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Gujarat : Storm over “encounter” deaths |
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Even as the controversy over Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi refuses to settle, another issue has attracted national headlines. Last week’s pre-dawn “encounter” that ended in the death of four people, including a young girl Ishrat Jahan, has rocked the state with police claiming that the four were out on a mission to kill Modi. However, public believes that the four were innocent and the “encounter” was staged-managed by police to glorify Modi. Despite police claims of evidence of the militants’ links with Pakistan-based militant outfits, Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad, the entire incident has taken political overtones, with opposition parties charging that the encounter was faked to ensure sympathy for the embattled Chief Minister.
In the latest incident on June 15, Gujarat police intercepted a car and gunned down four occupants, including a woman in her teens, claiming they were Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives who had driven to Ahmedabad from Mumbai to kill Modi. The encounter lasted almost 30 minutes. Police recoveries included an AK-56, two pistols, three Kalashnikov magazines, 81 rounds of ammunition, a satellite phone, Rs 2.06 lakh in cash and over 10 kg of chemicals for making low-intensity bombs.
While two of the terrorists, police claim, were Pakistani nationals, the two others are 19 year old college student, Ishrat Jahan and 30 year old, father of three, Javed Ghulam Mohammad Shaikh. The Congress and the media have come to the defence of Mumbai based Ishrat, particularly. The girl’s mother has claimed Ishrat was innocent and why the police chose to gun her down if they had suspicions about her activities. But police investigations have established Ishrat and Javed were very well known to each other and often travelled together staying in hotels under assumed names. Diaries allegedly recovered by the police have names of leaders like Modi, L.K. Advani and Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray besides leaders known for their anti-minority views like Pravin Togadia, Vinay Katiyar and Uma Bharti.
Javed, a Pune resident, incidentally used to be Pranesh Kumar Gopinath Pillai of Kochi till he fell in love with a Muslim and converted.
There have been two other encounters, both ending in the shooting down of some of the alleged conspirators, but leaving behind big question marks over their truthfulness.
On September 27, 2002, some six months after the post-Godhra riots subsided, police arrested Samirkhan Pathan (30) on the charge of being a Jaish-e-Mohammed operative assigned to kill Modi. Till then, Pathan was known as a chain-snatcher and bicycle thief who in 1996 had stabbed a constable to death when challenged. Thirteen others were arrested for helping him.
Pathan was gunned down on October 23, 2002, near the Usmanpura garden in Ahmedabad around 2 am in an encounter. This was the same spot where he had stabbed the constable six years earlier, and police claimed they had taken Pathan there to recreate the event when he snatched an officers’ revolver and fired two rounds, forcing them to shoot back. While Pathan died, none of the seven policemen with him at the time received even a scratch.
On January 2, 2004, a local court discharged all the 13 others accused in the case, saying the conspiracy theory had no logic and appeared to be a fancy. On April 2, the Gujarat High Court upheld that order. No weapon or explosive was recovered from Pathan during or after his arrest.
On January 13, 2004, the Gujarat Police said it had unearthed and swiftly snuffed out a Lashkar-e-Toiba conspiracy to not only target Modi but also deputy prime minister L K Advani and VHP leader Pravin Togadia. In the encounter on January 13, Sadique Jamal Mehtar, barely 25, was shot down in Naroda, apparently when he opened fire on cops. Till then, the worst Mehtar, a resident of Bhavnagar, had been accused of was cycle theft and chain-snatching. However, police sources in Mumbai said Mehtar was linked to Dawood Ibrahim.
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