Judiciary above Suspicion..............Power & Politics / The Sunday Standard/ July 26, 2015

Judiciary Above Suspicion in Pronouncing Justice, Irrespective of Blood Colour of Criminals

Yakub Memon is not a religion. It’s a proper noun like other names, such as Kehar Singh who was hanged for the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and Renuka Shinde and sister Seema Gavit who are on death row for murdering five children. All of them belong to different faiths and communities. But they share one thing in common. All have committed the rarest of rare crimes and were sentenced to go to the gallows. Yet, some ill-liberals have chosen to splash communal paint on the verdicts as if some names are above the law while the owners of some others must face the noose if they have taken the lives of others. Unfortunately, such insensitive remarks are being raised by a couple of minority community leaders who forget that it is the Indian judiciary that has always corrected illegal distortions in its own system. Ever since the Supreme Court rejected Memon’s clemency petitions, the knives are out to destroy its credibility. Shamelessly spraying criminal justice with communal hues, a few self-appointed leaders belonging to India’s peace-loving Muslim community are questioning the independence of the judiciary. They choose to forget that it has taken over 22 years for the prosecuting agencies to get justice for the 257 innocents who were massacred in the 1993 Mumbai blasts. Starting from the trial court all the way to the apex court, Memon, helped by his advocates and ill-liberal accomplices, was given enough fair opportunities to prove his innocence. It is only in India that the judiciary and the executive take such time-consuming and vigorous scrutiny of each and every piece of evidence at multiple levels. Many times, the prosecution and the judiciary have been at the receiving end of vituperative vocabulary for unnecessarily delaying the delivery of criminal justice. It is quite possible that a section of the judiciary may have erred in some cases, but their intent has never been malicious or prejudiced.

Now, the Indian judiciary is being accused of a communal bias. It is stupendously shocking to note the rising tendency among conscience-peddlers to attack or support court verdicts selectively. Obstreperous social activists are sitting in judgment to decide the merit of judicial verdicts. Judges are expected to deliver sentences to suit the convictions of these amoral advocates of expedience, and not by the law book. If a verdict is against their political ideology or personal preferences they take to the streets, condemning it as unsound and illogical. For them, Yakub’s death sentence is not a correct interpretation of evidence. They conveniently forget that for one Yakub Memon, there are more than a hundred Pulaham Rama Raos, Kattar Singhs, Gurdeep Singhs, Babbanna Patils and Mukul Behari Lals who have been hanged during the past 70 years. Why don’t the liberal lamenters find fault with the judiciary for singling out Hindus for capital punishment? Of the 700-odd criminals hanged since Independence, not more than 65 are Muslims. In a majority-minority state like Jammu and Kashmir, not a single Muslim has ever been hanged. This doesn’t mean the local judiciary has spared criminals with any particular religious tag. In fact, it has considered each case on its merit and not by the name of the accused. For the past few months, even heinous crimes like rapes have acquired political and religious pigmentation. While rape and abduction cases in states like West Bengal are either ignored or underplayed by the ill-liberals, the spotlight is directed on the ones occurring in states run by NDA governments. From their commentaries on social media, it can be gleaned that the colour of Yakub’s blood is different from that of Sharma, Yadav, Reddy, Jacob, Singh and Tomar.

It is only the Indian judiciary, which keeps India’s inclusive character intact. The increase in opinionated attacks on the justice system is aimed at maiming the secular character of our Constitution. In the past, the judiciary has faced criticism for catering to class interests, but has rarely been accused of a communal bias. The idea behind questioning verdicts against terrorists like Yakub, Afzal Guru and Kasab smacks of a conspiracy to divide not only political parties but also the judiciary along communal lines. The latter has usually chosen the path of leniency or mild censure instead of taking penal action against even those who have made personal accusations against the integrity of senior judges. But, what is most dangerous for a vibrant and tolerant democracy like India is the rising agitational anarchy in the name of secularism which aims to deliberately link judicial pronouncements with vote banks.

It is usual for leaders of various political parties to take up cudgels on behalf of criminals belonging to a particular community in order to mobilise votes. Illogical arguments are bandied to condemn judicial decisions. For example, Yakub’s supporters are saying that while he is likely to be hanged, those behind other riots have been spared, or are treated with kid gloves. Some of the Memonites have even gone to ridiculous lengths to debate whether Yakub was actually arrested or whether he surrendered himself—as if this differentiation would atone for the loss of human lives.

It is only in India that freedom of expression is turned into an excuse to diminish the credibility of institutions. Since the Indian judiciary has stood the test of difficult times and stood steadfast with total independence, it acts as the only check on anarchist and undemocratic forces. It has judiciously applied the best standards of scrutiny on every criminal, irrespective of whether he or she was a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim or from any other religion. Many a time, the judiciary has faced threats to its independence from the executive and the political establishment. Now, a formidable coalition of ill-liberals, communalists, internationalists and atheists are trying to intimidate it. Since there is no section in any law book that provides a palette of different colours for blood, the Indian judiciary is being pressured to pick one and deliver justice going by the colour of the blood of a criminal or a terrorist. Fortunately, in the Indian judiciary, justice is not blind.

prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com; Follow me on Twitter @PrabhuChawla

Power & Politics/The Sunday Standard Magazine/May 29, 2011

It's All Out in the Open Now, So

Why the softness on Pakistan?

Practising politicians are rarely prophetic as they live only in the present. They refuse to read the writing on the wall if it is politically inconvenient. They don’t mind killing their conscience to serve their fake drawing room constituencies. This is exactly what our ruling establishment is doing when dealing with Pakistan. All of them concede that Pakistan is almost a dead nation, yet they want to engage those who aren’t safe even in their own country. They live at the mercy of those who pose a threat to India. While bloodthirsty fundamentalists continue to demolish all the civilised and democratic institutions of Pakistan, large-hearted leaders from the US and their Indian fellow travelers continue to lobby for a dialogue. They have no logic. They don’t even have an idea about whom to talk to. For them, a healthy and stable Pakistan represents a golden future. These regular yatris from Lutyens’ Delhi to Lahore are more concerned about their evening parties where champagne is spilled than about the blood spattered all over the streets of Pakistan and in Mumbai during 26/11.

If any more evidence of Pakistan being the most favoured and safest haven for terrorists was required, it was there in the form of the audacious attack on the Karachi naval base last week. Earlier, the US army killed the Badshah of Terror Osama bin Laden in an area that was barely a few kilometres away from the seat the Pak military establishment. In the US, David Headley left no one in doubt during his ongoing trial that he was trained and funded by the Pakistan’s dreaded and unconstitutional ISI.

Headley even gave details about the names of Pakistani officials, terror funds and terror attacks planned against India. Yet Indian peaceniks have turned their backs to the facts and plugged their ears. While American opinion makers are furious over Headley’s revelations and confessions, Indian authorities have chosen to hide behind diplomatic camouflage. While the US is waging its war on ISI-sponsored terror, Indians are debating through media and TV channels on how to make Pakistan a stable and viable state. Predictably, the US is speaking with a forked tongue. One argues for the safety of their country and its strategic interests. Another advises India to wait and watch, which means let the ISI divert its terror outfits to hit at will on Indian soil.

It is amazing that our leaders and cheerleaders for Pakistan behave like ostriches. In private, however, they admit that Pakistan is the global godfather of terror. Even a hardcore diplomat-turned-politician like Natwar Singh admitted during a TV interview, which he gave as India’s foreign minister in 2004, that Pakistan was a failed state. But fearing diplomatic disaster, he withdrew his remark before it was telecast. He, and all those who both preceded and followed him to South Block, held almost similar views but never spoke their mind in the presence of colleagues or fellow diplomats. Hardly a day passes without women losing their husbands, children their parents and mothers their children in Pakistan, but its rulers instead of flushing out the killers boast about targeting India and that too on the floor of their parliament. General Pasha, the man whose ruling passion is harbouring and training terrorists isn’t bothered about the implications of his warmongering.

Why should he? He was, after all, addressing a captive house that enjoys only a token mandate from the people of Pakistan. None of them dared question the ISI chief about his dangerous plans to attack Indian defence and civil installations. Meanwhile, as Pasha was spewing venom, our leaders were still talking about talks. From Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to most Congress leaders, all pleaded for an incensed India to ignore the hawkish boast of a frustrated military establishment across the border. Moreover, American leaders visiting the subcontinent were exhorting their Indian counterparts to restrain themselves from speaking the same language as Pakistanis. Even the American collaborators in India are more active now than they have ever been before. Using foreign-funded think tanks, they have mounted pressure on Indian political, corporate and social circles to prevent the Government from taking any sort of action against Pakistan. None of them has spoken out for the repatriation of 45 fugitives, including Dawood Ibrahim who lives like a monarch in Pakistan. Not even a single NGO has demanded the dismantling of terror camps operating across the LOC. Instead, they go about collecting crowds and inviting Pak chatteratti and glitteratti to participate in Indian cultural festivals in return for generous remuneration. Even India’s hawkish Home Minister P Chidambaram admitted in a candid interview that while India has a limited capacity to undertake an Osama-type operation in Pakistan, it has constraints. It is clear that even his hands are tied.

For the past few months, as more and more evidence against Pakistan’s patronage of terrorism surfaces, Indian movers and shakers retreat further into their shells. While candlelight peace processions and seminars have almost vanished, so have those who were aggressively advocating an offensive against Pakistan; instead they are seen participating in seminars and conventions abroad. Escaping the summer heat seems to be more important than turning up the heat on Pakistan. Suddenly our over-enthusiastic defence chiefs also have lost their bravado and have stopped giving vent to their inner feelings. Defence Minister (Saint) A K Antony always preaches tolerance, even in the wake of serious provocation. Chidambaram will be reflecting the mood of the nation if he demands a level-playing field for Indian forces when he meets US Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. Chidambaram should demand the destruction of the evil empire of terror, whose access to Pakistan’s nukes will always be an ominous possibility. It can be done with US cooperation. Or if need be, in spite of them.
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com

Mumbai Attacked/ Essay/ India Today, December 8,2008

A harvest of terror

It was a cavalcade which, for once, brought out not the pomp but the limits of power. And it was not the sight Mumbai would have liked to wake up to after living through the dread and fear of the city’s longest night.

At six in the morning on November 27, when Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and half his cabinet drove past the Oberoi, the hotel where terrorists held sway, in a procession of 25 cars and well-protected by grey commandos, the worthies didn’t dare to take even a surreptitious glance at the policemen and reporters who lined the street. In another time, in another Mumbai, these gentlemen would not have missed the moment of photo ops and platitudinous banalities.
But this Thursday morning, as Mumbai bled and mourned, they were on the run. And it’s unlikely that they would have found a place to hide.

Well, there is no place for the entire political class to take refuge, for, the whispers of the dead—India’s political donation to the global enterprise of jihad—will frighten them out of every conceivable hiding place. Mumbai 2008 is the bloodiest of ironies that India, unarguably the softest victim state of hate, could have lived without. As the Indian Navy was excelling in its daredevilry by fighting pirates in the faraway Gulf of Aden, a few rubber boats could offload around two dozen armed jihadis in front of Mumbai’s prominent landmarks— the Taj and the Oberoi, the twin towers of the maximum city. And among the dead in the war on Mumbai was the boss of Maharashtra’s ATS (Anti-Terrorism Squad), which has been in the middle of a politically volatile investigation into the so-called saffron terror.

Sadly, the enormity of the Evil threatening the foundational solidity of the nation is yet to be comprehended by the political class, particularly the ruling establishment, which in every hate attack sees a million electoral possibilities. The impotent rage and vows of punishment in the wake of every terrorist strike—the frequency of which would have put any other country on permanent alert—are customary political theatre meant for the consumption of the gullible. The dead—who continue to multiply—don’t power India to new national resolutions.

They remain statistical trivia: 1,202 have been killed in 23 terrorist strikes in the country since the attack on Parliament. Five of them took place between December 2001 and May 2004 when the NDA was in power and the rest during the last four-anda-half years of the UPA Government. In three instances, terrorists were killed, but in all others, there have either been noarrests or, when arrests were made, the Government has not been able to secure their convictions. Still, we are not ashamed. And still, we are lining up to be killed.

As Mumbai becomes a horrific finale to a year that made India a nervous wreck, the politicians are back in the game—to be played with added deception in this season of elections. This could not have come at a worse time for the Congress which is already on the defensive over the twin issues of terrorism and national security. This week, voters in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan elect their new rulers and though L.K. Advani, who talked to the prime minister after the attacks began on the night of November 26, wisely desisted from playing the political blame game, no one doubts that his party stands to gain.

Grief and fear do not unite India. They divide us, for the nation is negotiable, but the vote bank is not, sorry. Mumbai 2008, perhaps more than Ayodhya 1992, is bound to change the syntax of Indian politics, and, immediately, it may reward the Indian Right. The colour of power in 2009 will be determined by the blood that discoloured the night of Mumbai on November 26.
Let that alone not be the political conclusion of Mumbai. India cannot afford to remain a nation in denial, and a nation shackled by the politics that divides. Winning an election is no longer the same as winning the soul of the nation. India, the most savaged nation on earth by the mercenaries of gods, is waiting for its political redeemer.

Mumbai Attacked / Exclusive /November 27, 2008

FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT

The night Mumbai turned into a ghost town

It's probably fate, but once again I found myself at the wrong place but at the right time. On Wednesday evening, I landed in Mumbai for a recording of my weekly show Seedhi Baat for Aaj Tak news channel. I am not much of a foodie and prefer my Dal Bhindi. But some close friends insisted on taking me to a dinner at the Pure restaurant of Taj Lands End Hotel. We finished our meal and topped it up with some wine when the waiter came and asked my friends whether they were heading back towards South Mumbai. I asked him what the problem was, and to my horror he told me that terrorists had taken over the Taj and Oberoi hotels.

The reporter in me wanted to rush to the spot. I rang up my colleagues at India Today. Our bureau chief was on her way home, another colleague was struck in a traffic jam. I looked out to see barricades coming up around the hotel and all vehicles being stopped at least a quarter mile way. Around midnight, I decided I couldn't afford to miss the action, but the hotel refused to provide us a car. There were three of us and surprisingly, we managed to persuade a taxi to take us on a tour of the city at that hour and on this day.

The drive from Taj Lands End, Bandra, towards Oberoi Hotel, Nariman Point, was the fastest I have had - hardly 20 minutes as opposed to the hour and half that it normally takes. Like New York, this is the City That Never Sleeps. But Mumbai this night was a ghost town. The road outside the Oberoi resembled a war zone. Police Commissioner Hassan Gafoor was leading his team from the front, leaning on his car and directing his officials to take positions. A young major from the army in civvies was also giving tips to the police.

The ubiquitous TV crews - over 100 of them - were there, spinning exclusives about every move the brave officers made or were about to make. "Do you journalists know what we are facing?" one of the police officials asked me before getting on with his job. I could sense his anger because the hand grenades that were flung out of the hotel windows were aimed in their direction and not at the huge tribe from the media.

For close to two hours, I stood there watching officers from the army, navy, NSG and local police working like a well-oiled machinery to tackle the situation which we, in our usual cynicism, say they will never be able to. We then moved to the Taj Hotel, Colaba, where the situation was much more grave. There were guests, wailing and shrieking, trying to get out of the hotel. Some escaped, the less fortunate ones were trapped inside. Senior executives from a sister hotel came around to offer help and move them.

All the while, I could hear the exchange of fire and from my vantage point see the secret movement of forces behind the walls of this 150-year-old majestic edifice, which has withstood many storms but now faced the real threat of being reduced to ashes by a handful of terrorists who had carefully chosen the Taj and the Oberoi, the twin towers of India's own economic might.
Back at the Oberoi, we were dismayed to find that Gafoor and his team had not met with any success. The terrorists were still in full control. At 6 in the morning, I saw a motor cavalcade - not less than 25 cars with full commando shield - whizzing past and was told it was Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his cabinet colleagues doing a race.

Mediapersons waved hands and shouted but the cars just sped by. In normal times, the VVIPs would have stopped to give the media biting bytes about an opponent. But this time, the opponent was deadly and they were too scared to talk. Or they knew they had no answers to the many questions. As Deshmukh headed home, I got back into my taxi to go back to the hotel. On the roads of Maximum City, there was not a soul to be seen. Even the petty thugs who roam the streets targetting "outsiders" chose to stay indoors. And even my guest for the show didn't turn up.

Mumabi Attacked / Exclusive

Taxi was meant to blow up Mumbai airport?

The flyover outside the domestic airport in Mumbai and a taxi driver’s unfamiliarity with the new slip route to the terminal perhaps went a long way in averting a major disaster that could have taken the toll into hundreds on Wednesday night itself.

Shortly before the terrorists moved into their targets in South Mumbai, a black and yellow taxi, with three passengers and enough ammunition to bring down a dome, sped in the direction of the airport. Instead of taking a slip road that would have taken the passengers straight to the airport, the driver took the flyover which bypassed the airport, only to get stuck at a red light.
At rush hour, the lights stayed red for long, at which the passengers berated the driver and asked him to cut the traffic lights. The driver moved on, but the wait turned out to be a minute or two too long. The car exploded. All that was found was a severed head and parts of three human legs. Had the terrorists' plans of coinciding a blast at the airport with the attacks on the Taj and Oberoi hotels succeeded, the death toll of 26/11 would have been much bigger than it already is.

Planned to perfection From New York to London, Madrid and Bali, the world has seen horrific terrorists attacks but few have been as perfect in terms of planning, organisation, operation and execution. It was clinical enough to make it apparent that the two dozen or so terrorists had logistical support from scores of "field officers" who mingled with the crowds outside the Taj and Oberoi hotels, not to speak of the many others who were sitting in hideouts watching TV.

The presence of TV crew, many of whom quoted their sources to tell readers about impending action by security forces, came in handy for the terrorists, at least some of whom are reported to have used satellite phones. With TV reporters dishing out exclusives about the actions that the forces were contemplating, it appeared that the terrorists were always a step ahead. The frustration boiled over and the official agencies had to finally ask the hotel management to disconnect TV cables.