[Assam] From Outlook India

[Chan Mahanta]

*** This is very long. But anyone interested in 
Indian justice, Kashmir and  Assam  ought to take 
the time to read it.

cm





Afzal Hanging

  'And His Life Should Become Extinct'

  The Very Strange Story of the Attack on the Indian Parliament

  ARUNDHATI ROY
We know this much: On  December 13, 2001, the 
Indian Parliament was in its winter session. (The 
NDA government was under attack for yet another 
corruption scandal.) At 11.30 in the morning, 
five armed men in a white Ambassador car fitted 
out with an Improvised Explosive Device drove 
through the gates of Parliament House. When they 
were challenged, they jumped out of the car and 
opened fire. In the gun battle that followed, all 
the attackers were killed. Eight security 
personnel and a gardener were killed too. The 
dead terrorists, the police said, had enough 
explosives to blow up the Parliament building, 
and enough ammunition to take on a whole 
battalion of soldiers. Unlike most terrorists, 
these five left behind a thick trail of 
evidence-weapons, mobile phones, phone numbers, 
ID cards, photographs, packets of dry fruit, and 
even a love letter.

Not surprisingly, PM A.B. Vajpayee seized the 
opportunity to compare the assault to the 
September 11 attacks in the US that had happened 
only three months previously.

On December 14, 2001, the day after the attack on 
Parliament, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police 
claimed it had tracked down several people 
suspected to have been involved in the 
conspiracy. A day later, on December 15, it 
announced that it had "cracked the case": the 
attack, the police said, was a joint operation 
carried out by two  Pakistan-based terrorist 
groups, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. 
Twelve people were named as being part of the 
conspiracy. Ghazi Baba of the Jaish (Usual 
Suspect I), Maulana Masood Azhar also of the 
Jaish (Usual Suspect II); Tariq Ahmed (a 
"Pakistani"); five deceased "Pakistani 
terrorists" (we still don't know who they are). 
And three Kashmiri men, S.A.R. Geelani, Shaukat 
Hussain Guru, and Mohammed Afzal; and Shaukat's 
wife Afsan Guru. These were the only four to be 
arrested.

In the tense days that followed, Parliament was 
adjourned. On  December 21, India recalled its 
high commissioner from Pakistan, suspended air, 
rail and bus communications and banned 
over-flights. It put into motion a massive 
mobilisation of its war machinery, and moved more 
than half-a-million troops to the Pakistan 
border. Foreign embassies evacuated their staff 
and citizens, and tourists travelling to India 
were issued cautionary travel advisories. The 
world watched with bated breath as the 
subcontinent was taken to the brink of  nuclear 
war. (All this  cost India  an estimated Rs 
10,000 crore of public money. A few hundred 
soldiers died just in the panicky process of 
mobilisation.)

Almost three-and-a-half years later, on August 4, 
2005, the Supreme Court delivered its  final 
judgement in the case. It endorsed the view that 
the Parliament attack be looked upon as an act of 
war.It said, "The attempted attack on Parliament 
is an undoubted invasion of the sovereign 
attribute of the State including the Government 
of India which is its alter ego...the deceased 
terrorists were roused and impelled to action by 
a strong anti-Indian feeling as the writing on 
the fake home ministry sticker found on the car 
(Ex PW1/8) reveals." It went on to say "the modus 
operandi adopted by the hardcore 'fidayeens' are 
all demonstrative of launching a war against the 
Government of India".

The text on the fake home ministry sticker read as follows:

"INDIA IS A VERY BAD COUNTRY AND WE HATE INDIA WE 
WANT TO DESTROY INDIA AND WITH  THE GRACE OF GOD 
WE WILL DO IT GOD IS WITH US AND WE WILL TRY OUR 
BEST. THIS EDIET WAJPAI AND ADVANI WE WILL KILL 
THEM. THEY HAVE KILLED MANY INNOCENT PEOPLE AND 
THEY ARE VERY BAD  PERSONS THERE BROTHER BUSH IS 
ALSO A VERY BAD PERSON HE WILL BE NEXT TARGET HE 
IS ALSO THE KILLER OF INNOCENT PEOPLE HE HAVE TO 
DIE AND WE WILL DO IT."


This subtly worded sticker-manifesto was 
displayed on the windscreen of the car bomb as it 
drove into Parliament. (Given the amount of text, 
it's a wonder the driver could see anything at 
all. Maybe that's why he collided with the 
Vice-President's cavalcade?)

The police chargesheet was filed in a special 
fast-track trial court designated for cases under 
the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). The trial 
court sentenced Geelani, Shaukat and Afzal to 
death. Afsan Guru was sentenced to five years of 
rigorous imprisonment. The high court 
subsequently acquitted Geelani and Afsan, but it 
upheld Shaukat's and Afzal's death sentence. 
Eventually, the Supreme Court upheld the 
acquittals, and reduced Shaukat's punishment to 
10 years of rigorous imprisonment. However it not 
just confirmed, but enhanced Mohammed Afzal's 
sentence. He has been given three life sentences 
and a double death sentence.

In its August 4, 2005, judgement, the Supreme 
Court clearly says that there was no evidence 
that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist 
group or organisation. But it also says, "As is 
the case with most of the conspiracies, there is 
and could be no direct evidence of the agreement 
amounting to criminal conspiracy. However, the 
circumstances, cumulatively weighed, would 
unerringly point to the collaboration of the 
accused Afzal with the slain 'fidayeen' 
terrorists."

So: No direct evidence, but yes, circumstantial evidence.

A controversial paragraph in the judgement goes 
on to say, "The incident, which resulted in heavy 
casualties, had shaken the entire nation, and the 
collective conscience of the society will only be 
satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the 
offender. The challenge to the unity, integrity 
and sovereignty of India by these acts of 
terrorists and conspirators can only be 
compensated by giving maximum punishment to the 
person who is proved to be the conspirator in 
this treacherous act" (emphasis mine).

To invoke the 'collective conscience of society' 
to validate ritual murder, which is what the 
death penalty is, skates precariously close to 
valorising lynch law.It's chilling to think that 
this has been laid upon us not by predatory 
politicians or sensation-seeking journalists 
(though they too have done that), but as an edict 
from the highest court in the land.

Spelling out the reasons for awarding Afzal the 
death penalty, the judgement goes on to say, "The 
appellant, who is a surrendered militant and who 
was bent upon repeating the acts of treason 
against the nation, is a menace to the society 
and his life should become extinct."

This paragraph combines flawed logic with 
absolute ignorance of what it means to be a 
'surrendered militant' in Kashmir today.

So: Should Mohammed Afzal's life become extinct?

A small, but influential minority of 
intellectuals, activists, editors, lawyers and 
public figures have objected to the Death 
Sentence as a matter of moral principle. They 
also argue that there is no empirical evidence to 
suggest that the Death Sentence works as a 
deterrent to terrorists. (How can it, when, in 
this age of fidayeen and suicide bombers, death 
seems to be the main attraction?)

If opinion polls, letters-to-the-editor and the 
reactions of live audiences in TV studios are a 
correct gauge of public opinion in India, then 
the lynch mob is expanding by the hour. It looks 
as though an overwhelming majority of Indian 
citizens would like to see Mohammed Afzal hanged 
every day, weekends included, for the next few 
years. L.K. Advani, leader of the Opposition, 
displaying an unseemly sense of urgency, wants 
him to be hanged as soon as possible, without a 
moment's delay.

Meanwhile in Kashmir, public opinion is equally 
overwhelming. Huge angry protests make it 
increasingly obvious that if Afzal is hanged, the 
consequences will be political. Some protest what 
they see as a miscarriage of justice, but even as 
they protest, they do not expect justice from 
Indian courts. They have lived through too much 
brutality to believe in courts, affidavits and 
justice any more. Others would like to see 
Mohammed Afzal march to the gallows like Maqbool 
Butt, a proud martyr to the cause of Kashmir's 
freedom struggle. On the whole, most Kashmiris 
see Mohammed Afzal as a sort of prisoner-of-war 
being tried in the courts of an occupying power. 
(Which it undoubtedly is). Naturally, political 
parties, in India as well as in Kashmir, have 
sniffed the breeze and are cynically closing in 
for the kill.

Sadly, in the midst of the frenzy, Afzal seems to 
have forfeited the right to be an individual, a 
real person any more. He's become a vehicle for 
everybody's fantasies-nationalists, separatists, 
and anti-capital punishment activists. He has 
become India's great villain and Kashmir's great 
hero-proving only that whatever our pundits, 
policymakers and peace gurus say, all these years 
later, the war in Kashmir has by no means ended.

In a situation as fraught and politicised as 
this, it's tempting to believe that the time to 
intervene has come and gone. After all, the 
judicial process lasted 40 months, and the 
Supreme Court has examined the evidence before 
it. It has convicted two of the accused and 
acquitted the other two. Surely this in itself is 
proof of judicial objectivity? What more remains 
to be said? There's another way of looking at it. 
Isn't it odd that the prosecution's case, proved 
to be so egregiously wrong in one half, has been 
so gloriously vindicated in the other?

The story of Mohammed Afzal is fascinating 
precisely because he is not Maqbool Butt. Yet his 
story too is inextricably entwined with the story 
of the Kashmir Valley. It's a story whose 
coordinates range far beyond the confines of 
courtrooms and the limited imagination of people 
who live in the secure heart of a self-declared 
'superpower'.Mohammed Afzal's story has its 
origins in a war zone whose laws are beyond the 
pale of the fine arguments and delicate 
sensibilities of normal jurisprudence.

For all these reasons it is critical that we 
consider carefully the strange, sad, and utterly 
sinister story of the December 13 Parliament 
attack. It tells us a great deal about the way 
the world's largest 'democracy' really works. It 
connects the biggest things to the smallest. It 
traces the pathways that connect what happens in 
the shadowy grottos of our police stations to 
what goes on in the cold, snowy streets of 
Paradise Valley; from there to the impersonal 
malign furies that bring nations to the brink of 
nuclear war. It raises specific questions that 
deserve specific, and not ideological or 
rhetorical answers. What hangs in the balance is 
far more than the fate of one man.

On October 4 this year, I was one amongst a very 
small group of people who had gathered at Jantar 
Mantar in New Delhi to protest against Mohammed 
Afzal's death sentence. I was there because I 
believe Mohammed Afzal is only a pawn in a very 
sinister game. He's not the Dragon he's being 
made out to be, he's only the Dragon's footprint. 
And if the footprint is made to 'become extinct', 
we'll never know who the Dragon was. Is.

Not surprisingly, that afternoon there were more 
journalists and TV crews than there were 
protesters. Most of the attention was on Ghalib, 
Afzal's angelic looking little son. Kind-hearted 
people, not sure of what to do with a young boy 
whose father was going to the gallows, were 
plying him with ice-creams and cold drinks. As I 
looked around at the people gathered there, I 
noted a sad little fact. The convener of the 
protest, the small, stocky man who was nervously 
introducing the speakers and making the 
announcements, was S.A.R. Geelani, a young 
lecturer in Arabic Literature at Delhi 
University. Accused Number Three in the 
Parliament Attack case. He was arrested on 
December 14, 2001, a day after the attack, by the 
Special Cell of the Delhi Police. Though Geelani 
was brutally tortured in custody, though his 
family-his wife, young children and brother-were 
illegally detained, he refused to confess to a 
crime he hadn't committed. Of course you wouldn't 
know this if you read newspapers in the days 
following his arrest. They carried detailed 
descriptions of an entirely imaginary, 
non-existent confession. The Delhi Police 
portrayed Geelani as the evil mastermind of the 
Indian end of the conspiracy. Its scriptwriters 
orchestrated a hateful propaganda campaign 
against him, which was eagerly amplified and 
embellished by a hyper-nationalistic, 
thrill-seeking media. The police knew perfectly 
well that in criminal trials, judges are not 
supposed to take cognisance of media reports. So 
they knew that their entirely cold-blooded 
fabrication of a profile for these 'terrorists' 
would mould public opinion, and create a climate 
for the trial. But it would not come in for any 
legal scrutiny.

Here are some of the malicious, outright lies 
that appeared in the mainstream press:

'Case Cracked: Jaish behind Attack'
The Hindustan Times, Dec 16, 2001: Neeta Sharma and Arun Joshi

"In Delhi, the Special Cell detectives detained a 
Lecturer in Arabic, who teaches at Zakir Hussain 
College (Evening)...after it was established that 
he had received a call made by militants on his 
mobile phone." Another column in the same paper 
said: "Terrorists spoke to him before the attack 
and the lecturer made a phone call to Pakistan 
after the strike."

'DU Lecturer was terror plan hub'
The Times of India, Dec 17, 2001

"The attack on Parliament on December 13 was a 
joint operation of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and 
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist groups in which a 
Delhi University lecturer, Syed A.R.Gilani, was 
one of the key facilitators in Delhi, Police 
Commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma said on Sunday."

'Varsity don guided fidayeen'
The Hindu, Dec 17, 2001: Devesh K. Pandey

"During interrogation Geelani disclosed that he 
was in the know of the conspiracy since the day 
the 'fidayeen' attack was planned."

'Don lectured on terror in free time'
The Hindustan Times, Dec 17, 2001: Sutirtho Patranobis

"Investigations have revealed that by evening he 
was at the college teaching Arabic literature. In 
his free time, behind closed doors, either at his 
house or at Shaukat Hussain's, another suspect to 
be arrested, he took and gave lessons on 
terrorism..."

'Professor's proceeds'
The Hindustan Times, Dec 17, 2001

"Geelani recently purchased a house for 22 lakhs 
in West Delhi. Delhi Police are investigating how 
he came upon such a windfall...".

'Aligarh se England tak chaatron mein aatankwaad 
ke beej bo raha tha Geelani (From Aligarh to 
England Geelani sowed the seeds of terrorism)
  Rashtriya Sahara, Dec 18, 2001: Sujit Thakur

Trans: "...According to sources and information 
collected by investigation agencies, Geelani has 
made a statement to the police that he was an 
agent of Jaish-e-Mohammed for a long time.... It 
was because of Geelani's articulation, style of 
working and sound planning that in 2000 
Jaish-e-Mohammed gave him the responsibility of 
spreading intellectual terrorism."

'Terror suspect frequent visitor to Pak mission'
The Hindustan Times, Dec 21, 2001: Swati Chaturvedi

  "During interrogation, Geelani has admitted that 
he had made frequent calls to Pakistan and was in 
touch with militants belonging to 
Jaish-e-Mohammed...Geelani said that he had been 
provided with funds by some members of the Jaish 
and told to buy two flats that could be used in 
militant operations."

'Person of the Week'
Sunday Times of India, Dec 23, 2001:

"A cellphone proved his undoing. Delhi 
University's Syed A.R. Geelani was the first to 
be arrested in the December 13 case-a shocking 
reminder that the roots of terrorism go far and 
deep..."

  Zee TV trumped them all. It produced a film 
called December 13th, a 'docudrama' that claimed 
to be the 'truth based on the police 
chargesheet'. (A contradiction in terms, wouldn't 
you say?) The film was privately screened for 
Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee and Home Minister 
L.K. Advani. Both men applauded the film. Their 
approbation was widely reported by the media.


  TV grab of one of the terrorists of the December 13, 2001, Parliament attack

The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal to stay the 
broadcast of the film on the grounds that judges 
are not influenced by the media. (Would the 
Supreme Court concede that even if judges are 
beyond being influenced by media reports, the 
'collective conscience of the society' might not 
be?) December 13th was broadcast on Zee TV's 
national network a few days before the fast-track 
trial court sentenced Geelani, Afzal and Shaukat 
to death. Geelani eventually spent 18 months in 
jail, many of them in solitary confinement on 
death row.

He was released when the high court acquitted him 
and Afsan Guru. (Afsan, who was pregnant when she 
was arrested, had her baby in prison. Her 
experience broke her. She now suffers from a 
serious psychotic condition.) The Supreme Court 
upheld the acquittal. It found absolutely no 
evidence to link Geelani with the Parliament 
attack or with any terrorist organisation. Not a 
single newspaper or journalist or TV channel has 
seen fit to apologise to Geelani for their lies. 
But S.A.R.Geelani's troubles didn't end there. 
His acquittal left the Special Cell with a plot, 
but no 'mastermind'. This, as we shall see, 
becomes something of a problem. More importantly, 
Geelani was a free man now-free to meet the 
press, talk to lawyers, clear his name. On the 
evening of February 8, 2005, during the course of 
the final hearings at the Supreme Court, Geelani 
was making his way to his lawyer's house. A 
mysterious gunman appeared from the shadows and 
fired five bullets into his body. Miraculously, 
he survived. It was an unbelievable new twist to 
the story. Clearly somebody was worried about 
what he knew, what he would say.... One would 
imagine that the police would give this 
investigation top priority, hoping it would throw 
up some vital new leads into the Parliament 
attack case. Instead, the Special Cell treated 
Geelani as though he was the prime suspect in his 
own assassination. They confiscated his computer 
and took away his car. Hundreds of activists 
gathered outside the hospital and called for an 
enquiry into the assassination attempt, which 
would include an investigation into the Special 
Cell itself. (Of course that never happened. More 
than a year has passed, nobody shows any interest 
in pursuing the matter. Odd.)

So here he was now, S.A.R. Geelani, having 
survived this terrible ordeal, standing up in 
public at Jantar Mantar, saying that Mohammed 
Afzal didn't deserve a death sentence. How much 
easier it would be for him to keep his head down, 
stay at home. I was profoundly moved, humbled, by 
this quiet display of courage.

  Across the line from S.A.R. Geelani, in the 
jostling crowd of journalists and photographers, 
trying his best to look inconspicuous in a lemon 
T-shirt and gaberdine pants, holding a little 
tape-recorder, was another Gilani. Iftikhar 
Gilani. He had been in prison too. He was 
arrested and taken into police custody on June 9, 
2002. At the time he was a reporter for the 
Jammu-based Kashmir Times. He was charged under 
the Official Secrets Act. His 'crime' was that he 
possessed obsolete information on Indian troop 
deployment in 'Indian-held Kashmir'. (This 
'information', it turns out, was a published 
monograph by a Pakistani research institute, and 
was freely available on the Internet for anybody 
who wished to download it. )  Iftikhar Gilani's 
computer was seized. IB officials tampered with 
his hard drive, meddled with the downloaded file, 
changed the words 'Indian-held Kashmir' to 'Jammu 
and Kashmir' to make it sound like an Indian 
document, and added the words 'Only for 
Reference. Strictly Not For Circulation', to make 
it seem like a secret document smuggled out of 
the home ministry. The directorate general of 
military intelligence-though it had been given a 
photocopy of the monograph-ignored repeated 
appeals from Iftikhar Gilani's counsel, kept 
quiet, and refused to clarify the matter for a 
whole six months.


  Ghalib, 7, Afzal's son, with Yasin Malik and 
S.A.R. Geelani in Delhi on Oct '06

Once again the malicious lies put out by the 
Special Cell were obediently reproduced in the 
newspapers. Here are a few of the lies they told:

"Iftikhar Gilani, 35-year-old son-in-law of 
Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is 
believed to have admitted in a city court that he 
was an agent of Pakistan's spy agency." -- The 
Hindustan Times, June, 11, 2002: Neeta Sharma

"Iftikhar Gilani was the pin-point man of Syed 
Salahuddin of Hizbul Mujahideen. Investigations 
have revealed that Iftikhar used to pass 
information to Salahuddin about the moves of 
Indian security agencies.He had camouflaged his 
real motives behind his journalist's facade so 
well that it took years to unmask him, 
well-placed sources said." -- The Pioneer, Pramod 
Kumar Singh

"Geelani ke damaad ke ghar aaykar chhaapon mein 
behisaab sampati wa samwaidansheil dastaweiz 
baramad" (Enormous wealth and sensitive documents 
recovered from the house of Geelani's son-in-law 
during income tax raids) -- Hindustan, June 10, 
2002

Never mind that the police chargesheet recorded a 
recovery of only Rs 3,450 from his house.

Meanwhile, other media reports said that he had a 
three-bedroom flat, an undisclosed income of Rs 
22 lakh, had evaded income tax of Rs 79 lakh, 
that he and his wife were absconding to evade 
arrest.

But arrested he was. In jail, Iftikhar Gilani was 
beaten, abjectly humiliated. In his book My Days 
In Prison he tells of how, among other things, he 
was made to clean the toilet with his shirt and 
then wear the same shirt for days. After six 
months of court arguments and lobbying by his 
colleagues, when it became obvious that if the 
case against him continued it would lead to 
serious embarrassment, he was released.

Here he was now. A free man, a reporter come to 
Jantar Mantar to cover a story. It occurred to me 
that S.A.R. Geelani, Iftikhar Gilani and Mohammed 
Afzal would have been in Tihar jail at the same 
time. (Along with scores of other less well known 
Kashmiris whose stories we may never learn.)

It can and will be argued that the cases of both 
S.A.R. Geelani and Iftikhar Gilani serve only to 
demonstrate the objectivity of the Indian 
judicial system and its capacity for 
self-correction, they do not discredit it. That's 
only partly true. Both Iftikhar Gilani and S.A.R. 
Geelani are fortunate to be Delhi-based Kashmiris 
with a community of articulate, middle-class 
peers; journalists and university teachers, who 
knew them well and rallied around them in their 
time of need. S.A.R. Geelani's lawyer Nandita 
Haksar put together an All India Defence 
Committee for S.A.R. Geelani (of which I was a 
member). There was a coordinated campaign by 
activists, lawyers and journalists to rally 
behind Geelani. Well-known lawyers Ram 
Jethmalani, K.G. Kannabiran, Vrinda Grover 
represented him. They showed up the case for what 
it was-a pack of absurd assumptions, 
suppositions, and outright lies, bolstered by 
fabricated evidence. So of course judicial 
objectivity exists. But it's a shy beast that 
lives somewhere deep in the labyrinth of our 
legal system. It shows itself rarely. It takes 
whole teams of top lawyers to coax it out of its 
lair and make it come out and play. It's what in 
newspaper-speak would be called a Herculean task. 
Mohammed Afzal did not have Hercules on his side.

For five months, from the time he was arrested to 
the day the police charge-sheet was filed, 
Mohammed Afzal, lodged in a high-security prison, 
had no legal defence, no legal advice. No top 
lawyers, no defence committee (in India or 
Kashmir), and no campaign. Of all the four 
accused, he was the most vulnerable. His case was 
far more complicated than Geelani's. 
Significantly, during much of this time, Afzal's 
younger brother Hilal was illegally detained by 
the Special Operations Group (SOG) in Kashmir. He 
was released after the chargesheet was filed. 
(This is a piece of the puzzle that will only 
fall into place as the story unfolds.)

In a serious lapse of procedure, on December 20, 
2001, the investigating officer, Asst 
Commissioner of Police (ACP) Rajbir Singh 
(affectionately known as Delhi's 'encounter 
specialist' for the number of 'terrorists' he has 
killed in 'encounters'), called a press 
conference at the Special Cell. Mohammed Afzal 
was made to 'confess' before the media. Deputy 
commissioner of police (DCP) Ashok Chand told the 
press that Afzal had already confessed to the 
police.This turned out to be untrue. Afzal's 
formal confession to the police took place only 
the next day (after which he continued to remain 
in police custody and vulnerable to torture, 
another serious procedural lapse). In his media 
'confession' Afzal incriminated himself in the 
Parliament attack completely.


  From left; Shaukat Guru, S.A.R. Geelani and Mohammed Afzal in Delhi, 2001

  During the course of this 'media confession' a 
curious thing happened. In an answer to a direct 
question, Afzal clearly said that Geelani had 
nothing to do with the attack and was completely 
innocent. At this point, ACP Rajbir Singh shouted 
at him and forced him to shut up, and requested 
the media not to carry this part of Afzal's 
'confession'. And they obeyed! The story came out 
only three months later when the television 
channel Aaj Tak re-broadcast the 'confession' in 
a programme called Hamle Ke Sau Din (Hundred Days 
of the Attack) and somehow kept this part in. 
Meanwhile in the eyes of the general public-who 
know little about the law and criminal 
procedure-Afzal's public 'confession' only 
confirmed his guilt. The verdict of the 
'collective conscience of society' would not have 
been hard to second guess.

  The day after this 'media' confession, Afzal's 
'official' confession was extracted from him. The 
flawlessly structured, perfectly fluent narrative 
dictated in articulate English to DCP Ashok Chand 
(in the DCP's words, "he kept on narrating and I 
kept on writing") was delivered in a sealed 
envelope to a judicial magistrate. In this 
confession, Afzal, now the sheet-anchor of the 
prosecution's case, weaves a masterful tale that 
connected Ghazi Baba, Maulana Masood Azhar, a man 
called Tariq, and the five dead terrorists; their 
equipment, arms and ammunition, home ministry 
passes, a laptop, and fake ID cards; detailed 
lists of exactly how many kilos of what chemical 
he bought from where, the exact ratio in which 
they were mixed to make explosives; and the exact 
times at which he made and received calls on 
which mobile number. (For some reason, by then 
Afzal had also changed his mind about Geelani and 
implicated him completely in the conspiracy.)

Each point of the 'confession' corresponded 
perfectly with the evidence that the police had 
already gathered. In other words, Afzal's 
confessional statement slipped perfectly into the 
version that the police had already offered the 
press days ago, like Cinderella's foot into the 
glass slipper. (If it were a film, you could say 
it was a screenplay, which came with its own box 
of props. Actually, as we know now, it was made 
into a film. Zee TV owes Afzal some royalty 
payments. )

Eventually, both the high court and the Supreme 
Court set aside Afzal's confession citing 'lapses 
and violations of procedural safeguards'. But 
Afzal's confession somehow survives, the phantom 
keystone in the prosecution's case. And before it 
was technically and legally set aside, the 
confessional document had already served a major 
extra-legal purpose: On December 21, 2001, when 
the Government of India launched its war effort 
against Pakistan it said it had 'incontrovertible 
evidence' of Pakistan's involvement. Afzal's 
confession was the only 'proof' of Pakistan's 
involvement that the government had! Afzal's 
confession. And the sticker-manifesto.Think about 
it. On the basis of this illegal confession 
extracted under torture, hundreds of thousands of 
soldiers were moved to the Pakistan border at 
huge cost to the public exchequer, and the 
subcontinent devolved into a game of nuclear 
brinkmanship in which the whole world was held 
hostage.

Big Whispered Question: Could it have been the 
other way around? Did the confession precipitate 
the war, or did the need for a war precipitate 
the need for the confession?

Later, when Afzal's confession was set aside by 
the higher courts, all talk of Jaish-e-Mohammed 
and Lashkar-e-Taiba ceased. The only other link 
to Pakistan was the identity of the five dead 
fidayeen. Mohammed Afzal, still in police 
custody, identified them as Mohammed, Rana, Raja, 
Hamza and Haider. The home minister said they 
"looked like Pakistanis", the police said they 
were Pakistanis, the trial court judge said they 
were Pakistanis. And there the matter rests. Had 
we been told that their names were Happy, Bouncy, 
Lucky, Jolly and Kidingamani from Scandinavia, we 
would have had to accept that too. We still don't 
know who they really are, or where they're from. 
Is anyone curious? Doesn't look like it. The high 
court said the "identity of the five deceased 
thus stands established. Even otherwise it makes 
no difference. What is relevant is the 
association of the accused with the said five 
persons and not their names."

In his Statement of the Accused (which, unlike 
the confession, is made in court and not police 
custody) Afzal says: "I had not identified any 
terrorist. Police told me the names of terrorists 
and forced me to identify them." But by then it 
was too late for him. On the first day of the 
trial, the lawyer appointed by the trial court 
judge agreed to accept Afzal's identification of 
the bodies and the postmortem reports as 
undisputed evidence without formal proof! This 
baffling move was to have serious consequences 
for Afzal. To quote from the Supreme Court 
judgement, "The first circumstance against the 
accused Afzal is that Afzal knew who the deceased 
terrorists were. He identified the dead bodies of 
the deceased terrorists. On this aspect the 
evidence remains unshattered."

Of course it's possible that the dead terrorists 
were foreign militants. But it is just as 
possible that they were not. Killing people and 
falsely identifying them as 'foreign terrorists', 
or falsely identifying dead people as 'foreign 
terrorists', or falsely identifying living people 
as terrorists, is not uncommon among the police 
or security forces either in Kashmir or even on 
the streets of Delhi.

Bodies of the Chhittisinghpura 'terrorists' being exhumed
  The best known among the many well-documented 
cases in Kashmir, one that went on to become an 
international scandal, is the killing that took 
place after the Chhittisinghpura massacre. On the 
night of April 20, 2000, just before the US 
President Bill Clinton arrived in New Delhi, 35 
Sikhs were killed in the village of 
Chhittisinghpura by 'unidentified gunmen' wearing 
Indian Army uniforms. (In Kashmir many people 
suspected that Indian security forces were behind 
the massacre.) Five days later the SOG and the 
7th Rashtriya Rifles, a counter-insurgency unit 
of the army, killed five people in a joint 
operation outside a village called Pathribal. The 
next morning they announced that the men were the 
Pakistan-based foreign militants who had killed 
the Sikhs in Chhittisinghpura. The bodies were 
found burned and disfigured. Under their 
(unburned) army uniforms, they were in ordinary 
civilian clothes.It turned out that they were all 
local people, rounded up from Anantnag district 
and brutally killed in cold blood.

There are others:

On October 20, 2003, the Srinagar newspaper 
Al-safa printed a picture of a 'Pakistani 
militant' who the 18 Rashtriya Rifles claimed 
they had killed while he was trying to storm an 
army camp. A baker in Kupwara, Wali Khan, saw the 
picture and recognised it as his son, Farooq 
Ahmed Khan, who had been picked up by soldiers in 
a Gypsy two months earlier. His body was finally 
exhumed more than a year later.

On April 20, 2004, the 18 Rashtriya Rifles posted 
in the Lolab valley claimed it had killed four 
foreign militants in a fierce encounter. It later 
turned out that all four were ordinary labourers 
from Jammu, hired by the army and taken to 
Kupwara. An anonymous letter tipped off the 
labourers' families who travelled to Kupwara and 
eventually had the bodies exhumed.

On November 9, 2004, the army showcased 47 
surrendered 'militants' to the press at Nagrota, 
Jammu, in the presence of the General Officer 
Commanding XVI, Corps and the Director General of 
Police, J&K. The J&K police later found that 27 
of them were just unemployed men who had been 
given fake names and fake aliases and promised 
government jobs in return for playing their part 
in the charade.

These are just a few quick examples to illustrate 
the fact that in the absence of any other 
evidence, the police's word is just not good 
enough.

The hearings in the fast-track trial court began 
in May 2002. Let's not forget the climate in 
which the trial took place. The frenzy over the 
9/11 attacks was still in the air. The US was 
gloating over its victory in Afghanistan. Gujarat 
was convulsed by communal frenzy. A few months 
previously, coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express 
had been set on fire and 58 Hindu pilgrims had 
been burned alive inside. As 'revenge' in an 
orchestrated pogrom, more than 2,000 Muslims were 
publicly butchered and more than 1,50,000 driven 
from their homes.

For Afzal, everything that could go wrong went 
wrong. He was incarcerated in a high-security 
prison, with no access to the outside world, and 
no money to hire a lawyer professionally. Three 
weeks into the trial the lawyer appointed by the 
court asked to be discharged from the case 
because she had now been professionally hired to 
be on the team of lawyers for S.A.R. Geelani's 
defence. The court appointed her junior, a lawyer 
with very little experience, to represent Afzal. 
He did not once visit his client in jail to take 
instructions. He did not summon a single witness 
for Afzal's defence and barely cross-questioned 
any of the prosecution witnesses. Five days after 
he was appointed, on July 8, Afzal asked the 
court for another lawyer and gave the court a 
list of lawyers whom he hoped the court might 
hire for him. Each of them refused. (Given the 
frenzy of propaganda in the media, it was hardly 
surprising. At a later stage of the trial, when 
senior advocate Ram Jethmalani agreed to 
represent Geelani, Shiv Sena mobs ransacked his 
Bombay office.) The judge expressed his inability 
to do anything about this, and gave Afzal the 
right to cross-examine witnesses. It's 
astonishing for the judge to expect a layperson 
to be able cross-examine witnesses in a criminal 
trial. It's a virtually impossible task for 
someone who does not have a sophisticated 
understanding of criminal law, including new laws 
that had just been passed, like POTA, and the 
amendments to the Evidence Act and the Telegraph 
Act. Even experienced lawyers were having to work 
overtime to bring themselves up to date.

The case against Afzal was built up in the trial 
court on the strength of the testimonies of 
almost 80 prosecution witnesses: landlords, 
shopkeepers, technicians from cell-phone 
companies, the police themselves.This was a 
crucial period of the trial, when the legal 
foundation of the case was being laid. It 
required meticulous back-breaking legal work in 
which evidence needed to be amassed and put on 
record, witnesses for the defence summoned and 
testimonies from prosecution witnesses 
cross-questioned. Even if the verdict of the 
trial court went against the accused (trial 
courts are notoriously conservative), the 
evidence could then be worked upon by lawyers in 
the higher courts. Through this absolutely 
critical period, Afzal went virtually undefended. 
It was at this stage that the bottom fell out of 
his case, and the noose tightened around his neck.

Even still, during the trial, the skeletons began 
to clatter out of the Special Cell's cupboard in 
an embarrassing heap. It became clear that the 
accumulation of lies, fabrications, forged 
documents and serious lapses in procedure began 
from the very first day of the investigation. 
While the high court and Supreme Court judgements 
have pointed these things out, they have just 
wagged an admonitory finger at the police, or 
occasionally called it a 'disturbing feature', 
which is a disturbing feature in itself. At no 
point in the trial has the police been seriously 
reprimanded, leave alone penalised. In fact, 
almost every step of the way, the Special Cell 
displayed an egregious disregard for procedural 
norms. The shoddy callousness with which the 
investigations were carried out demonstrate a 
worrying belief that they wouldn't be 'found 
out,' and if they were, it wouldn't matter very 
much. Their confidence does not seem to have been 
misplaced.

There is fudging in almost every part of the investigation.

Consider the Time and Place of the Arrests and 
Seizures: The Delhi Police said that Afzal and 
Shaukat were arrested in Srinagar based on 
information given to them by Geelani following 
his arrest. The court records show that the 
message to look out for Shaukat and Afzal was 
flashed to the Srinagar police on December 15 at 
5.45 am. But according to the Delhi Police's 
records Geelani was only arrested in Delhi on 
December 15 at 10 am-four hours after they had 
started looking for Afzal and Shaukat in 
Srinagar. They haven't been able to explain this 
discrepancy. The high court judgement puts it on 
record that the police version contains a 
'material contradiction' and cannot be true. It 
goes down as a 'disturbing feature.' Why the 
Delhi Police needed to lie remains unasked, and 
unanswered.

When the police arrest somebody, procedure 
requires them to have public witnesses for the 
arrest who sign an Arrest Memo and a Seizure Memo 
for what they may have 'seized' from those who 
have been arrested-goods, cash, documents, 
whatever. The police claim they arrested Afzal 
and Shaukat together on December 15 at 11 am in 
Srinagar. They say they 'seized' the truck the 
two men were fleeing in (it was registered in the 
name of Shaukat's wife). They also say they 
seized a Nokia mobile phone, a laptop and Rs 10 
lakh from Afzal. In his Statement of the Accused, 
Afzal says he was arrested at a bus stop in 
Srinagar and that no laptop, mobile phone or 
money was 'seized' from him.

Scandalously, the Arrest Memos for both Afzal and 
Shaukat have been signed in Delhi, by Bismillah, 
Geelani's younger brother, who was at the time 
being held in illegal confinement at the Lodhi 
Road Police Station. Meanwhile, the two witnesses 
who signed the seizure memo for the phone, the 
laptop and the Rs 10 lakh are both from the J&K 
Police. One of them is Head Constable Mohammed 
Akbar (Prosecution Witness 62) who, as we shall 
see later, is no stranger to Mohammad Afzal, and 
is not just any old policeman who happened to be 
passing by. Even by the J&K Police's own 
admission they first located Afzal and Shaukat in 
Parimpura Fruit Mandi.For reasons they don't 
state, the police didn't arrest them there. They 
say they followed them to a less public 
place-where there were no public witnesses.

So here's another serious inconsistency in the 
prosecution's case. Of this the high court 
judgement says 'the time of arrest of accused 
persons has been seriously dented'. Shockingly, 
it is at this contested time and place of arrest 
that the police claim to have recovered the most 
vital evidence that implicates Afzal in the 
conspiracy: the mobile phone and the laptop. Once 
again, in the matter of the date and time of the 
arrests, and in the alleged seizure of the 
incriminating laptop and the Rs 10 lakh, we have 
only the word of the police, against the word of 
a 'terrorist'.

The Seizures Continued: The seized laptop, the 
police said, contained the files that created the 
fake home ministry pass and the fake identity 
cards. It contained no other useful information. 
They claimed that Afzal was carrying it to 
Srinagar in order to return it to Ghazi Baba. The 
Investigating Officer, ACP Rajbir Singh, said 
that the hard disk of the computer had been 
sealed on January 16, 2002 (a whole month after 
the seizure). But the computer shows that it was 
accessed even after that date. The courts have 
considered this but taken no cognisance of it. 
(On a speculative note, isn't it strange that the 
only incriminating information found on the 
computer were the files used to make the fake 
passes and ID cards? And a Zee TV film clip 
showing the Parliament Building. If other 
incriminating information had been deleted, why 
wasn't this? And why did Ghazi Baba, Chief of 
Operations of an international terrorist 
organisation, need a laptop-with bad artwork on 
it- so urgently?)

Consider the Mobile phone call records: Stared at 
for long enough, a lot of the 'hard evidence' 
produced by the Special Cell begins to look 
dubious. The backbone of the prosecution's case 
has to do with the recovery of mobile phones, SIM 
cards, computerised call records, and the 
testimonies of officials from cellphone companies 
and shopkeepers who sold the phones and SIM cards 
to Afzal and his accomplices. The call records 
that were produced to show that Shaukat, Afzal , 
Geelani and Mohammad (one of the dead militants) 
had all been in touch with each other very close 
to the time of the attack were uncertified 
computer printouts, not even copies of primary 
documents. They were outputs of the billing 
system stored as text files that could have been 
easily doctored and at any time. For example, the 
call records that were produced show that two 
calls had been made at exactly the same time from 
the same SIM card, but from separate handsets 
with separate IMEI numbers. This means that 
either the SIM card had been cloned or the call 
records were doctored.

Consider the SIM card: To prop up its version of 
the story, the prosecution relies heavily on one 
particular mobile phone number-9811489429. The 
police say it was Afzal's number-the number that 
connected Afzal to Mohammad, Afzal to Shaukat, 
and Shaukat to Geelani. The police also say that 
this number was written on the back of the 
identity tags found on the dead terrorists. 
Pretty convenient. Lost Kitten! Call Mom at 
9811489429. (It's worth mentioning that normal 
procedure requires evidence gathered at the scene 
of a crime to be sealed.The ID cards were never 
sealed and remained in the custody of the police 
and could have been tampered with at any time.)

A suspected 'militant' gunned down by the police in Ansal Plaza, Delhi, 2002
  The only evidence the police have that 
9811489429 was indeed Afzal's number is Afzal's 
confession, which as we have seen is no evidence 
at all. The SIM card has never been found. The 
police produced a prosecution witness, Kamal 
Kishore, who identified Afzal and said that he 
had sold him a Motorola phone and a SIM card on 
December 4, 2001. However, the call records the 
prosecution relied on show that that particular 
SIM card was already in use on the November 6, a 
whole month before Afzal is supposed to have 
bought it! So either the witness is lying, or the 
call records are false. The high court glosses 
over this discrepancy by saying that Kamal 
Kishore had only said that he sold Afzal a SIM 
card, not this particular SIM card. The Supreme 
Court judgement loftily says "The SIM card should 
necessarily have been sold to Afzal prior to 
4.12.2001." And that, my friends, is that.

Consider the Identification of the Accused: A 
series of prosecution witnesses, most of them 
shopkeepers, identified Afzal as the man to whom 
they had sold various things: ammonium nitrate, 
aluminum powder, sulphur, a Sujata mixer-grinder, 
packets of dry fruit and so on. Normal procedure 
would require these shopkeepers to pick Afzal out 
from a number of people in a test identification 
parade. This didn't happen. Instead Afzal was 
identified by them when he 'led' the police to 
these shops while he was in police custody and 
introduced to the witnesses as an Accused in the 
Parliament Attack. (Are we allowed to speculate 
about whether he led the police or the police led 
him to the shops? After all he was still in their 
custody, still vulnerable to torture. If his 
confession under these circumstances is legally 
suspect, then why not all of this?)

The judges have pondered the violation of these 
procedural norms but have not taken them very 
seriously. They said that they did not see why 
ordinary members of the public would have reason 
to falsely implicate an innocent person. But does 
this hold true, given the orgy of media 
propaganda that ordinary members of the public 
were subjected to, particularly in this case? 
Does this hold true, if you take into account the 
fact that ordinary shopkeepers, particularly 
those who sell electronic goods without receipts 
in the 'grey market', are completely beholden to 
the Delhi Police?

None of the inconsistencies that I have written 
about so far are the result of spectacular 
detective work on my part. A lot of them are 
documented in an excellent book called December 
13th: Terror Over Democracy by Nirmalangshu 
Mukherji; in two reports (Trial of Errors and 
Balancing Act) published by the Peoples' Union 
for Democratic Rights, Delhi; and most important 
of all, in the three thick volumes of judgements 
of the trial court, the high court and the 
Supreme Court. All these are public documents, 
lying on my desk. Why is it that when there is 
this whole murky universe begging to be revealed, 
our TV channels are busy staging hollow debates 
between uninformed people and grasping 
politicians? Why is it that apart from a few 
sporadic independent commentators, our newspapers 
carry front-page stories about who the hangman is 
going to be, and macabre details about the length 
(60 metres) and weight (3.75 kg) of the rope that 
will be used to hang Mohammed Afzal (Indian 
Express, October 16, 2006).Shall we pause for a 
moment to say a few hosannas for the Free Press?

It's not an easy thing for most people to do, but 
if you can, unmoor yourself conceptually, if only 
for a moment, from the "Police is Good/Terrorists 
are Evil" ideology. The evidence on offer minus 
its ideological trappings opens up a chasm of 
terrifying possibilities. It points in directions 
which most of us would prefer not to look.

The prize for the Most Ignored Legal Document in 
the entire case goes to the Statement of the 
Accused Mohammed Afzal under Section 313 of the 
Criminal Procedure Code. In this document, the 
evidence against him is put to him by the court 
in the form of questions. He can either accept 
the evidence or dispute it, and has the 
opportunity to put down his version of his story 
in his own words. In Afzal's case, given that he 
has never had any real opportunity to be heard, 
this document tells his story in his voice.

In this document, Afzal accepts certain charges 
made against him by the prosecution. He accepts 
that he met a man called Tariq. He accepts that 
Tariq introduced him to a man called Mohammad. He 
accepts that he helped Mohammad come to Delhi and 
helped him to buy a second-hand white Ambassador 
car. He accepts that Mohammad was one of the five 
fidayeen who was killed in the Attack. The 
important thing about Afzal's Statement of the 
Accused is that he makes no effort to completely 
absolve himself or claim innocence. But he puts 
his actions in a context that is devastating. 
Afzal's statement explains the peripheral part he 
played in the Parliament attack. But it also 
ushers us towards an understanding of some 
possible reasons for why the investigation was so 
shoddy, why it pulls up short at the most crucial 
junctures and why it is vital that we do not 
dismiss this as just incompetence and shoddiness. 
Even if we don't believe Afzal, given what we do 
know about the trial and the role of the Special 
Cell, it is inexcusable not to look in the 
direction he's pointing. He gives specific 
information-names, places, dates. (This could not 
have been easy, given that his family, his 
brothers, his wife and young son live in Kashmir 
and are easy meat for the people he mentions in 
his deposition.)

  In Afzal's words:

"I live in Sopre J&K and in the year 2000 when I 
was there Army used to harass me almost daily, 
then said once a week. One Raja Mohan Rai used to 
tell me that I should give information to him 
about militants. I was a surrendered militant and 
all militants have to mark Attendance at Army 
Camp every Sunday. I was not being physically 
torture by me. He used to only just threatened 
me. I used to give him small information which I 
used to gather from newspaper, in order to save 
myself. In June/ July 2000 I migrated from my 
village and went to town Baramullah. I was having 
a shop of distribution of Surgical instruments 
which I was running on commission basis. One day 
when I was going on my scooter S.T.F (State Task 
Force) people came and picked me up and they 
continuously tortured me for five days. Somebody 
had given information to S.T.F that I was again 
indulging in militant activities. That person was 
confronted with me and released in my presence. 
Then I was kept by them in custody for about 25 
days and I got myself released by paying Rs 1 
lakh. Special Cell People had confirmed this 
incident. Thereafter I was given a certificate by 
the S.T.F and they made me a Special Police 
Officer for six months. They were knowing I will 
not work for them. Tariq met me in Palhalan S.T.F 
camp where I was in custody of S.T.F. Tariq met 
me later on in Sri Nagar and told me he was 
basically working for S.T.F.I told him I was also 
working for S.T.F. Mohammad who was killed in 
Attack on Parliament was along with Tariq. Tariq 
told me he was from Keran sector of Kashmir and 
he told me that I should take Mohammad to Delhi 
as Mohammad has to go out of country from Delhi 
after some time. I don't know why I was caught by 
the police of Sri Nagar on 15.12.2001. I was 
boarding bus at Sri Nagar bus stop, for going 
home when police caught me. Witness Akbar who had 
deposed in the court that he had apprehended 
Shaukat and me in Sri Nagar had conducted a raid 
at my shop about a year prior to December 2001 
and told me that I was selling fake surgical 
instruments and he took Rs 5000/- from me. I was 
tortured at Special Cell and one Bhoop Singh even 
compelled me to take urine and I saw family of S. 
A.R. Geelani also there, Geelani was in miserable 
condition. He was not in a position to stand. We 
were taken to Doctor for examination but 
instructions used to be issued that we have to 
tell Doctor that everything was alright with a 
threat that if we do not do so we be again 
tortured."

He then asks the court's permission to add some more information.

"Mohammad the slain terrorist of Parliament 
attack had come along with me from Kashmir. The 
person who handed him over to me is Tariq. Tariq 
is working with Security Force and S.T.F JK 
Police. Tariq told me that if I face any problem 
due to Mohammad he will help me as he knew the 
security forces and S.T.F very well... Tariq had 
told me that I just have to drop Mohammad at 
Delhi and do nothing else. And if I would not 
take Mohammad with me to Delhi I would be 
implicated in some other case. I under these 
circumstances brought Mohammad to Delhi under a 
compulsion without knowing he was a terrorist."

So now we have a picture emerging of someone who 
could be a key player. 'Witness Akbar' (PW 62), 
Mohd Akbar, Head Constable, Parimpora Police 
Station, the J&K policeman who signed the Seizure 
Memo at the time of Afzal's arrest. In  a letter 
to Sushil Kumar, his Supreme Court lawyer, Afzal 
describes a chilling moment at one point in the 
trial. In the court, Witness Akbar, who had come 
from Srinagar to testify about the Seizure Memo, 
reassured Afzal in Kashmiri that "his family was 
alright". Afzal immediately recognised that this 
was a veiled threat. Afzal also says that after 
he was arrested in Srinagar he was taken to the 
Parimpora police station and beaten, and plainly 
told that his wife and family would suffer dire 
consequences if he did not co-operate. (We 
already know that Afzal's brother Hilal had been 
held in illegal detention by the SOG during some 
crucial months.)

In this letter, Afzal describes how he was 
tortured in the STF camp-with electrodes on his 
genitals and chillies and petrol in his anus. He 
mentions the name of Dy Superintendent of Police 
Dravinder Singh who said he needed him to do a 
'small job' for him in Delhi. He also says that 
some of the phone numbers mentioned in the 
chargesheet can be traced to an STF camp in 
Kashmir.


  Protests against Afzal's hanging in Srinagar

  It is Afzal's story that gives us a glimpse into 
what life is really like in the Kashmir Valley. 
It's only in the Noddy Book version we read about 
in our newspapers that Security Forces battle 
Militants and innocent Kashmiris are caught in 
the cross-fire. In the adult version, Kashmir is 
a valley awash with militants, renegades, 
security forces, double-crossers, informers, 
spooks, blackmailers, blackmailees, 
extortionists, spies, both Indian and Pakistani 
intelligence agencies, human rights activists, 
NGOs and unimaginable amounts of unaccounted-for 
money and weapons.There are not always clear 
lines that demarcate the boundaries between all 
these things and people, it's not easy to tell 
who is working for whom.

Truth, in Kashmir, is probably more dangerous 
than anything else. The deeper you dig, the worse 
it gets. At the bottom of the pit is the SOG and 
STF that Afzal talks about. These are the most 
ruthless, indisciplined and dreaded elements of 
the Indian security apparatus in Kashmir. Unlike 
the more formal forces, they operate in a 
twilight zone where policemen, surrendered 
militants, renegades and common criminals do 
business. They prey upon the local population, 
particularly in rural Kashmir. Their primary 
victims are the thousands of young Kashmiri men 
who rose up in revolt in the anarchic uprising of 
the early '90s and have since surrendered and are 
trying to live normal lives.

In 1989, when Afzal crossed the border to be 
trained as a militant, he was only 20 years old. 
He returned with no training, disillusioned with 
his experience. He put down his gun and enrolled 
himself in Delhi University. In 1993 without ever 
having been a practising militant, he voluntarily 
surrendered to the Border Security Force (BSF). 
Illogically enough, it was at this point that his 
nightmares began. His surrender was treated as a 
crime and his life became a hell. Can young 
Kashmiri men be blamed if the lesson they draw 
from Afzal's story is that it would be not just 
stupid, but insane to surrender their weapons and 
submit to the vast range of myriad cruelties the 
Indian State has on offer for them?

  The story of Mohammed Afzal has enraged 
Kashmiris because his story is their story too. 
What has happened to him could have happened, is 
happening and has happened to thousands of young 
Kashmiri men and their families. The only 
difference is that their stories are played out 
in the dingy bowels of joint interrogation 
centres, army camps and police stations where 
they have been burned, beaten, electrocuted, 
blackmailed and killed, their bodies thrown out 
of the backs of trucks for passers-by to find. 
Whereas Afzal's story is being performed like a 
piece of medieval theatre on the national stage, 
in the clear light of day, with the legal 
sanction of a 'fair trial', the hollow benefits 
of a 'free press' and all the pomp and ceremony 
of a so-called democracy.

If Afzal is hanged, we'll never know the answer 
to the real question: Who attacked the Indian 
Parliament? Was it the Lashkar-e-Toiba? The 
Jaish-e-Mohammed? Or does the answer lie 
somewhere deep in the secret heart of this 
country that we all live in and love and hate in 
our own beautiful, intricate, various, and thorny 
ways?

There ought to be a Parliamentary Inquiry into 
the December 13 attack on Parliament. While the 
inquiry is pending, Afzal's family in Sopore must 
be protected because they are vulnerable hostages 
in this bizarre story.

To hang Mohammed Afzal without knowing what 
really happened is a misdeed that will not easily 
be forgotten. Or forgiven. Nor should it be.

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