey

Badar explains that the unfortunate incidents in the last few years have changed the city socially and economically. The trend that had started in the 1990s to seek education and employment in India itself has reversed again. Now kids are scared to move to Indian cities and prefer to stay back in town or else move to the Gulf. But there is a major hurdle in this too.

Some of the youths from the district became members of the Rashtriya Ulema Council, which was a political outfit formed in the aftermath of Batla Houseencounter. The state government slapped cases against these youth for participating in the protests under the banner of the council and hence, they are denied passports.

A young member of the Ulema council says that he has been trying for a passport for a long time. “I was angry when the Batla House encounter took place and I joined an organisation to vent my anger. Cases were filed against me. Now I want to travel to the Gulf and support my family but I am helpless. I have to stay back inAzamgarh and wait for these cases to be dismissed before applying for a passport. The wait may go on until the time to earn and support my family is gone.”

The next morning as we prepared to leave the city, we could see billboards of coaching centres for IITs and medical colleges.The most prominent and visible ones were for spoken English classes. It indicated that despite the challenges, the city and its young are still trying hard to make it into the mainstream life.

The fear of the youth to migrate to other cities is not unfounded. They often face the wrath of the stereotypes that exist about the place. A top corporate executive, who refuses to be named, tells Tehelka, “There are certain biases against people from Azamgarh when we are hiring. It is not that we don’t trust them. But we have our own safety concerns and don’t want to risk them.”

This reminds this correspondent of a lawyer who had told him how he was once denied a job in 2010 after the employer got to know that he was from Azamgarh. It was when arrests from the district were frequent.

This discrimination has more far reaching effects. Students living in metros find it difficult to find houses on rent. Shahid, a university student in Delhi, says, “Every time I finalise a deal for renting a house, it gets cancelled at the last minute. It is because that is the time when the landlord discovers that I am from Azamgarh. And this happens too often in Jamia Nagar, where the alleged encounter took place in 2008.”

Back in Azamgarh, amidst the suffering of the people, what remains at the back foot is development. The town remains devoid of basic infrastructure — from good hospitals to schools, colleges and industries. Political outfits like Ulema Council which flourished riding on the sentiments in the aftermath of the Batla Houseencounter have ceased to have any significant existence. The dismal state of affairs is despite Mulayam Singh himself being the Member of Parliament from the Azamgarh constituency.

asad.ashraf@tehelka.com

In The Dead Of The Night, Hatred Burns.

Photos: Vijay Pandey

The room in which a once happy family of four was sleeping on the night of 20 October in Sunped, Haryana now smells of burnt flesh and blood. The flames that leapt through the room left their mark on the walls and partially burnt the bed on which two-year-old Vaibhav and 10-month-old Divya slept. The fire took their lives and severely injured their parents.

“It must have been around 3 am when the killers, Rajputs from the same village, threw petrol through the grills of the window,” alleges Jitender, father of the children. “The doors were locked and before we could react, the damage was already done. My two children and wife had received critical burns before the main door could be opened.”

It was around 3 pm when this correspondent reached the village where the atrocity took place. The village, which until then had little claim to fame, now swarms with police forces, vip vehicles and media of all hues. The killers succeeded in not just murdering the kids, but also in bringing the remote village to notice, albeit for horrifying reasons.

The gutted house was filled with vips and yet the cries of the women were the only audible noise. The scenes were so drastically different to what the poor family was accustomed to, that they were overwhelmed. Jitender, whose hands and feet were severely burnt, sat in the courtyard narrating the tale to a stream of journalists. The scene was reminiscent of Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah’s lines: Today my body was a TV massacre that had to fit in the sound bites and word limits.

IIt was ironic that just a hundred metres from the house, several villagers were watching Ram Leela, that theatrical enactment of the victory of Ram over Ravan during the nine-day Navratri festivities. While the audience cheered the victory of good over evil, other ‘Ravans’ were at work at the house of late Vaibhav and Divya.

The official police version is that the incident is an outcome of a feud between twofamilies and that security was already being provided to the victims’ family, as they had complained of receiving threats. However, local Dalits say tension had been simmering between the Dalits and the upper castes in the village for the past one year. It started with a trivial issue: a fight between kids of the two communities over a mobile phone that fell down the drain.

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An alleged dispute between the Dalits and Rajputs, overthe mobile phone, had last year caused clashes between the two communities, that lead to the death of three adults.

 

The Dalits allege that the upper caste Rajputs asked their kids to fetch the phone from the drain in an apparent act of casteism. Rajputs, on the other hand, deny this, saying no one would dare to give such a demeaning order to the Dalits in these times. After this incident, three Rajputs were murdered, allegedly by theDalits, in October 2014. But the Dalit families living in the village refute the allegations. “There is no question of murder. How will we murder someone when we do not even have weapons to defend ourselves?” asks a local Dalit man.

A time to mourn Family members grieve over the tragedy. Photos: Vijay Pandey

The police has so far arrested three suspects in connection with the triple murder and booked nine others. According to a source within the police, Desh Raj, whom the Dalits accuse of being part of the group that committed the arson, was a complainant in the case. According to the fir, Desh Raj’s relatives — Pappu, Indaral and Bharatpal — were allegedly stabbed to death by the 11 Dalits, including two brothers of Jitender.

At around 4 pm, there was a sudden hustle in the village as a rumour spread that former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was to arrive at the spot. TV crews started unlocking their cameras from their tripods while print reporters pulled out their notepads. Hooda, ignoring them all, went straight to Jitender, sat next to him and consoled him.

Meanwhile, villagers and family members approached him with their lists of demands. They wanted Rs 1 crore as compensation for the family, a government job for the father of the kids and for him to raise the question of security of Dalitsin the Parliament. Some even wanted licensed weapons for self-protection. Hooda heard them patiently and assured that he would raise these issues.

Later talking to the media, he said, “Ever since the BJP government came to power, law and order in the country has been dismantled. The Congress party firmly condemns this brutal incident.” Replying to the question posed by Tehelka whether this incident was an attack on the Dalit community, he said, “If theDalits, who were given security by the police, are not safe, then what will happen to the others? This government is prejudiced against the lower castes and the minorities and is doing nothing to protect them.”

Indeed, the family was given security and they had recently lodged a complaintwith the local police that a woman relative was verbally abused by the Rajputs. However, the Station House Officer (SHO) allegedly told them that they will have to bear the brunt in view of the fact that three Rajputs died last year.

Grief unplugged The sit-in by Bhagana villagers .

The locals also hold the Commissioner of Police responsible for overlooking grievances of the Dalit community and the dismal law and order situation. Raghvir Singh, the pradhan of the Jatav community tells Tehelka, “If policemen had done their duty, this wouldn’t have happened. Ever since Manohar Lal Khattar of theBJP became chief minister, atrocities against Dalits have increased.”

Local Dalit women present at the spot also talked about the sense of insecurity that stemmed from living in a village dominated by the upper castes. The village has 70 percent upper castes and 30 percent lower castes. Chamla (name changed) tells Tehelka, “We are consistently eve-teased by the upper caste men from the village. It is difficult for us to come out of our homes because of them.”

However, the Rajputs who had assembled almost 50 metres from the spot denied all these allegations. Bijender Singh, a former sarpanch, says, “We have been living together for hundreds of years and there are no streaks of casteism here. We have always treated everyone equally. In fact, three Thakurs were murdered by theDalits last year and they are blaming us for this unfortunate incident.”

Raising doubts over the narratives of the Dalits, he asks, “How can someone throw petrol and light it in a room that is only metres away from the Ram Leela venue without no one getting to know? How did the father only get burns on his hand while others in the room were critically injured?”

IIn his election campaign last year,Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted his OBC identity at several junctures. He spoke about the plight of Dalits and other backward castes and the need to uplift them. However, the incident in Faridabad is yet another reminder that theDalits remain one of the most vulnerable communities in this country. Dalits in the past one year have been under consistent attacks despite the promises made to them by the prime minister.

Jitender, father of the deceased children.

In a similar incident in another part of Haryana, Dalit women were gangraped and tortured in Bhagana village of Hisar district. After a two-year sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar, members of the Dalit community gave up hope of redress of their grievances and converted to Islam as a mark of protest. Instead of being invited for a dialogue, the protestors were ruthlessly beaten up by the Delhi Police after their conversion and new charges were slapped on them. However, they still persist with their protest.

The list of atrocities on the Dalit community across the country is endless, despite the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act being in force. India, while claiming to be an emerging world economy, has not yet been able to obliterate its centuries- old regressive caste system. In fact, as if to add insult to injury, there has been talk of scrapping the reservation system which is sometimes the only lifeline that givesDalits access to mainstream life. Recently, none less than Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat went so far as to speak about the need to rethink the reservation system. This is a clear enunciation of what lies ahead.

Amidst all this, elections are underway in Bihar and the Dalit and ExtremelyBackward Class (EBC) voters remain on the focal point of every party. The politicians are doing their best to woo the Dalit votes, which is said to determine the fate of the election. However, most of them, if not all, have Dalit blood on their hands. It is now upto political parties to decide if they consider Dalits and minorities as equal citizens or just votes to help their ship sail through electoral waters.

The blackened walls of Jitender’s house will be repainted, the burnt bed will be replaced and the media will soon forget the village that briefly atracted their attention. However, will the fate of Dalits in the country be any different in the future?

asad.ashraf@tehelka.com