I/III.
24th September 2008
Press Statement
Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group.
Jamia Teachers Condemn Communal Witch Hunt and Demand
Independent Impartial Enquiry
The events of 19th September and subsequent days have
left the Jamia community shocked, aggrieved and
fearful. In particular the manner and the suspicious
circumstances in which young boys, many of them
students of Jamia Millia Islamia, have been picked up
by the Special Cell, and pronounced "dreaded
terrorists" by a trial by an utterly sensationalist
and prejudiced media has created an atmosphere of fear
and suspicion.
On the day of the operation indiscriminate arbitrary
detentions were made that included five school
children living in the flat opposite and were released
only late in the night. Arrests are continuing
unabated. Even as some teachers had accompanied senior
lawyers to meet with the families of boys picked up,
on 23.09.2008, around 5 o' clock, news arrived that
Saqib Akhtar, a 17-year-old boy, a distant cousin of
slain Atif Amin, had been picked up from his residence
in Abul Fazal Enclave. A complaint with the police was
filed at the Jamia Nagar Police Station. Within an
hour the Special Cell communicated to the boy's family
that he would be released. It appears that the
presence of a well-known Supreme Court lawyer,
teachers from Jamia, and senior journalists pressured
the Special Cell enough to refrain from detaining an
innocent boy, and ensured that Saqib returned home
safe the same evening. This incident illustrates the
vulnerability of the people residing in the locality:
not only are they subject to arbitrary 'arrests' by
the Special Cell, which whisks them off to undisclosed
locations, the local police refuses to file complaints
or feigns ignorance. Further, they lack recourse to
proper legal aid.
We as teachers feel that we cannot afford to isolate
ourselves in intellectual ivory towers. There is an
urgent need to reach out to the community which lives
at our very doorstep, and where a large number of
teachers, administrative staff and our students
reside. The locality has been besieged by a sense of
alienation, terror and insecurity. We unequivocally
condemn this brazen witch hunt in the name of fighting
terror and pledge solidarity with the people of Jamia
Nagar, and especially the families of those whose boys
have been picked up and arrested without a shred of
evidence.
Independent fact finding teams and even sections of
the media have raised doubts about the veracity of the
police version regarding the 'encounter' on 19th
September and the subsequent arrests made on that
basis. We demand that an impartial and independent
enquiry be constituted to examine this entire episode.
We further demand that a list of students who have
been picked up by the Delhi Police/ Special Cell
should be provided to the University immediately. The
University must demand that no students (whether
living in the hostel or not) shall be picked up/
arrested without intimating the university
authorities. And upon receiving such information, the
administration must actively intervene and ensure that
students are not tortured in custody and that their
rights as citizens are not denied.
The Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group also resolves to
extend legal or any other assistance to the students
arrested/ implicated in this entire episode. We shall
work to extend the movement to include teachers from
other universities, as well as other bodies such as
the DUTA, JNUTA, IGNOUTA, and other democratic and
secular individuals and organisations.
Signed:
Prof. Farida Khan (Faculty of Education)
Prof. A. K. Ramakrishnan (Centre for West Asian
Studies)
Prof. Janaki Rajan (Faculty of Education)
Prof. Azra Razzack (Centre for Dalit and Minority
Studies)
Prof. Navnita Behera (Centre for Peace and Conflict
Resolution)
Dr. Neshat Quaiser (Department of Sociology)
Dr. Padmanabh Samarendra (Centre for Dalit and
Minority Studies)
Dr. Sanghamitra Misra (Centre for Peace and Conflict
Resolution)
Dr. Ravi Kumar (Department of Sociology)
Dr. Narendra Kumar (Centre for Dalit and Minority
Studies)
Dr. Rahul Ramangundam (Centre for Dalit and Minority
Studies)
Dr. Farah Farooqi (Faculty of Education)
Dr. Anuradha Ghosh (Department of English)
Manisha Sethi (Centre for the Study of Comparative
religions and Civilizations)
Sreerekha (Centre for Women's Studies)
Tanweer Fazal (Centre for Peace and Conflict
Resolution)
Ahmed Sohaib (Centre for the Study of Comparative
religions and Civilizations)
Kamei Aphun (Department of Sociology)
Dr. Shahid Jamal Ansari (Centre for West Asian
Studies)
Dr. Sabiha Hussain (Centre for Dalit and Minorities
Studies)
Ambarein Qadas (Mass Communication Research Centre)
M.G. Shahnawaz (Department of Psychology)
Waseem Ahmed Khan (Faculty of Education)
Meher Fatima Hussain (Centre for Dalit and Minority
Studies)
Harpreet Kaur Jass (Faculty of Education)
Arshad Ahmed (Faculty of Education)
Dr. Sarwat Ali (Institute of Advanced Studies in
Education)
Dr. Rafiullah Azmi (Centre for West Asian Studies)
Arshad Alam (Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies)
Dr. Arif Ali, (Department of Biotechnology)
Adil Mehdi (Department of English)
Haris Ul Haq (Jamia Middle School)
Dr. Ranjeeta Dutta, (Department of History)
II.
*Cover-up charges cling to terror probe*
NDTV Correspondent
Wednesday, September 24, 2008, (New Delhi)
http://www.ndtv. com/convergence/ ndtv/story.
aspx?id=NEWEN200 80066505
Delhi's latest terror spectre throws up contrasting
images. A police officer
-- one of finest -- shot 3 times. And, young,
educated, fun-loving men who
the police say are deadly terrorists.
The police are convinced that Atif and his group, all
in their 20s with the
youngest just 17, are the men responsible for all the
major blasts in India
this year and the death of nearly 150 people.
But now, a group of lawyers and human rights activists
are raising
questions. They ask who are the two missing men, who
escaped from the flat
in Batla house on the day of encounter. And how could
they possibly escape
when the only way out was a narrow staircase and there
were several
policemen in the area.
*(Watch)*<http://www.ndtv. com/convergence/
ndtv/videopod/ default.aspx? id=39463>
The other question is that the profiles of these young
men seemed to
indicate terror was the farthest thing from their
minds. The were regular
college going students.
One of those arrested, Zeeshan, was giving his exams
on the day of the
encounter. He came on TV to surrender. Why didn't he
run away? The police
say they have evidence that he planted the bomb at
Delhi's Barakhamba Road.
Another alleged Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative Saqib
was also arrested. A
gold medalist in economics honours from Jamia Millia
University, he was a
regular on Orkut. He maintained a profile like most
users do and had a wide
circle of friends.
Cops claim the 23-year-old was involved in both
Ahmedabad and Delhi blasts.
Saqib's family has countered the police claims and
furnished documents to
show that Saquib appeared for six exams from the 23rd
of July to the 28th
July -- the time that the police claim he was planning
the blasts.
Shakib's brother says: "He was the topper in his class
for the last two
years."
The house where the men were staying and its caretaker
are also under the
scanner. The caretaker, who has worked in the PWD for
several years, insists
that he gave the details of the men staying at his
home to the police almost
a month before the blasts.
However, the police have now arrested him for forging
these documents. His
son has also been arrested for involvement with
terrorists.
There are several such questions to which there are
still no easy answers.
And the police know they will have to find hard
evidence to back each of
their claims. However, they say the death of Inspector
Sharma proves there
was no fake encounter.
III.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Editorial/Error_tactics/articleshow/3519726.cms
Error tactics
24 Sep 2008, 0128 hrs IST, Jug Suraiya
The scourge of terror India is facing is compounded by
what seems to have become a persistent policy of error
on the part of the law enforcement agencies, from the
home ministry down to the policeman on the beat. The
Batla House encounter in Delhi, in which two suspected
terrorists belonging to the radical wing of the Indian
Mujahideen (IM) were shot dead, one was arrested, and
a much-decorated police officer, Mohan Chand Sharma,
lost his life, is a case in point. While the Delhi
Police and the Intelligence Bureau have claimed that
the terrorist cell behind previous blasts, in Delhi
and in Ahmedabad, has been virtually neutralised,
several awkward questions have been raised which have
yet to be satisfactorily answered by the authorities.
Why did Mohan Sharma — a thoroughly professional
career police-man known for his cool, analytical
ability — go into a potential combat zone without
taking the basic precautions of wearing a bullet-proof
vest or asking for back-up? How did two other
terrorists said to have been on the premises manage to
escape despite the police cordon set up around the
building? Had the IM 'mastermind' who was killed in
the shooting, Atif, actually undergone police
verification, as is claimed by the caretaker of the
hideout flat?
In a standard non-reply to these and similar
questions, a spokesperson for the Delhi Police is
quoted as having said: "It is the irony of this
country that they (presumably anyone who questions the
official version of any incident involving extremists
or suspected extremists) continue to sympathise with
the terrorists despite the death of a policeman in the
operation."
Surely the point is that such questions — which call
to account the efficacy of the official machinery to
apprehend and eliminate terror — are all the more
relevant in the context of the death of a brave law
enforcement officer, who has already become a local
folk hero. Mohan Sharma was a victim of terror. But
was he also a victim of the error tactics of the
official apparatus to fight terror?
Had the intelligence agencies (a misnomer if ever
there was one) been more accurate and anticipatory in
their information-gathering and fact-finding, had the
basic ground rules of armed engagement in the field
been observed, Mohan Sharma might well have been alive
today, the dedicated nemesis of many a terrorist and
other lawbreaker. Repeated official error has been,
and remains, the unwitting accomplice of terror. A
survey conducted by the TOI made the unsurprising
discovery that those states which had the highest
incidents of communal violence were also the most
prolific breeding grounds for potential extremists.
A climate of chronic creed- or caste-based hostility
and repression creates a backlash of fundamentalism,
either religious or ideological, as in the case of
so-called Naxals. Though this is patently obvious to
the point of banality, little or nothing has been done
to pre-empt and obviate extremism by deterring
communal and caste violence, both through more
vigilant policing and through punitive measures such
as the imposition of collective fines on communities
repeatedly indicted for such offences.
Errors of omission and commission encourage and foment
terrorism. Though the ban on SIMI justifiably stays in
place, Bajrang Dal continues with impunity — and in
some cases with alleged police complicity — to attack
Christian establishments, including orphanages, in
Karnataka and elsewhere. The Bajrang Dal represents a
fundamentalism as vicious as that of any terrorist
organisation. No, the Bajrang Dal does not plant bombs
which randomly kill innocent people of all creeds;
employing the energy-saving ergonomics of ethnic
cleansing the offshoot of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
attacks only Christian priests, nuns and orphans.
There are too few Christians in India — the putative
casus belli of conversions notwithstanding — to give
reactionary rise to Christian extremism as has
tragically happened with Islam. But this will owe
nothing to central and state governments' policies to
curb extremism in any form. And which, so far, have
only added 'error' to the't' in terror.
(secondopinion@timesgroup.com)
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