Modi and the Vanzara Bomb

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Tongue N Cheek

ENARADA, New Delhi

By Ajay N Jha

Two developments in quick succession including the Vanzara letter bomb and Modi’s own admission that his mandate was to serve the people of Gujarat till 2017, appears to have  brought down the BJP balloon with a thud.  Political pundits in new Delhi and Ahmedabad  are already  hair-splitting on the motive and the impact of these two- developments and  Modi’s silence has made  plot all the more mysterious.

His detractors have lampooned him as like a whimpering coward who cannot face the accusations of the ex head cop of his own state while his supporters have maintained that there is no need for Modi to respond to unsubstantiated accusations from a suspended IPS officer. The whole sequence of developments and its interpretations are becoming more like a Bollywood pot-boiler.

Many inferences could be drawn from this letter and Modi’s statement on the Prime Ministerial ambition:-

1.   Vanzara in his letter says that he implemented the zero tolerance policy against terror in Gujarat. If he was the culprit, then the policy makers should also be in jail. Even if Vanzara does not detail how the killings for which he is cooling his heels in jail actually happened, his description of a police force that executed a “zero tolerance to terrorism” policy under the close monitoring of a state government merits further scrutiny. If police officers have been arrested for alleged fake encounters, the government should be arrested too since it was “inspiring, guiding and monitoring our actions from very close quarters”.

2.   Also, the fact that Vanzara and his fellow accused officers were expecting political patronage — whether it was promised to them or otherwise — is a comment on the nature of the law enforcement establishment’s relationship with the political class. From encounter cops to bureaucrats arrested in the Adarsh case, that political will was involved in their actions, is amply clear. When the political class is expected to step in and protect the officers, it raises serious questions on both, the nature of the bureaucracy and the way politicians use or abuse their talents.

3.   In any case, the use of the police and bureaucracy or attempts to coerce them into doing things which are outside the law is nothing new. Those officers who have insisted on upholding the rules and regulations have often been made to suffer.  The moot point is whether Vanzara was not aware that sooner or later, this issue would come up for public scrutiny and he would have to pay a heavy price for that. Yet, he chose to be a catalyst in that plan.

4.   To the best of public knowledge, Vanzara has not been known for his eloquence whether in speaking or writing and yet he produced a 10 page letter in which he argues like a seasoned lawyer. Did he sign on someone else’s script or got this letter drafted for himself?

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5  Was it a part of  BJP’s internal conspiracy in which Modi’s enemies are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that he is packed off from the election arena; but with every such “exposure”, the credibility of the disclosure also drops. Interestingly, a CD which was made in November 2012 surfaces and follows close on the heels of a public interest litigation (PIL) based on a sting operation which apparently shows BJP spokesperson Prakash Javdekar and others conspiring to help Amit Shah, former Gujarat Minister of State for Home, who has been charge-sheeted in the Tulsiram Prajapati encounter case. Since Vanzara’s letter of resignation also seeks to make Shah the villain of the piece, the linkage and timing of the two events are inter-twined. Can that be just coincidence?

5.   More than that, how is it that two days, two events and two different pieces of news are pointing towards the indictment of the same person. ? Vanzara is facing charges of conducting fake encounters in four cases (Sohrabuddin, Tulsiram Prajapati, Ishrat Jehan, and Sadiq Jamal), and in two of them (Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram) Amit Shah is also being accused of involvement.

6      Vanzara’s broad accusation that the state had at least winked at the idea of using encounters to get rid of “terrorists” is not difficult to believe, since this has been the policy in all states and the centre so far. Whether it is militants in the north-east, Khalistani terrorists in Punjab, jihadi elements in Kashmir, or Naxals in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, all governments, without exception, have been following this broad policy of giving police officers leeway on how they eliminate extremists. The significant point is that the consensus has broken only because the man at the centre of it all is Modi and not anyone else. Leave Modi out, and it is highly unlikely that anyone would have gone after the politicians who may have implicitly supported any encounter, fake or otherwise.

7      According to a veteran political commentator “The logical thing to do if one wants to avoid extra-judicial killings is to expand the police force, free it from political control, and make it follow the law. Only then can we expect the police to take the easy way out through encounters. KPS Gill is a national hero today because he did what was needed to break the back of Khalistani terrorism in Punjab. He was not doing anything different from what Vanzara claimed to be doing in Gujarat:- dealing with Pakistan-inspired terrorists.”

8     So how do the encounters killings of hundreds of suspected/alleged Sikh terrorists in Punjab become justified, but some half dozen in Gujarat evoke such an outrage?.  In India, the anomaly is that while some men in uniform get legal protection for their acts, others don’t. The purpose of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is to specifically exempt the army from being held too accountable for human rights violations, including encounters, committed in the line of duty. That this Act may have been used to protect people from even charges of rape is another matter, but there is little doubt what the Act’s central purpose is. There is little difference between what the army does in Kashmir or Manipur, and what the state police do with gangsters or terrorists in their regions.

9     In the absence of such protection, state governments (and the centre) have had a tacit policy of looking the other way when the police get into extra-judicial action. The political sanction, if any, always comes with this unstated condition: the state will protect the people directly involved in encounters, whether fake or real, either by looking the other way, or by not actively supporting the prosecution. On the obverse side, in case anyone gets caught for reasons that the state can do nothing about (like intervention by the Supreme Court, for example), the politicians will still have plausible deniability. Consider the recent convictions in the “fake encounter” case of Ram Narayan Gupta, supposedly an agent of absconding gangster Chhota Rajan. A Mumbai sessions court in July convicted 13 cops for the fake encounter, but no politician was being implicated in that.

10    It is difficult to believe that politicians did not know anything about something involving such a large group of policemen, especially when the police are under direct political control, and the politician-police nexus is strong everywhere. Vanzara’s letter actually shows that the state is not messing around with his protection. Talking about the fate of several policemen who are in jail for fake encounter cases, Vanzara writes: “I, being the senior-most officer and being one among them in the jail, have been making ceaseless efforts on behalf of all of them, to persuade this government to be of some use and assistance to me and my officers which, I am sorry to state, had not been fruitfully paid attention to. Verbal consolations given by this government, time and again, had been proved to be invariably hollow and deliberately misleading.”

11    At another point, he rails against the unfairness of it all and rants: “With the passage of time, I realized that this government was not only not interested in protecting us but it also has been clandestinely making all efforts to keep me and my officers in jail so as to save its own skin from CBI, on one hand, and gain political benefits on the other.” It is not clear how keeping police officers in jail helps Amit Shah or Modi, because it should then be easier for the CBI and the courts to get some of them to give evidence against the state government. If Modi wanted to control what Vanzara and others had to offer, they should be keener to get them out on bail and fix things directly.

12    Later on, Vanzara effectively goes into another rant that looks like an indirect accusation against the court. “Inspite of all such acts of betrayal and treachery, I was gradually reconciling myself with this government, when a Skylab in the form of Supreme Court order of transfer of Sohrabuddin trial to Mumbai fell on us from New Delhi, which was beyond wildest of my imaginations. With all regards for Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, I sincerely believe and state that but for the legal and political intrigues, machinations and manoeuvrings of Shri Amitbhai Shah, the trial of the Sohrabuddin encounter case, followed by that of the Tulsiram encounter case, would not have gone out of the state of Gujarat. It goes without saying that the cruel act of transferring the case out of the state has increased the agony of the jailed police officers, on one hand, and multiplied the hardships of their family members on the other.”

13    There is no doubting the hardships faced by families when trials involving their kith and kin are geographically moved to another state, but what should concern us here is the implicit allegation that Shah got the court to get the trial shifted out of Gujarat so that he would be allowed back into the state to campaign for the assembly elections where he won handsomely. This is something the Supreme Court needs to take note of, not Shah.

14   Vanzara’s allegation seems to be the result of seeing too many conspiracies behind his misfortune, when it is apparent that all most anti-Modi activists welcomed this decision of the court, including Teesta Setalvad. The larger point, though, is important. Vanzara says that when it comes to encounters, “the government and police officers are sailing in the same boat and have to swim or sink together.” He’s right on this. “But he is the collateral damage resulting from the Modi factor, and the fear it engenders in his rivals. This fear is prompting tectonic changes in the old rules of conduct between politicians and men in uniform, never mind if it impacts intelligence gathering and public security”says veteran commentator R Jagannathan.

The other side of the story, when pieced together, becomes all the more interesting.  While a section of BJP leaders say that this ’letter bomb’ had already had the desired effect and now, Modi  has himself opted out of the race of being BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, other say that  Vanzara letter could have been a deliberate leak by Modi himself because Vanzara has gone hammer and tongues  against Amit Shah but said nothing against Modi.

Yet another question asked in BJP circles is if Vanzara was trying to blackmail Modi through this letter and whether there could be more letters in the offing? There are   32 other officials of various ranks behind the bars including 7 IPS officers. Would they also follow up with Vanzara type letters in the coming days?

Moreover, was Modi himself aware that the Vanzara episode was in the offing anyway. In this case, Modi’s own statement at the BJP-RSS coordination committee meeting last month in Delhi could be noted. In that meeting Modi had said “When you decide to make me the Prime Ministerial candidate, certain things engineered by our rivals may surface that might unnerve you.”

Clearly, the fact that his detractors would be looking for anything to pull him down a peg or two was weighing heavily on his mind. A month down the line, the explosive contents of suspended IPS officer DG Vanzara’s letter has made Modi sound prophetic. Either that, or he had specific information that something of this sort was in the offing and he found himself in a place where there was little he could do to prevent it from happening.  Or, was this a clever ploy to ‘ first separate Modi and Shah’ and then attack them from within individually?.

Does it give an indication that there could be more such episodes in the run-up to the next parliamentary elections? Both, within and outside of the BJP, many believe that there could be more such events in store.  At the same time, they have been asking as to why Vanzara didn’t challenge those 7 years ago and why he had done that now and on whose behalf?  There  may be some truth in that but the fact remains that in Modi regime, bureaucrats have not dared to open their mouth and challenge Modi’s decision and those who tried to do that, were finished. One such example was ADG Sreekumar who had to face Modi’s wrath for challenging him.

Conversely, did Modi want to create a hype and value for himself in BJP through this event because he is not only the BJP campaign committee Chairman but also the party’s most popular face across the country and his withdrawal at this juncture would doom the party? In other words, was Modi trying to   tie BJP leaders down as the” fait accompali ”  given that RSS-BJP-VHP wanted to announce Modi’s name as the PM candidate of the Saffron brigade on 8th-9th September in Delhi.

The Congress has found the contents of Vanzara’s 10 page resignation letter to be the most potent ammunition to fight Modi and today’s Gujarat band is the first Bandh call by the Congress in Gujarat since 2004.The Congress is hoping that the Vanzara letter bomb will help the party mobilize momentum against Modi, within and outside of Gujarat, that he could not be the real challenger to the UPA regime.

To add power to Vanzara’s punch, the Congress is also relying on CDs of a sting operation which show two BJP MPs apparently discussing a blank affidavit by the mother of another encounter victim, Tulsi Prajapati. Another CD purportedly shows leaders alleging that the Gujarat government had provided a “safe passage” to the “chief conspirator” in Haren Pandya’s murder.

The BJP’s worry is that while Modi has weathered enough rough situations to sail out of this one, there could be legal implications. The script of how things unfold over the next few days could be interesting – whether the CBI uses the contents of the letter as some kind of evidence and fresh information or if some NGO or individual seeks judicial intervention. How far such legal implications could impact Modi and his trusted aide Amit Shah is the real question on which the BJP think tank seems to be at a loss and any more such damning revelations would puncture the Modi balloon even before the 2014 poll bugle would have sounded.

(Posted on September 6, 2013 @ 10.10pm)

(Ajay N Jha is a veteran journalist from both Print and Electronic media.  He is the  President and CEO of WICS Global Communications.  His email id is Ajay N Jha <ajayjha30@gmail.com> )

The views expressed on the website are those of the Columnists/ Authors/Journalists / Correspondents and do not necessarily reflect the views of ENARADA.

 

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