Image: PTI

The Mecca Masjid Blast
On May 18, 2007, a cell phone triggered pipe bomb exploded in the Wazukhana or the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad killing 8 people and injuring 58 others. Nearly 10,000 people were offering Friday prayers at the time of the blast. Two unexploded IEDs were later recovered from the site. The explosions led to panic and also violent retaliation. Some members of the minority community went on a rampage destroying public property. The police came in for scathing criticism when it fired indiscriminately at them killing 5 people.

The HuJI Angle and Wrongful Detention of Muslim Youth
The Hyderabad Police conducted an initial probe, and pointed a finger of suspicion toward the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI). A man named Bilal, linked to HuJI was blamed for the attack. He was later killed in a shootout. The police reportedly detained more than 50 Muslim youth during the investigation.

A fact-finding panel with the state’s minority commission found that the youth were illegally confined and tortured by the police. The youth were all subsequently acquitted, and, as per the National Minority Commission’s recommendation, the state government handed out monetary compensation to them. In September 2013, the Andhra Pradesh High Court set aside the compensation paid to the youth. 

Cases bounces from local cops to CBI to NIA
After the CBI took over the case, it filed a chargesheet against Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak Devendra Gupta and RSS activist Lokesh Sharma. They were said to be working with another former RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on December 29, 2007 in Dewas.

The NIA took over in 2011 and filed a supplementary chargesheet against former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activist and self-styled cleric/preacher Aseemanand, alias Naba Kumar Sarkar. They claimed he was a key player in radicalising and recruiting people for the purpose of exacting ‘Saffron vengeance’. Five people were arrested: Aseemanand, Gupta, Sharma, Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar and Rajendra Chowdhry. Two accused–Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra–are still absconding.

Evidence vs Confessions
There was little evidence provided and the prosecution’s case was built entirely on confessional statements. Aseemanand, who was one of the main accused and who had also been implicated and later acquitted in the Ajmer blast case had confessed to his involvement in the Mecca Masjid blast in December 2010. By January right wing groups started claiming that Aseemanand was forced to make a false confession. In April that year, Aseemanand too retracted his confession saying it had been extracted under duress. The conspiracy charge that was based on call data records of the accused and witnesses who had attended meetings mentioned in Aseemanand’s confession. Most of the witnesses turned hostile in court.

The NIA alleged Aseemanand said, “Bomb ka jawaab bomb se dena hai,” in his meetings with other accused, but was eventually unable to prove this in court. The prosecution also relied on the comparision between explosives used in the Ajmer blasts and the Mecca Masjid blasts. However, in Aril 2017, a Jaipur court acquitted Aseemanand in the Ajmer blast. This further weakened the prosecution’s case against Aseemanand in the Mecca Masjid matter. Of the 226 witnesses sited, none apart from the official witness supported the prosecution.

Moreover, a red shirt suspected to have belonged to one of the persons who planted the bomb was recovered from the blast site by the local police. But this key piece of evidence never made it to the NIA when it took over the case from the CBI.

The Curious Case of Devendra Gupta
Devendra Gupta, a former RSS pracharak was named by the CBI as one of the first accused in the case along with Aseemanand. He was found guilty in the Ajmer blast case, where the NIA was able to prove in court that Gupta had cellphone SIM cards used to time and trigger the bombs kept at the Sufi shrine.

This is pertinent because SIM cards from this very set were used to trigger the blast at Mecca Masjid. According to the chargesheet, these SIM cards had been purchased by Gupta and his accomplices Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange under fake names from Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal. They were used to not only communicate and discuss the conspiracy but also as triggers for the bombs. In fact, a SIM card from an unexploded bomb from Mecca Masjid had match with a phone used in the Ajmer Dargah blast.

However, the NIA failed to convince the court of Gupta’s complicity in the Mecca Masjid case and he was acquitted along with Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar and Rajendra Chowdhry, on April 16. 

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Image Courtesy: The Indian Express
 
Ten people, all allegedly belonging to the right-wing Hindu organisation Abhinav Bharat, were accused in the case. These included Nabakumar Sarkar alias Swami Aseemanand, Devender Gupta, Lokesh Sharma alias Ajay Tiwari, Mohanlal Rateshwar and Rajender Chowdhary. Two accused–Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra–are still absconding. One of the accused, RSS official Sunil Joshi, was murdered during the investigation.
 
Wrongful detention of Muslim Youth
The Hyderabad Police conducted an initial probe, and reportedly detained more than 50 Muslim youth during the investigation. A fact-finding panel with the state’s minority commission found that the youth were illegally confined and tortured by the police. The youth were all subsequently acquitted, and, as per the National Minority Commission’s recommendation, the state government handed out monetary compensation to them. In September 2013, the High Court set aside the compensation paid to the youth. 
 
How the Investigation and Trial progressed
Following the police probe, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the Mecca Masjid blast case and filed a chargesheet. In April 2011, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took over the case. The trial, which concluded last week, took place at the IV Additional Metropolitan Session Court, a special NIA court, at Hyderabad’s Namapally court complex. The verdict was scheduled for today, April 16. The prosecution was led by the NIA’s Chief Public Prosecutor N. Harinath, who interviewed 226 witnesses. 64 witnesses, including Lt. Col. Shrikant Purohit, turned hostile during the trial. Purohit alleged that neither the CBI nor the NIA recorded his statement. 
 
Aseemanand’s Confession and Retraction
Swami Aseemanand, who was present at the Namapally court today, was arrested by the CBI in November 2010 in Haridwar over his alleged involvement in the Mecca Masjid bomb blast. In December 2010, Aseemanand confessed to plotting the 2006 Malegaon blasts, February 2007’s Samjhauta Express blast, May 2007’s Mecca Masjid blast, and October 2007’s Ajmer Sharif blast, and also implicated certain RSS officials. 
 
In January 2011, following the news of Aseemanand’s confession, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad alleged that the Congress-led government was attempting to “malign the image of Hindu leaders by terming them as terrorists,” saying it was the “greatest lie” that Aseemanand had confessed. An editorial in the RSS’ ‘Organiser’ said it was “…intriguing that only persons named in alleged Hindu radicalism seem to be making ‘confessions’,” adding, “We have not heard of a Kasab or Afzal Guru or captured jehadi, terrorist making such a confession. Are they so tight-lipped?”
 
However, in March 2011, Aseemanand submitted a letter to an Ajmer court saying, “I have been pressurized mentally and physically by the investigating agencies to confess that I was behind these blasts.” He also alleged that the investigative agencies, such as the NIA and the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) were involving his family members in the case, and accused Rajasthan’s ATS unit of not allowing him to engage a lawyer. 
 
Other evidence
Forensic reports from the NIA indicated a link between the 2006 and 2008 Malegaon blasts, the 2007 Ajmer Sharif and Mecca Masjid blasts, the 2008 Modasa and the 2006 Samjhauta Express blasts. In March 2017, Aseemanand was acquitted in the Ajmer Dargah blast case, and later granted bail in the Mecca Masjid blast case. 
 
The curious testimony of Shaikh Abdul Kaleem
In April 2017, Shaik Abdul Kaleem, 27, to whom Aseemanand allegedly admitted his involvement in the Mecca Masjid blast when they were both at Hyderabad’s Chanchalguda Jail, said he wanted to write a memoir, but questioned who would agree to publish it. He said, “When I heard Aseemanand was acquitted in the Ajmer blast case, I could not believe it. I could not believe when he was granted bail in the Mecca Masjid blast case also. I put my life at risk and went to Ajmer and Panchkula to give evidence based on what Aseemanand confessed to me… at Chanchalguda Jail”.
 
According to Kaleem, Aseemanand told him “how he and his group planned and executed the blasts, and apologised to me because I had to spend time in jail while he was the accused. He repented that”. Kaleem was detained by the police in July 2007 following the Mecca Masjid blast over the suspicion of being involved in terror activities. He was in jail for a year, and was acquitted in July 2008. Since then, he also spent time in jail in relation to another case, and was booked for alleged assault in a third case.

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The second decision came the very next day from a National Investigation Agency (NIA) Special Court Jaipur acquitting a self-proclaimed monk and former RashtriyaSwayamsevakSangh(RSS) activist, Swami Aseemanand, accused in the 2007 Samjhauta Express (68 dead and dozens injured), Hyderabad Mecca Masjid (16 dead, hundreds injured) and Ajmer Dargah blasts (three dead, 17 injured) and six others, while convicting three persons in the sensational Ajmer dargah blast case.

On the face of it, there was no semblance of a ‘crime’cited by the court in Saibaba’s case except for false notion constructed within the draconian UAPA. Yet the accused were awarded an extreme sentence.

In the second verdict,where people were actually killed when the culprits exploded bombs at the 13th century holy shrine during the congregation of 5000 devotees, key accused were let off. In other times, these judgements would have been commented upon, even described unfortunate coincidence in contrast. With the supremacist BJP in power, however, these two judicial verdicts just reinforce a sinister pattern: of protecting the criminals owing allegiance to the ideology of Hindutva and crushing its opponents at the cost of the institutional reputation of the judiciary that is behaving like the handmaiden of the powerful.

Innocence of Aseemanand
When the Muslims were demonized as terrorists after 9/11 attack by the US, the biggest beneficiary group after the Zionists was the Hindutvawadis in India. The US’s War on Terror came as endorsement of the historical vendetta of Hindutva forces against the Muslims. Although, the very first act of terror in post-independence India was committed by them when they assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, the terrorist label was paradoxically stuck to the latter. For the first time, Aseemanand’s confessions exposed Hindutvawadis as a terrorist group. Although he stated that its terror was in response to Muslim terror, much of what passed off as the latter may also be its own design.

P Chidambaram, the then home ministerhad first alerted state police chiefs about the danger of “saffron terrorism” in August 2010.Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat at that time, had responded with a Bhagwa Gaurav Andolan (saffron pride campaign) in his state.It wasall due to Assemanand’s confession, which was not obtained by the police through its normal practice of custodial torture.

This was a statement by Aseemanand, aka Jatin Chatterjee, a Post-graduate in Botany, and a hardened RSS functionary who masterminded several terror plots.It was recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code before the Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Dabas at the Tis Hazari courts on December 18 , 2010 to be regarded as evidence under the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

He had confessed that he and other Hindu activists were involved in bombings at Muslim religious places because they wanted to answer every Islamist terror act with “a bomb for bomb’’ policy. In addition, in a taped interview to the Caravan magazine, this Swami had revealed that a series of deadly blasts between 2006 and 2008 were sanctioned by Mohan Bhagwat who was then RSS general secretary but who cautioned, “.. you should not link it to the Sangh”. Both these irrevocable statements were conveniently retracted by Aseemanand later.

Aseemanand’s confession corroborated investigations in various cases. The audio tapes seized from a laptop of Dayanand Pande, accused in Samjhauta Express blast (2007), confirmed that Hindutva groups had been plotting and executing a series of bomb blasts across the country including Malegaon (2006 and 08), Ajmer Sharif (2007) and Mecca Masjid (2007).

The police picked up, detained, and tortured dozens of Muslim youth in each of these cases and made out usual stories of Islamic modules being involved. It goes to the credit of Hemant Karkare, the then chief of Maharashtra ATS, who was killed in the 26/11 attack;that the responsibility and culpability of the Hindutva gang was exposed.

But even after this happened, Muslim boys were incarcerated for 10 long years before the courts finally acquitted them. This exposure took the toll of at least two lives: Karkare’s death remains shrouded in mystery and Shahid Azmi’s is disposed as an outrage of a patriotic goon.

The cases dragged on in the absence of any political will and after the BJP came to power in 2014, the NIAactually began plotting to get the key accused released. In May 2016, ithe NIA dropped all charges against Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Shivnarayan Kalsangra, Shyam Sahu, Praveen Takkalki, Lokesh Sharma and Dhan Singh and five others in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, while charges under the stringent MCOCA law have been given up against all the other 10 accused, including Lt. Col. Prasad Shrikant Purohit, calling Karkare’s investigation as “questionable” and “dubious”.

Saibaba’s Crime
The vehemence with which the state opposed and courts obliged in denying bail to Saibaba despite his 90 percent disability and failing health, made it lear that it wanted to dish out a harsh lesson to the m ‘urban network’ of the Maoists.
 
This case, and the judgement has a striking similarity with the case of Dr Binayak Sen, who despite having high professional reputation, impeccable record of public service and vocal sympathy of the entire progressive world was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Raipur Sessions Court and was  repeatedly denied bail just to set an example to all those who dared to have soft corner for the Maoists.
 
Sen’s innocence itself became the biggest crime in this state schema. In Saibaba’s case, the Maharashtra government has overtaken even Chhattisgarh in identifying its prey in a 90 per cent disabled professor working in a prestigious university in the capital.
 
Saibaba has been a radical activist and has never hidden his sympathies for the struggling masses, who are all ‘Maoists’ for the government and the establishment. But can a wheelchair-bound person who could not even move without help do anything beyond thinking and writing? That, however, is precisely what the state wants to demonstrate. If it could do this to Saibaba, it can do it to anyone. His co-accused in the case, viz., Hem Mishra and Prashant Rahi, JNU student and a freelance Journalist cum activist, respectively also supplemented itsterrorising schema. The other three convicted accused were the Adivasis just to project the unlikely nexus.     
 
The Gadchiroli sessions court held them all guilty under Sections 13, 18, 20, 38 & 39 of the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) read with 120-B of the IPC. The punishment was awarded for having connections with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and its "front" Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF).
 
In the Binayak Sen case itself, a Bench of Justices Markandeya Katju and Gyan Sudha Mishra had categorically said that mere membership of a banned organisation did not make a person criminal unless he or she resorted or incited people to violence. In May 2015, the Kerala High Court freed one Shyam Balakrishnan, who had been picked up in 2014 on suspicion of being a Maoist, saying “being a Maoist is not a crime”. The HC cryptically observed that it was “a basic human right for people to have aspirations”, and reproached the state for “disguised aberration of law in the cloth of uniform” where “protectors become aggressors.” Still the case hankered on the Maoist connection of the accused.

This is not the place to dissect the 827 odd page judgement, but as has been pointed out by the lawyers, the judgement is fraught with apparent neglect of law and wilful ignorance of facts. It is obviously coloured with pulls and pressures of police as well as politicians as most lower court judgements are.

Roguery of the State
These two cases expose the roguery of the Indian state. In the neoliberal era, states have intrinsic tendency towards fascization to ensure marketocracy. While, this trend is visible across the globe, in India it creates resonance with its hegemonic ideology of Brahmanism, which has been the ideology of the ruling classes. The state, irrespective of which party is in power, has always been the same–pro-capital, pro-Hindu, pro-upper caste, and plutocratic.

The BJP unashamedly owning it up makes it just more aggressive and masculine, aptly reflected in Modi’s bravados. To achieve its goal of Hindu Rashtra, which it finds so close now, it could go to any extent in decimating resistance. The institutional barriers having largelybeen overcome by its saffronization drive, it is out to crushresidual dissent. As a matter of fact, from 2014, the trend is so visible that such verdicts have become predictable. All the executioners of the 2002 carnage in Gujarat are out of the net of law and rather stand handsomely rewarded. And those who tried to resist, as Teesta Setalwad,are variously harassed and terrorised.

Contrary to their self-proclamation, the Hindutva forces have always been ruthless executioners; their foundational inspiration being in Hitlers and Mussolinis of this world and the prophets of peace like Buddha,being the object of abhorrence.

Savarkar the progenitor of Hindutva wanted “Hinduization of politics, and militarization of Hindus.” Burning of Graham Stains with his two sons in 1991, lynching of five Dalits in Dulina in 2002 and Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadriin 2015; flogging of four Dalit youth in Mota Samdhiyala near Una last yearor murders of Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and Kalburgi provide just glimpses to their brutal persona.

After all, when they are drawn to their cultural roots, violence becomes their hallmark, their religion being the only one whose gods wield weapons. But it does not behove the state to become unjust, violent and amoral.

It is a folly to imagine that brutalizing Saibaba and his co-accused in such unjust and amoral manner in the name of justice would be a lesson to others of his ilk. There is no evidence that such ‘lessons’ have ever served their purpose. On the contrary, this intimidatory police mentality has accelerated more resistance, steeling peoples’ resolve to fight such terrorist acts of the rogue state. 

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Last year, Aseemanand was granted bail in Samjhauta Express blasts case, where he’s the prime accused.

This came after the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is controlled by the central government, decided not to oppose the conditional bail granted to Aseemanand, chargesheeted in the 2007 Samjhauta blasts case.

This was stated by Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary in Lok Sabha while replying to a written question by Asaduddin Owaisi of All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) last month.

The Narendra Modi government had also declined to grant permission to challenge a bail order granted to two other Hindutva terror accused in the Mecca Masjid blasts case, Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma, on the “grounds of parity” since bail had been granted to Bharat Mohal Lal and Tejaram Parmar which had not been challenged by the prosecution.

More to come
 

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