Unanswered Questions in the Ishrat Jahan case

LETTER TO NEW INDIAN EXPRESS

Dear Sir,

Reference ‘secular’ Seema Mustafa’s ” Misplaced priorities ” – ( TNIE – 16 Sep ).

The Bollywood style tearjerker – a la Ishrat Jahan – by our ‘secular’ columnist comes as no surprise!! I was anticipating its publication !! To that extent ‘The New Secular Christian-Muslim Express’, has not let the ‘secular side’ down!! Not in the least !!

On 01 Jul 2004,columnist TVR Shenoy wrote a piece in the news portal Rediff.com, entitled – ” Unanswered questions in the Ishrat Jahan case “. In that Article, Shenoy had raised valid
issues, which till date have not been answered by the ‘secular media’. Maybe, Seema could provide the answers? These are, to quote Shenoy:

– Everybody agrees that Ishrat Jahan disappeared from her house on June 12. Her mother Shamima Jahan Sheikh says she kept quiet about her daughter going missing because she
didn’t want a scandal. This is understandable enough (although some parents might have consulted the authorities to make sure that a child was safe, scandal be damned). But it begs the question: what was Ishrat Jahan doing between June 12, when she disappeared from her mother’s house, and June 15, when she was shot in the company of alleged terrorists?

– Second, the newspapers and television channels have been filing stories about Ishrat Jahan’s college-mates, her teachers, and her neighbours telling the world what a good girl she was. She was, they all insist, the last woman who could be suspected of ‘fundamentalist’tendencies. Once again, such assertions fly in the face of common sense. If you were a terrorist, would you actually go around announcing to the world that you intended to shoot Narendra Modi? Or would you keep quiet until the time came to act?

– How about Javed Ghulam Sheikh? His father Gopinatha Pillai is adamant about his son’s innocence. But here too there are questions which beg to be answered. I suppose there
could be some reason why he possessed passports both as Pranesh Kumar Pillai and as Javed Ghulam Sheikh (although under Indian law he should have surrendered one or the other). But is it true that he also had a third such document under the name of Sayyad Abdul Wahid? And what of his own sister’s supposed statement that one of the two alleged Pakistanis killed in the encounter had stayed with her brother?

TVR Shenoy conclusions make interesting reading. he wrote:

” Occam’s Razor suggests that nobody would leave their homes and families to escort strangers unless they shared some common purpose”. And then he poses the clinching question : ” But to the professional ‘secularists’ it is not these two who stand accused of intent to murder, it is the Gujarat police that is guilty of ‘state terrorism’. So why are they unwilling to grant the same presumption of innocence to the Gujarat police?”

Can our ‘secular’ Seema Mustafa provide the answers for the enlightenment of your readers?

Let us turn to the new poster boy of the ‘secularists’ – Metropolitan Magistrate Tamang. This new found love for this magistrate can be better understood in the light of the ‘secularist’ rantings in the wake of the Justice Wadhwa Commission of Inquiry, that went into the murder of the Australian missionary – Graham Staines. Justice Wadhwa committed the
cardinal sin of examing the evidence presented and after the due process of cross-examination, concluded:

” The Commission has scrutinized THE EVIDENCE before it — – . There is NO EVIDENCE TO SUGGEST THAT ANY OF THE PERSONS INVOLVED IN THE CRIME WAS IN FACT A MEMBER OF EITHER THE BAJRANG DAL OR BJP OR ANY ORGANIZATION”.

All hell broke loose on the ‘secular’ media front thereafter !!

As Arun Shourie wrote in his ” Harvesting our Souls ” (pp-15) :

” But no the secularists were all in rage. ‘A WHITEWASH’, ‘A POLITICALLY TUTORED REPORT’- they shouted. Justice Wadhwa had failed the litmus test: IF ONLY HE HAD INCLUDED A SENTENCE- A SINGLE SENTENCE! – IMPUTING, HOWSOEVER OBLIQUELY THAT DARA SINGH WAS IN SOME WAY AFFILIATED TO SOME ORGANIZATION THAT OUR FRIENDS COULD HAVE SOMEHOW LINKED TO THE RSS OR THE BJP, WHAT APPLAUSE WOULD HAVE
GREETED THE REPORT”.

 And the ‘clincher’. Shourie wrote:

” A COMMISSION OF INQUIRY IS TRUTHFUL ONLY IF IT IS USEFUL! AND IT IS USEFUL ONLY IF IT HELPS REINFORCE THE STEREOTYPE THEY HAVE MANUFACTURED”. Any wonder then Magistrate Tamang is the darling of the ‘secular mafia’ these days?!!

Be that as it may, reports appearing in sections of the media (not TNIE) indictae the following with respect to the Magistrate Tamang’s report:

– It had been produced with amazing speed
– The policemen who have been named were not questioned
– The due process of conducting a magisterial inquiry was not followed.   

I throw the gauntlet down and challenge Seema Mustafa to counter the above with respect to Tamang’s inquiry.

Here is one more for Seema Mustafa’s consumption !! Its an Article in Rediff.com of  15 Jul 2004, penned by journalist Sheela Bhatt (another ‘secular’, if I may add !!). It was entitled  ” On the trail of the terrorists “. Here is a snippet from the Article;

“ Javed, Ishrat, the two Pakistanis, the Ahmedabad lawyer, and Muzammil used coded language in all their communications on telephone and by e-mail. The telephone tapes and Ishrat’s diary revealed these codes. According to these, Advani was ‘Lala’, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was ‘Mubarak’, Vishwa Hindu Parishad Secretary General Dr Pravin Togadia was ‘Tinku’, Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray was ‘Kutta’, Uttar Pradesh BJP president Vinay Katiyar was ‘Kanta’ and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti was ‘Behenji’. Delhi was ‘Maika’ and Ahmedabad, ‘Sasural.’

They wanted to kill these leaders because they viewed them as enemies of Islam.

The two Pakistanis were smuggled into India from across the Bandipura border in Jammu and Kashmir. They were linked to Muzaffarabad-based terrorist Zaki-ur-Rehman who heads the Lashkar’s operations in the state.

LITTLE did Javed and Ishrat, or the others, know that they were being watched closely as they went about preparing for their terrorist acts. The couple and the Pakistanis are said to have travelled to many places, including Lucknow, Ibrahimpur, and Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh.”

Am sure Seema can ‘google’ the rest of the Article??

To the Editor-in-Chief of TNIE, my request is that the ‘secularists’ have to start thinking of a new modus operandii in purveying their ‘secular lies’!! Jhabua, Jhajjar, Baripada, Allahabad have already earned the media the sobriquet ” Secular Hoot and Scoot, Tell Lies and Run Away” !!! (TNIE-29 JUN 2004).

CHEERS !!

VANDE MATARAM

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