"The younger children had not even heard of Modi. None of them knew what an 'encounter' was. And they could not believe that their beloved Ishrat was suddenly dead, and branded a terrorist. She was just 19." BAREFOOT The end of one life: Ishrat Jehan HARSH MANDER
The police cover-up was clumsy and ham-handed, the forensic evidence crystal clear, but no court had until then chosen to look this ugly and explosive truth in the face.
 Vindicated: Ishrat Jehan's mother Shameera, brother Anwar and sister Mussarat. Ishrat Jehan was barely 17 when her father died from a brain tumour, leaving behind a large bereaved family in a small rented apartment in Mumra, a Mumbai suburb. Ishrat was not the eldest of the six children, but she was the brightest and most respo nsible. Still in high school, she started tuitions for children of the neighbourhood. The fees the children gave her became the main source of survival for the closely knit family. Ishrat entered college for a bachelor's degree in science. She would cook breakfast for the family, rush to college, and return to teach two batches of children. Their mother Shameema spent most of her day at the sewing machine, stitching zari borders to saris. They owned no television, and were not allowed to watch films or even to visit friends. They were busy just in the business of everyday living: content in their routine of studying, working, dreaming; hardly aware of the world outside their home. Hard days The summer months after school examinations were the hardest for the family, because school children were on holiday, and none came to Ishrat for tuitions. In March 2004, some relatives introduced the family to a middle-aged man Javed, who was looking for help with marketing and accounts for his perfume business. He would pay 3,500 rupees a month. It would also involve some out-station visits, for which he would pay extra. With seven mouths to feed, her mother had little option but to allow Ishrat to accept the employment, for the lean summer months. Ishrat made two short visits to Pune and Lucknow. On June 11, she left on her last out-station assignment. Her brother left her at the bus stand. Javed was to meet her at Nasik, from where they were to travel by car to other cities. On the evening of June 16, a group of young strangers visited their home. They asked them: Have you not heard the news? Don't you watch television? The visitors initially said they were from Ishrat's college, and they needed her passport photograph for her college forms. Around 8 at night they finally broke the terrible news. They were journalists. Ishrat had been killed in a police encounter. She was charged with a conspiracy to kill Modi. Television channels were broadcasting the sensational news all day. They needed her photograph to flash on television. The cold dread and shock of Ishrat's family was matched only by their utter bewilderment. The younger children had not even heard of Modi. None of them knew what an 'encounter' was. And they could not believe that their beloved Ishrat was suddenly dead, and branded a terrorist. She was just 19. But they had no time even to grieve. By 9 p.m., police came to their home, evacuated and sealed the house, and drove the entire terrified family to the police station. Throngs of journalists and television cameras had by then crowded outside their home. The police dropped them back at 2.30 a.m. Their house was sealed. Shameera and the children sat sleepless the whole night at a nearby shop. By morning, the journalists had grown virtually into a mob. A team of women policemen arrived, opened the seal of the house, and searched it, roughly throwing out the contents of cupboards, stripping the beds, over-turning all their furniture. Ishrat's mother then was driven to Ahmedabad by some sympathetic neighbours, to collect her daughter's body. She was grilled and abused by the senior police officials there. Finally they gave her the body — stiff, bloodied, defaced with bullet wounds. The assembled media went wild with their cameras and questions. Back in the Mumbai suburb Mumra, they were stunned when literally tens of thousands of people attended the funeral; all their faces were grim and strained, as though for each it was a personal loss. Continuing harassment
In a few weeks, the media forgot about them, but the police did not. The neighbours were initially helpful, but if anyone tried to assist the family, they were soon summoned for questioning and harassed by the police for sympathy to terrorists. The family was soon left almost alone. "There were times when we wondered why we were still alive", her sister Mussarat recalls. 'Why were we being punished?' They moved into a new rented house, but the mundane business of feeding now six mouths, without their father and Ishrat, loomed over their lives. Mussarat dropped out of studies, and helped her mother in sewing. Young Anwar also sewed, and started holding computer classes. Not everyone abandoned them, and there were a few in the local community who collected money for them once in a while, to help them survive. They also assisted Shameera to file a petition in the Gujarat High Court seeking a CBI enquiry into the deaths. But the case remained dormant. Then in 2006 unexpected glimmerings of hope were lit. Their friends came with the news that the same Gujarat police officers led by Vanazara, involved in Ishrat's death, had been jailed for the killing of Sohrabuddin and his wife in another 'fake encounter'. Shameera wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court, that she wanted to know who the killers of her daughter were. They did not hear from the Court. Shameera persisted, aided by human rights lawyers Vrinda Grover and Mukul Sinha. Javed's father filed a petition in 2007. Two years later he was advised to go to the Supreme Court. As these superior courts prevaricated, an unknown junior metropolitan magistrate S.P. Tamang, responsible for conducting what is almost always an utterly routine statutory enquiry into the encounter killings, stood tall, bravely affirming justice and truth. He examined the forensic reports and statements, and in a lucid and tightly argued report on September 7, 2009, stunned everyone by concluding that the police version of how the killings occurred was an 'absolutely false and concocted story'. The police had charged that Ishrat was a Lashkar-e-Toiba activist, who drove into Ahmedabad with three other terrorists, in a plot to kill Chief Minister Modi. The police was tipped off, and chased their vehicle, and fired into the car tyre, forcing it to halt. The terrorists are then said to have alighted from the car, and fired relentlessly at the police vehicle. In self-defence, the police finally felled all four in a fierce gun battle. Official cover-up
Magistrate Tamang analysed the post-mortem and forensic evidence, to conclude irrefutably that Ishrat and the three men were actually killed several hours before the alleged shoot-out, from close range. The police had then taken their bodies to the roadside, fired themselves on their police jeep, and planted an AK 47 weapon in the hands of one of the dead men, and explosives in their car. It was cold blooded murder by the police, including of an innocent 19-year-old college girl. The police cover-up was clumsy and ham-handed, the forensic evidence crystal clear, but no court had until then chosen to look this ugly and explosive truth in the face. This is what Tamang did. Ishrat's family received the news with complete disbelief, and then a poignant sense of elation, as they distributed sweets. The grim report confirmed the brutal circumstances in which their beloved Ishrat was killed. But it also cleared her name, and identified her killers to be men in uniform. The family could emerge at last from the dense darkness of isolation and stigma of the last five years, which they thought would never end. After these long years, they could once again step out of their homes with their heads high. They could begin to live, and hope again. This hope was fragile, frail, tentative… But still it was hope. With Regards Abi  "At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst" - Aristotle |
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