Licence to Kill

With gory details coming out every passing day, the ‘fake encounter’ case snowballs into a national controversy that puts the spotlight on the uglier side of policing— killing in the name of law enforcement.

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GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES: Sohrabuddin with Kausarbi; (inset) Vanzara in police custody

IN COLD BLOOD    A blow-by-blow account of how the police officers staged the fake encounters

1. NOVEMBER 22, 2005 TANDOLA A Qualis intercepts a bus headed for Belgaum via Sangli. Policemen in civvies enter the bus, take Sohrabuddin, Tulsiram Prajapati and Kausarbi and force them to board the Qualis. 2 NOVEMBER 24, 2005 AHMEDABAD The Qualis arrives in Ahmedabad where Sohrabuddin and Kausarbi are kept in a farmhouse. Prajapati is taken by the Rajasthan Police across the border where he is shown as arrested. 3 NOVEMBER 25, 2005 AHMEDABAD Sheikh is brought out of farmhouse and taken to ATS office. He is kept overnight there and later taken to a pre-selected spot on the Narol Juhapura on the outskirts of the city. 4 NOVEMBER 26, 2005 AHMEDABAD Sheikh is shot at point blank range but it is made to look as if he was fired at in retaliation 5 NOVEMBER 26, 2005 GANDHINAGAR As news of Sheikh’s killing becomes public, farmhouse owner asks that Kausarbi be shifted from the place. She is shifted to another bungalow near Gandhinagar. 6 NOVEMBER 28, 2005 AHMEDABAD Kausarbi is killed and her body is taken in a Tempo to Vanzara’s native village of Illol. Her body is burnt near a river. Her bones and ashes are collected and scattered in an effort to destroy evidence. 7 DECEMBER 28, 2006 BANASKANTHA Prajapati is brought to Ahmedabad in connection with a case. On the return journey, police deliberately let him enter Banaskantha district and pulled the trigger. Later shown as killed in an encounter.

The Government has not said as to how Kausarbi was killed but has admitted before the apex court that her body was taken from a farmhouse near Gandhinagar to Illol and disposed on the night of November 28, 2005—two days after the fake encounter involving her husband. The admission, which has caused huge embarrassment to the Narendra Modi Government, came after Nathusinh Jadeja, a driver of the state’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (of which Vanzara was the dig and Pandian the sp) who drove one of the cars in the caravan that took Kausarbi’s body to Illol, told the police that the entire operation was masterminded by Vanzara himself with Pandian a willing accomplice. The statements of four other civilians in the Kausarbi episode have given further corroborative evidence in the case. The four include the owners of the two houses where she was kept, the owner of Bhagwati Timber Mart in Ahmedabad who supplied logs for burning Kausarbi’s body and a crane operator whose vehicle was used on the night of November 28 at Illol when one of the vehicles involved in the cover-up operation got trapped in the sand warranting the crane.

Police seemed to be divided into two factions—one bent on fixing Vanzara and Pandian who were known to be close to BJP, the other which felt the battle against terror couldn’t be won without such officers. Evidence with the investigators—three policemen have given crucial statements about their involvement in the case—have so far suggested that the noose may be tightening around the three officers. Andhra Pradesh Police were informed by Vanzara and Pandian about intelligence inputs which pointed to Sohrabuddin’s emergence as a link between the Naxalites in the state and Pakistan’s ISI. Supporters of Vanzara clash with lawyers and garland him outside a Ahmedabad court; Muslim

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STAGES OF CRIME: (Clockwise from left) The entrance of the farmhouse where Kausarbi was lodged; the bike Sohrabuddin was said to be riding before being killed; the Toyota Qualis used in the ‘encounter’

As the case progressed, the Gujarat Police appeared to have turned into a battleground of warring factions—one bent on fixing Vanzara and Pandian who were known to be close to the ruling BJP dispensation in the state and the other which felt that the battle against terror could not be won without officers of the calibre of Vanzara and Pandian even as the dig of the state cid and Crime and the investigating officer in the case, Rajnish Rai, began his hunt to collect crucial evidence in the case. Despite Rai’s admirable zeal, the state cid and Crime officials are yet to find any material evidence of Kausarbi’s remains in Illol. They are now pinning their hopes on a well on the compound of Vanzara’s house in Illol over which a small building was constructed after the Kausarbi episode. Rai and his team are now planning to pull down the building and dig out the mud out of the well in search of possible bones from her body which might have been part of the ashes scattered in the well.

The alleged killings took place more than a year-and-half ago and would have remained as just another case until last week when the three senior ips officers, one of whom from the Rajasthan cadre, were arrested by the Gujarat Police. The charges against them were that on November 26, 2005, they had killed Sheikh, a dreaded gangster who was wanted in a series of crimes ranging from murder to extortion, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in “a fake encounter”. Facing a case under the National Security Act and two under the Arms Act, Sheikh was no ordinary criminal. Ever since the sensational discovery of 24 ak-56 assault rifles in his native Jhirniya village in Madhya Pradesh in 1995, which he had allegedly transported and stashed away in a well, Sheikh was constantly on the watch list of the Central and state intelligence agencies. Despite being from a well-to-do family, he found his calling in being a trucker. With the Malwa region, where Ujjain lies, emerging as one of the key operating points of the underworld because of its booming real estate and opium trade, his graduation into the underworld was easy.

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“The war against terror and underworld will be much more difficult to wage from now on.” D.G. VANZARA DIG, BORDER RANGE	“Things are falling in place. I am hopeful of getting justice for my brother’s murder.” RUBABUDDIN SOHRABUDDIN’S BROTHER

While not many tears would have been shed at the death of Sheikh, it is the manner of his killing—and that of his wife—that is worrying and even has prompted Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav to demand that Narendra Modi be sacked as chief minister of Gujarat. But while human rights groups picked up the refrain, politicians were quick to realise that this was not something to be capitalised upon after it became clear that the Gujarat Police and their counterpart in adjacent BJP-ruled Rajasthan were not the only ones that were at fault.

The Congress’s initial attempts to milk the issue politically appeared to boomerang after it was known that the police in the party-ruled Andhra Pradesh had provided logistics support to Vanzara and his team in the fake encounter case. Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy said, “To the best of my knowledge, there is no involvement of the Andhra police.” While state Home Minister Jana Reddy chose to be tightlipped. Other party leaders were careful to stress that no “support was given to the Gujarat Police other than the normal cooperation that the force in one state extends when help is sought from outside”. But police sources in Hyderabad said Gujarat Police had made several requests in the past including the well-known case in which they helped track down in Hyderabad those alleged to be involved in plotting the murder of the state’s former home minister Haren Pandya.

In the present case, in tracking down the wanted criminal in Hyderabad, a posse drawn from the Hyderabad Police Commissioner’s Task Force and the Special Investigation Team were drafted to provide logistics and other support. Pandian stayed in the Police Mess at Masab Tank while the rest of the team was put up in the CISF mess, with the help of E. Radhakrishnaiah, an IPS officer of the Gujarat cadre, posted with the CISF in Hyderabad, who has now gone on two months’ leave. He is said to have introduced Pandian to police officials in Hyderabad.

Vanzara, who also faces corruption charges but spread terror among the radical Islamic groups for his unstinted drive against them, told INDIA TODAY, while being brought to a court in Ahmedabad last week: “What is going on now is a trial by the media. We are victims of inter-police rivalry. The battle against terror and underworld will be much more difficult to wage from now onwards. People will realise it later and rue the day we were arrested.” Said Pandian: “The charges are false. Not a single one will hold in the court.” Even supercop K.P.S. Gill has come out in support of the police officers: “Their arrest doesn’t augur well for the war against terror and underworld elements. The police have to take shortcuts to deal with anti-national elements because the Indian criminal justice system has failed to deliver.” Investigating officer Rai chose to be tightlipped but sources close to him feel they are on a strong wicket. As one of them said: “Let the fresh FSL reports come and we will have a watertight case.”

While the oral and circumstantial evidence with the investigators have so far suggested that the noose may be tightening around the three officers, it is said in defence of them that the lack of sufficient material evidence could still go in their favour. So far three police personnel—the two ATS drivers Gurdayal Singh and Jadeja, and Ajay Parmar, personal assistant to Pandian—have given crucial statements about their involvement in the case. Singh, who drove the Toyota Qualis car to Hyderabad in which Sheikh and Kausarbi were brought to Ahmedabad, has admitted that Pandian had come in the same vehicle. But Parmar has retracted his statement and remains untraceable. Among the civilians who have given crucial statements are Satish Sharma, who arranged the Disha Farmhouse where Sheikh and Kausarbi were kept on November 24 and 25; Girish Patel, the owner of the Disha Farmhouse; Raju Jirawala, the owner of Arham bungalow where Kausarbi was kept for two days from November 26 after her husband was killed until her body was sent to Illol. All of them are said to have faithfully reported what they saw and investigators believe these to be crucial oral and circumstantial evidence. Investigators have also seized the cars used in first moving Kausarbi to the farmhouse and then later carrying her body, as has been the crane. The timber mart owner has also corroborated that the logs were loaded in a pickup truck on November 28 night from his shop at Motera near Ahmedabad.

POLITICAL IMPACT

Modi Unruffled   PICTURE SPEAK AS EVER BEFORE: When troubles mount, Modi tends to emerge stronger To mention Narendra Modi’s name to a Congressman is like showing a bull the red rag. Yet, when the horrific events of the last week gripped Gujarat and indeed the country, Union Textile Minister Shankersinh Vaghela was asked whether his party would demand the Modi Government’s dismissal. The answer was as honest as could be: “On the eve of polls, we wouldn’t want to make him a martyr.” If the non-stop TV coverage and the reams and reams in print are a barometer, the Modi Government is on the backfoot following the admission by the state Government of the killing of Sheikh’s wife by police and the attacks from the human rights lobby and his political rivals who accuse Modi and his Minister of State for Home Amit Shah of involvement in the case. But Modi has been in this situation before. When the state went to the polls last, he was constantly under attack from the same lobbies who held him responsible for the riots in early 2002. As it turned out, the harder his opponents tried to hit him, the more people rallied around him. In fact, some of his advisers are learnt to have told him that the issue is just what he needs to reap another political whirlwind. That, of course, would mean that he digresses from his current pet theme of development and focus once again on Hindutva. If he does that, there is enough ammunition ready: how the battle against terror and organised crime will get weaker now; how the human rights lobby justifies the action against the police officers; why is it that the massacre of innocents at Nandigram is not pursued by the courts as steadfastly? Why is Gujarat alone targeted when fake encounters in Uttar Pradesh outnumber those in Gujarat? The last time, Modi was under all-round attack when he took bjp to its most impressive victory in the Assembly elections. Clearly, the man loves a fight when he has his back to the wall.

The case against the officers also hinges on the testimonies of two eyewitnesses before V.L. Solanki, the officer who was entrusted with the task of preliminary investigation after the Supreme Court, following an application from Sheikh’s brother Rubabuddin, directed the Gujarat Government to institute an inquiry. Both had vouched that they had seen Sheikh and burqa-clad Kausarbi along with a third person being made to alight from a bus by plainclothesmen when it was ferrying passengers to Belgaum from Hyderabad on the night of November 22, 2005. When showed photographs of the couple, both Sharad Krishnaji Apte, a resident of Sangli, and Gazi Jamalludin Chabuk, the cleaner of the bus that was owned by a Hyderabad-based travel agency, identified them as the two people who were taken out of the bus. Apte subsequently retracted his statement. Later, a third witness Aslam Mohammed Jafar recognised the photographs as those belonging to the passengers who were asked to alight from the bus by the policemen. Other eyewitnesses who were passengers were not able to identify the three, but recalled that the policemen were not keen on taking along the veiled woman passenger and instead asked her to carry on her journey, it was she who insisted that she would accompany her husband and subsequently alighted from the bus.

Investigators piecing together the jigsaw have come to the conclusion that Pandian flew down to Hyderabad on November 21, 2005 after taking due permission from his boss Vanzara. Before reaching Hyderabad, he had informed friendly officers in the local police about the tip-off he had about Sheikh’s presence in the city. Sources say both Vanzara and Pandian had informed the Andhra Pradesh Police about intelligence inputs which pointed to Sheikh’s emergence as a link between the Naxalites in that state and the ISI of Pakistan. It was on this basis that the help of the Andhra Pradesh Police was sought.

Meanwhile, Pandian also hailed a Qualis, reportedly belonging to a fish exporter in Porbandar, to ferry other members of the ATS from Ahmedabad to Hyderabad. A joint team of the Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat Police intercepted the bus (registration no. 5051) near Tandola village on Maharashtra-Andhra Pradesh border on the night of November 22. Sheikh, Kausarbi and Prajapati were made to alight from the bus and board the Qualis. Also joining them was Pandian. They arrived in Ahmedabad on the morning of November 24 and were initially lodged in the farmhouse. The next night, Sheikh was taken to the ATS office where, after spending the night, he was taken early in the morning to a predetermined spot. He was allegedly shot dead in cold blood and investigators believe the perpetrators of the crime then strew evidence all around to make it seem that he had been killed in an encounter: that he was coming on a motorcycle and when intercepted fired at the police forcing it to return the fire and kill him.

That, however, was just the beginning. When the owner of the farmhouse saw the body of Sheikh in a TV newscast on November 26, he panicked and insisted Kausarbi be taken away from his place. The job was entrusted to Deputy sp M.L. Parmar, one of the officers in the operation, who then took her to the Arham bungalow. There, she was allegedly killed on November 28 apparently in a bid to destroy evidence. Newspaper reports have suggested that the officer raped Kausarbi following which the woman threatened to expose their deeds to the authorities. Unconfirmed reports say Vanzara who arrived on the spot was livid and decided to eliminate her. That Kausarbi’s body was taken to Illol on November 28 night under the supervision of Vanzara and Pandian rests only on the statement of Jadeja. But investigators believe there is enough and corroborative and circumstantial evidence points to support the case.

It was more than a year after the deaths of Sheikh and Kausarbi that Prajapati, the third passenger on the bus, was killed. He was shown as arrested near Udaipur on the same day Sheikh was shot dead. When Gita Johri, the then ig of Gujarat’s cid and Crime, submitted her report to the Supreme Court on December 12, 2006, Prajapati was in jail and was in the know of all developments and could even leak out details of the fake encounter. On December 26, 2006, he was brought to Ahmedabad by the Rajasthan Police in connection with a case. On his return journey, police are said to have deliberately let him escape from their custody within the limits of Banaskantha district bordering Udaipur. On December 28, he was killed in an ‘encounter’ in Banaskantha and it is perhaps no coincidence that Vanzara was the dig of the border range in which Banaskantha falls and Dinesh was the sp of Udaipur. The two had allegedly masterminded the operation one year before when Vanzara was DIG ATS. Says Rubabuddin: “Things are falling in place.” Delayed though, he is confident that justice will not be denied.

-with Amarnath K. Menon in Hyderabad, Ambreesh Mishra in Bhopal

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