Harsh Mander alleges judge P.B. Desai “ignored” eyewitness accounts on Ehsan Jafri’s killing

Special SIT court judge P.B. Desai "ignored evidence" that former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in a mob attack in Ahmedabad's Gulberg Housing Society during the 2002 riots, did all that was possible within his power to protect Muslims from the "rage of the mob" and instead echoed the position of then Chief Minister Narendra Modi that his killing was only a "reaction" to his "action" of shooting at the mob, says human rights activist Harsh Mander.

He says that "the learned judge", who retired in December 2017, overlooked statements by surviving witnesses that Jafri made repeated desperate calls to senior police officers and other persons in authority, "including allegedly Chief Minister Modi", pleading that security forces be sent to "disperse the crowd" and rescue those "against whom the mob had laid a powerful siege".

Mander, who quit the IAS in Gujarat in the wake of the riots, makes these observations in his just released book, "Partitions of the Heart: Unmaking the Idea of India", published by Penguin.

The 66-year-old activist, who works with survivors of mass violence and hunger as well as homeless persons and street children, goes on to quote the late journalist Kuldip Nayar to establish that Jafri had desperately telephoned him, "begging him to contact someone in authority to send in the police or the Army to rescue them".

Mander says Nayar rang up the Union Home Ministry to convey to it the seriousness of the situation. The Home Ministry said it was in touch with the state government and was "watching" the situation. Jafri called again, pleading with Nayar to do something as the mob was threatening to lynch him.

In the chapter titled "Whatever happened in Gulberg Society?", Mander contends that Jafri did everything within his power to protect "those who believed that his influence would shield them from the rage of the mob". Mander says Jafri begged the mob to "take his life instead" and in a show of valour went out "to plead and negotiate" with the angry crowd.

"When he realised that no one in authority would come in for their protection, he also did pick up his licensed firearm and shoot at the crowd...," Mander notes, describing it as the "final vain bid" on behalf of Jafri to protect the Muslims in the line of fire.

The author notes that in describing Jafri's final resort to firing as an illegitimate action, the judge only echoed the position taken repeatedly by Modi, who had given an interview to a newspaper in which he had said that it was Jafri who had first fired at the mob.

"He forgot to say what a citizen is expected to do when a menacing mob, which has already slaughtered many, approaches him and the police has deliberately not responded to his pleas," says Mander.

He says that it was as if even when under attack and surrounded by an armed mob warning to slaughter them, "and with acid bombs and burning rags flung at them", a good Muslim victim should do nothing except plead, and this would ensure their safety.

Ehsan Jafri's wife Zakia Jafri, according to Mander, was firmly convinced that her husband was killed because of a conspiracy that went right to the top of the state administration, beginning with Modi. The author notes that the court, in its judgement running into more than 1,300 pages, disagreed.

"It did indict 11 people for the murder but they were just foot soldiers," observed Mander.

He further says that the story the survivors told the judge over prolonged hearings was consistent but Judge Desai was convinced that there was "no conspiracy behind the slaughter" and that the administration did all it could to control it.

"Jafri, by the judge's reckoning, and that of Modi, was responsible for his own slaughter," he laments.

Mander also argues in the book that recurring episodes of communal violence in Ahmedabad had altered the city's demography, dividing it into Hindu and Muslim areas and Gulberg was among the last remaining "Muslim" settlements in the "Hindu" section of the city.

He says that Desai also disregarded the evidence in the conversations secretly taped by Tehelka reporters, mentioning that superior courts, according to Desai himself, have ruled that while a person cannot be convicted exclusively based on the evidence collected in such "sting operations", such evidence is certainly "admissible as corroborative proof".

"But he chose to disregard this evidence, not because there was proof that these video recordings were in any way doctored or false but simply because the Special Investigative Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court of India chose to ignore this evidence," says Mander.

According to Mander, the Tehelka recordings "certainly supported the theory that there was indeed a plan to collect, incite and arm the mob to undertake the gruesome slaughter".

The SIT was headed by R.K. Raghavan, today Ambassador to Cyprus. Mander contends in the book that just because the investigators did not pursue Tehelka recordings in greater depth, Desai concluded that the "recordings cannot be relied upon as trustworthy of substantial evidence and establish any conspiracy herein".

In the book, Mander takes stock of whether India has upheld the values it had set out to achieve and offers painful, unsparing insight into the contours of violence. The book is now available both online and in bookstores.