Sohrabuddin And Tulsiram: The Twain Shall Not Part
By Mustafa Khan
05 May, 2010
Countercurrents.org
There is no doubt about the good relationship between Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his friend Tulsiram Prajapati. The police in Gujarat are so wily that they still feel that they could cover up the matter of fake encounter to save Narendra Modi. The chief minister was not only morally responsible for the events in Gujarat ever since he was sworn in office but given his penchant for Hindutva he was the spring sources of all actions.
When Modi was chosen as CM he contested election just before February 2002. Ehsan Jafri spoke against Modi during the election because of the die hard communalist nature of the person. This irked Modi because his background of RSS made him believe India as the heirloom of Hindus and the mians (Muslims) as second class citizens and what is worst “the outsiders”. He personally took it out against Jafri on the fateful day of February 28, the last phone call of the former MP to CM bears it out.
Rising on the crest of the anti Muslim weltanschauung in the aftermath of 9/11, Modi and PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee both made hay when the sun of the weltanschauung was shining. It is in this context that the events in Gujarat need to be analyzed. The fake encounters were a carefully crafted design to put the Muslims into a tight corner. The calculated effect was what the RSS wanted, downgrading the Muslims, boycotting them, dispossessing them of their acquired position.
This was the larger strategy of which the fake encounters came as easy manipulate able tactic. The encounters were made out to be deshbhukti, patriotism, the love of the country the perpetrators showed in killing the enemies of the country. That the chief minister was the target of assassination was facile probability. Even the most unlikely person like Ishrat Jehan and her friends were killed to copycat the strategy. She might have been just going Ahemdabad on a pleasure tour as was Sohrabuddin, his wife Kauserbi and friend Tulsiram Prajapati visiting Hyderabad.
Sohrab and Tulsiram were chums and may have had indulged in smuggling and making a fast buck. Since the third person in the bus with a reserve ticket from the bus agency in Hyderabad traveling with Sohrab and wife was Tulsiram it was but logical that the police would not like him to live another day and tell the truth. Either he disappeared to escape arrest or the police caught him as well and he was let off after he coughed up money. Fake encounters were also a business enterprise involving astronomical amount of cash. The state was involved as the opposition leader Bharatsinh Solanki said that the state earned crores by way of fake encounters! The marble merchant of Rajasthan gave 60 lakh to ATS to finish off Sohrab. The money was routed through one of the senior BJP general secretaries. No chief minister in India can be so naïve not to know this thanks to the ace encounter specialists in Mumbai who own palatial houses and hotels in Dubai. It is not just Dawood Ibraahim, son of a cop, who chose Dubai. The regular cops were not far behind.
Tulsiram was killed soon after DG Vanzara assumed office of DIG Border range that includes Banskantha, on December 28, 2006.
There was a well coordinated strategy that involved the cops in Hyderabad, Rajasthan and Gujarat. After the fake encounter of Sohrab on November 26, 2005, Vanzara told in a press conference that Sohrab was an agent of Lashkar-e-Toiba and had gone to Hyderabad to establish ties with others in the L-e-T. Incidentally the Hyderabad police also followed similar strategy in the aftermath of the Mecca mosque blast.
Why the twain shall not part is that Tulsiram was killed when the state was frustrated in covering up the murder of Sohrab. In the night of November 24, 2005 ATS of Gujarat had ordered Tulsiram to Danilimda flat to identify the duo, Sohrab and Kauserbi, this hours before Sohrab was killed. Geetha Johari had discovered this in her investigation of the case. The home minister Amit Shah had allegedly been instrumental in the Commandant of Home Guards GC Raiger taking the investigation away from Geetha Johari on December 18, 2006 and ten days later Tulsiram was bumped off. Geetha Johari would have found more. But then she found out that Sohrab and wife were kept at Girish Patel’s flat. Vanzara and Rajkumar Pandiyan urgently contacted Amit Shah and told about the discovery of the tell-tale secret.
What is true of CM and HM complicity in genocide of 2002 is equally true of the fake encounters since then.
Tulsiram did what Haren Pandiya did, reveal the secret of the conspiracy. Tulsiram told brother of Sohrab, Rubabuddin, that he had been told to identify Sohrab and Kauser held at Danilimda flat. The state could brooke neither. Therefore the chain of command theory makes the CM accountable for these murders.
The state of Gujarat was truly administered by BJP according to its ideology. Maintaining a Muslim face like Sikandar Bakht or Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been its hall mark of politicking with the minority. The police did the same, Rajasthan inspector Abdul Rehman fired two shots at Sohrab who was thrown on the road by inspector Chaube, ASI Ramsingh fired one shot, ASI Himanshusingh fired two shots and PI Ramsingh fired one shot.
A stolen two wheeler was ordered by the ATS to be placed at the place where Sohrabuddin was killed to make out that he was riding. Tulsiram had seen both Sohrab and wife and also the police officer who went to bring the stolen vehicle from ATS compound. But in the press briefing Vanzara had professed ignorance about Kauserbi. Rubabbuddin thus appealed to the court with a habeas corpus on his sister in law. The Gujarat police and administration first tried to brush it off that they did not know about her. Then inquiry into the matter revealed that she was with her husband and the police must have killed her as well. Thus it was again Tulsiram and his friendship with the family that helped truth to see the light of day. BJP did nothing to help out the Sheikh family which was active in support of it till then. Is it not a proof that BJP is a Hindu communalist party? Is it not the same party whose prime minister did not allow a motion for the mourning the death of Ehsan Jafri in parliament? Communalism is multifaceted as can be seen the promptness with which BJP opposes the so called ‘appeasement.’
Tulsiram was accused by the police in another crime and put in central jail of Udaipur. When the home minister Amit Shah was informed how the investigation has exposed VHP leader Grish Patel’s involvement they acted fast. The Rajasthan police under MN Dinesh took Tulsiram to Gujarat and on the way killed him. But they too had woven a web of lies. That Tulsiram tried to run away by throwing chilli powder at the cops with the help of two accomplices. As he was fleeing he waved at a car which turned out to be a police car and in the subsequent encounter he was shot dead.
In the last analysis what emerges from this parable of the twain shall not part even in death is a lasting moral for the time. The much larger twain of India, Hindus and Muslims, also must not part in the fight over terrorism if we have to really win it. Even in taking on the governments which sponsor the fake encounters (state terrorism).
