Ajit Kumar Doval is now the national security advisor to the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi. He was chief of the Intelligence Bureau (2004-2005), which works under the CBI. In his period in office, Rajendra Kumar generated the bogus input that declared Ishrat Jahan as a LeT operative, indeed a woman fidayeen out to kill Modi. He supplied the AK 57 that the ATS under PP Pandy, DG Vanzara, and GL Singhal used in killing her and three others. The order to kill them came from the grey beard a euphemism for Modi and the black beard another euphemism for Amit Shah who was then minister of state for home directly under Modi.
Four months after Kumar had been charge-sheeted by CBI as an investigating and prosecuting agency for murder and conspiracy, Kumar and CBI chief Ranjit Sinha were partying at a wedding ceremony of Kumar’s son, on June 7 in a staffs’ mess near the airport in Delhi. Referring to this collusion the defense counsel in the case of Ishrat Jahan, Vrinda Grover remarked: “Ranjit Sinha by socializing with Kumar, whom the probe agency has charged in the Ishrat case with his apparent approval, has compromised the office of the CBI director.” “He should be immediately removed.”
Read more: How Modi escaped accountability for terrorism against Muslims
Understanding the matter better
When the prosecution and the accused are hobnobbing with such intimacy it verifies truth is stranger than fiction. Gujarat has plenty of examples of it, as in the advocate general of the state Tushar Mehta passing secret information regarding the cases of Muslim victims to S Gurmurthy and others to ferret out points against the defendants. The apparent purpose was to sabotage the 2002 pogrom cases from within.
The fiction in the 2004 case was that Ishrat and the three others were LeT operatives. The AK57 and the cars used in the killing, etc are truth as true as CBI chief Ranjit Sinha and retired IB officer Kumar partying. And the final nod came from chief minister Modi to carry out the extra-judicial killing.
These are the very officials, including Doval, who were behind the incident and now they are dilly-dallying the judicial course. The CBI is keeping the police investigation diaries and the home department under Congress and now under BJP rule has sought for them. The home minister using the pretext has let time pass. That is how the delay is prepared by a setup. That overall scheme cannot be broken unless International Criminal Court or UN Security Council is approached through Optional Protocol second. In the case of the Gujarat pogroms of 2002, it was technically not possible to approach ICC which had come into existence a couple of months afterward. But the faked encounter of Ishrat and others took place on June 15, 2004, and many more later hence the option is open. Partying is nothing short of cocking a snook at the judiciary.
It is all the more urgent to resolve the case because Doval is the national security advisor to prime minister Modi and hence has greater concern for security. Doval had initiated a doctrine of “shoot first, investigate later.” This was carried out in the case of Ishrat in line with other such fake encounter cases of the so-called terrorists out to kill Modi or attack temples. He had planned the Punjab election in 1992 when Rajendra Kumar and Modi too were on assignment there. Modi’s friendship with Kumar goes back to that period. When Modi became a chief minister he shifted Kumar to Ahmadabad.
Read more: Is it possible to survive the aggressive Hindutva reign of terror?
Doval had vehemently defended Modi when the Congress party accused the chief minister of his involvement and the issue came up in 2013. This is the service Doval rendered to Modi, a reason why he is an advisor today to the PM. Which court in India can deliver justice when such powerful bureaucrats and the PM himself are ganged up against ordinary citizens framed and killed in bogus terror charges, or languishing in jails for decades together, or being acquitted now after having spent decades in jail as especially in the home state of the PM? Even more astounding, the court has not taken note of the charges against Kumar and three of his colleagues who all worked together when Doval was their boss.
Mustafa Khan holds a Ph.D. on Mark Twain. He lives in Malegaon Maharashtra, India. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.