Every murder comes back

With Amit Shah's arrest, horror stories of the political and police mafia in Gujarat, are spilling over
Sadiq Naqvi Delhi

Long and relentless nights of long knives and macabre horror stories are unravelling every day in the 'vibrant Gujarat' of Chief Minister Narendra Modi. And every episode, often loaded with gory details, is pointing towards an entrenched establishment of a secret political and police mafia which had run amok violating every law of the land, and all norms of human conduct. 

The dangerous phenomena points towards the complete communalisation and criminalisation of the ruling Hindutva political regime and police force within the unaccountable BJP-led state government in Gujarat, combined with a deadly nexus of corrupt criminals, politicians, murderers, gangsters, extortionists, builders, marble lobbies. The trigger-happy cops and politicians have been so cocky, that they have left a trail of evidence, and clues, across a terrain of multiple fake encounters in cold-blood.

With one dirty disclosure emerging after another, top cops turning witnesses, and new witnesses emerging from the shadows, a continuous horror spiral of murder, extortion, crime, big money, even allegations of rape, have come to stalk Narendra Modi, his government, and  his party. With the Hindutva terror trail and bomb blasts across the country - killing hundreds - also unfolding new RSS links, the BJP is seriously in the dock, especially after the arrest of Amit Shah, junior home minister and right-hand honcho of Modi, who was the direct boss of Shah in the state home ministry.  

Shah was arrested by the CBI on the charge of masterminding the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and subsequent murders of his wife Kauserbi in November 2005, and, later, sole eyewitness Tulsi Prajapati in December 2006. Shah has been booked under Sections 120B, 341, 342, 364, 365, 384, 302, 201 of the Indian Penal Code. The charge sheet was filed on July 23, 2010 against him and 14 others in Ahmedabad.

Shah, the CBI says, was running an extortion racket with the help of some senior police officers who formed his close coterie. The CBI has a record of phone intercepts between the cops and Shah at the time of the encounter. It is learnt that Shah acted on the behest of influential BJP leaders from Rajasthan with strong links with the marble lobby which was being pressurised by Sohrabuddin for money. Sohrabuddin, in turn, was working as a conduit for Shah in this massive inter-state extortion racket, along with state Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) chief DG Vanzara, IPS officer Ajay Chudasama, who are all accused of direct complicity in the murders. 

There is enough evidence on record to suggest that there was a larger conspiracy to eliminate Sohrabuddin.  It is being alleged that even the firing episode inside the office of Popular Builders in Navrangpura in Ahmedabad in November, 2004, was part of this conspiracy. Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian, (including Chudasama, recently arrested), who are now in jail for the last 40 months (a total of 14 cops are in jail), were entrusted by Shah to kill Sohrabuddin. The CBI has alleged that it was Vanzara himself who had lit the pyre of Kauserbi (helped by a sub inspector and inspector), after she was murdered at the Arham farmhouse near Gandhinagar.