First the good news. The Gujarat high court has stayed the arrest of human rights activists Teesta Setalvad, Javed Anand and three others in connection with the Gulberg Society embezzlement case. This grants them a few more days of freedom, till April 4.
Ms Setalvad and others have been charged with embezzlement of funds collected for the victims of the Gulberg Society massacre in Ahmed-abad, in February 2002. This week, their anticipatory bail application was rejected by the Ahmedabad city civil and by the sessions court.
Now the bad news. The very fact that anyone successfully fighting a corrupt system and oppressive government is slapped with fake charges and denied bail shows how weak our democracy actually is. For years Ms Setalvad and Mr Anand have doggedly continued their fight for justice for the victims of the sectarian violence in Gujarat 2002, extracting guilty verdicts and life sentences for several of the accused in legal battles that were impossibly loaded against the victims.
As a result, over the years, Ms Setalvad has been charged with all kinds of crimes — from tutoring witnesses to falsely depose against the accused to surreptitiously digging up bodies of riot victims — and most charges have been proved to be fabricated. While examining one such case in 2012, the Supreme Court had said: “This is a hundred per cent spurious case to victimise the petitioner.” Adding: “This type of case does no credit to the state of Gujarat in any way.”
Clearly, the Supreme Court’s advice has had no effect on a state government headed by one who claims that his 56-inch chest and bachelorhood make him the ideal candidate for the Indian Prime Minister’s post. (Never mind that both these claims are false as well.)
Anyway, it appears that the investigators had closed this case a year ago, satisfied that the charges were wrong. The accused, apart from Ms Setalvad and Mr Anand, are three members of Gulberg Society who were themselves survivors of the massacre.
Salimbhai Sandhi and Firoz Gulzar Pathan each lost five members of their family. And Tanvir Jafri lost his father Ehsan Jafri, the former Congress MP who was hacked to death by Hindutva goons. Not exactly the profile of cunning rogues out to rob fellow members and residents of their housing society’s residential colony.
So why was the case revived now and an FIR filed in January 2014? May be because Ms Setalvad’s organisation was helping Zakia Jafri, Ehsan Jafri’s widow, to file a petition against the government?
Mrs Jafri’s appeal is in the high court now, prot-esting against the SIT’s clean chit to Narendra Modi regarding the 2002 violence. In fact, it accuses the chief minister and 59 other politicians, police personnel and administrative officers of conspiracy for mass murder and other very serious crimes.
But to be fair to Mr Modi, he is not the only one who flexes state muscle to intimidate activists.
Dr Binayak Sen, human rights activist and doctor, spent years in jail before he got bail and was later sentenced to life imprisonment for sedition. There was no material evidence, the judgment was based primarily on fabricated evidence and fake witnesses. He is now out on bail.
In spite of the fantastic publicity that this outrageous case got, we failed to rectify the dangerous flaws in our justice system and to review the vindictive use of laws to silence dissent. Hundreds of citizens are imprisoned and tortured on false charges particularly in “disturbed” areas, ordinary citizens and local activists who do not have the support of powerful well-wishers like Dr Sen or Ms Setalvad do. It is that much easier for the court to accept fabricated evidence and absurd arguments against unknown, powerless individuals hidden away from the media limelight.
From tribal rights activist Damayanti Barla in Ranchi, Jharkhand, to RTI activist Manoj and social activist Dandapani in Coimbatore, from anti-trafficking activist Mohammad Kalam in Forbesganj, or RTI activist Hemant Kumar in Muzaffarpur, both in Bihar, to the activist couple Seema Azad and Vishwa Vijay in Allahabad, protesters and crusaders for justice have often faced fabricated charges. But what makes the case against Ms Setalvad et al particularly important is the persistence with which the state government has attacked them.
Because far too much is at stake. Mr Modi is being projected not as a Prime Minister candidate but as the future Prime Minister.
Not exactly a modest man, Mr Narendra Modi himself has declared: “This is the first election when the country has decided the elections before voting.” And grandly announced what he will do “after (not ‘if’) I form the government.”
This is a clever game of auto-suggestion and making the insecure bow to “destiny”, a dangerous mix of threat and goading.
Riding high on corporate money, the unabashed support of several mega industrialists and a largely loyal mass media, Mr Modi could win this game of bluff very easily.
We must remember that Mr Modi has not won yet. Our democracy is not dead. Dissent-ing voices are not silenced. And the very citizens who make the mouse into a tiger can at any time feel threatened by it, and declare: “Punar mushiko bhava! (Turn back into the mouse!)” For the sake of Indian democracy, we must remember that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
The writer is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at: sen@littlemag.com
