Indian Supreme Court is trying to murder an innocent Kashmiri, Afzal Guru, to cover the December 13, 2001 ‘attack/drama’ outside the parliament building which was orchestrated by the ‘dirty tricks’ department of Indian intelligence agencies
Are BJP president Rajnath Singh & Secretary Gen. Arun Jaitley working for Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency?
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, October 18, 2006 - A couplet from the great 19th century Scottish poet and novelist, Sir Walter Scott, (1771-1832) which reads, “O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!” comes to mind when one reads about the controversy raging in the Indian media about an innocent Kashmiri, Mohammad Afzal Guru, who has been sentenced to death, by India’s Supreme Court which is packed with Neo-Nazi, right wing, Hindutva judges – most of them hailing from the minority Brahmin caste. Mohammad Afzal Guru, an innocent Kashmiri patriot, is supposed to hang, by the neck till he is dead, on October 20, 2006, for a crime he did not commit.Some months from now when Indian occupied Kashmir insurgency again spins out of control, with Afzal Guru’s judicial murder as the spark, (as the former Kashmir Chief minister Dr. Abdullah predicted the other day) the Hindutva crowd will claim, as is its wont, that ISI (Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency) agents planted inside the Indian Prime minister’s office, and India’s Home ministry, were responsible for the judicial murder of Mohammad Afzal Guru as his death suits Pakistan for the trouble it will create for India in disputed Kashmir. Readers might remember that the BJP crowd has been claiming that ISI agents in Prime minister Indira Gandhi’s office arranged the June 1984 attack on the Akal Takht Sahib in the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) Amritsar which led to the Sikh revolt. But, the way BJP Secretary General Arun Jaitley and BJP President Rajnath Singh have today attacked Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri’s reported remarks, favoring clemency for Mohammad Afzal Guru, have created doubts about the loyalty to India of these BJP honchos. The thought comes to mind that these fellows (BJP Secretary General Arun Jaitley and BJP President Rajnath Singh ) can’t be this dumb. These two BJP stalwarts must be covertly working for the ISI. (For details of the BJP protest, over Mr. Kasuri’s plea for clemency, please read report, by Rajeev Ranjan Roy, headlined, “Pak meddling on Afzal intolerable,” in the right wing PIONEER newspaper of Oct. 18, 2006 and Daily Times newspaper of Lahore, at: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\10\18\story_18-10-2006_pg7_16 and http://www.dailypioneer.com/archives2/default12.asp?main_variable=front%5Fpage&file_name=story3%2Etxt&counter_img=3&phy_path_it=D%3A%5Cdailypioneer%5Carchives2%5Coct1806) which organization most likely will look with favor at anything that keeps the pot boiling in disputed Kashmir.
It is common knowledge that Mohammad Afzal Guru, who is innocent, has been accused of involvement in the December 13, 2001 armed attack ‘drama’, organized by the ‘dirty tricks’ department of Indian intelligence, outside the impressive sandstone circular building, built by the Colonial British on stolen holy Sikh Gurdwara land, which houses the Indian parliament in New Delhi. This column, Khalistan Calling, carried an expose, in our issue of December 19, 2001, based on our reliable eye witness accounts from New Delhi at that time, about the ‘fingerprints’ of Indian intelligence all over the orchestrated December 13, 2006, parliament attack. We had said that the December 13 ‘drama’ was enacted ‘live’ under TV lights, by India’s Neo-Nazi, right wing, BJP Vajpayee government of that time, to justify the subsequent massing of one million Indian troops on Pakistan’s Eastern border by which tactic of coercive diplomacy Delhi hoped to obtain concessions from beleaguered Pakistan. At that point in time, Pakistan was under great pressure from the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan on its Western border. The then Home (police) minister, and deputy Prime minister of India, L. K. Advani, when asked, within minutes of the December 13, 2001, incident/drama outside the Indian parliament building, about the identity of the attackers, famously said: "They looked like Pakistanis". How he came to that conclusion is still a riddle.
Incidentally the 2002 coercive diplomacy, of massing a million Indian troops, at great expense of treasure and Indian lives (hundreds of Indian soldiers and Sikh civilians were wasted in accidents around newly laid minefields etc., on the Indo/Pakistan border) did not work. The half million strong Pakistan Army too, defiantly manned the border in force, in an eyeball to eyeball confrontation. Pakistan also pointedly unsheathed its nuclear fangs by testing a number of missiles, during the confrontation in 2002, which sent a loud and clear message to the Indian rulers that not only Punjab and Delhi, but Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore were also in the cross hairs of Pakistani nuclear tipped missiles. These nuclear missile tests not only panicked the American and European companies, who have invested in call offices and such in the above Indian cities, but caused great concern among the Sikhs. The world’s 25 million Sikhs realized the vulnerability of their Punjab Homeland, and the grave mortal danger to the holy shrines of the Sikh nation, on both sides of the Indo/Pak border, in case the border confrontation escalated into any nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan.
Coming back to the Afzal Guru drama; the biggest farce about Mohammad Afzal Guru's conviction, is the alleged unfair hearing process he had to go through. Thirty-seven-year old Mohammad Afzal Guru was arrested from his home in Sopore in Baramulla district, in Indian occupied Kashmir, on December 17, 2001, only three days after the so-called attack/drama on the parliament, along with his cousin, Shaukat Ahmad Guru and Shaukat's wife Afshan Guru. According to Delhi police, a Delhi university Professor of Kashmiri origin, S. R. Gilani, who was arrested earlier, had mentioned Afzal Guru's name during interrogation. The accused were presented in a court established under the infamous draconian POTA law, (law repealed in 2004) in Delhi. Meanwhile, Afzal Guru's confession (under torture) to the police interrogators was hurriedly recorded and aired through various TV channels. On December 18, 2002, the trial court awarded death sentences to Prof. S. R. Gilani, Mohammad Afzal Guru and Shaukat Hussain Guru while Afshan Guru was sentenced to five years' rigorous imprisonment for conspiring in and abetting the attack. Later on in 2003, the Delhi high court acquitted Professor S. R. Gilani and Afshan Guru for lack of evidence, but the death sentences awarded to Shaukat Hussain Guru and Mohammad Afzal Guru were maintained. (http://www.thehindu.com/2003/10/30/stories/2003103007840100.htm) In August 2005, the supreme court of India again modified the death sentence of Shaukat Hussain Guru to ten years' rigorous imprisonment but the death sentence to Mohammad Afzal Guru was upheld, following which the Delhi trial court on September 26, 2006 issued the execution order – black warrant.
According to recent media reports, Mohammad Afzal Guru, in a statement placed on the Delhi high court record, has accused the deputy superintendent of police in the Special Task Force (STF), now known as the Special Operation Group (SOP), of forcing him to escort to Delhi a person by the name of Mohammad - one of the ‘terrorists’ killed in the parliament attack - get him accommodation and buy him a car. Afzal Guru tells how he was made a scapegoat in the conspiracy hatched by police officers, and that he was warned of dire consequences for his family in case of dissent. Guru's confession, and later denial, is a standard story about the police stations in India. Given the murky business of espionage in which India has indulged in the past, nothing can be written off about the real motives and actors.
The fact that Afzal Guru's conviction is based on confession obtained during police interrogation, (read torture) and not by evidences or credible witnesses, which could authenticate his direct involvement, a 'death penalty' can hardly be termed as a fair judgment, especially when he is only accused of facilitating and not actually conducting the act of violence. Lack of evidence, the absence of an appropriate lawyer for the defendant – no lawyer would take Afzal Guru’s case till one ‘human rights activist’ attorney a Colin Gonsalves was brought in by the intelligence agencies to ‘defend’ Afzal Guru. According to a statement published in the latest issue of the OUTLOOK magazine (http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061016&fname=afzalresponse&sid=1&pn=1) issued by one Vinod K. Jose, Secretary, Communications, SPDPR (Society for the Protection of Detainees' and Prisoners' Rights) headlined ‘Unnecessary Controversy’ quotes Afzal Guru’s complaint which reads as follows:- "Being in high-security ward of Tihar Jail where it is too difficult to communicate with outer people like lawyer etc., in a week, I (Afzal Guru) have seen a news through Indian Express daily that my lawyer had told the High Court on behalf of me that I (AFZAL) had accepted the death sentence and I want only that method/way of killing/hanging should be changed by injecting the Powerful Toxic injection. So as to reduce the pain of dying. I object and challenge this false statement which has been actually given by lawyer himself without my knowledge and consent making my whole process of appeal a mockery." Obviously Afzal Guru’s advocate (Colin Gonsalves is an intelligence mole) who is trying his best to setup the judicial murder of Afzal Guru to eraze the finger prints of the Indian intelligence agencies on the December 11, 2001, orchestrated attack on the Indian parliament building. The workers of the right wing, communalistic, neo-Nazi BJP have also joined the street protests, organized by the Intelligence agencies, to ensure that Afzal Guru is not granted clemency and is ‘judicially’ murdered.
The case of Afzal Guru is very similar to the judicial murder of Sikh martyr, Sirdar Kehar Singh, who was hanged in 1989. Sirdar Kehar Singh did not assassinate Indira Gandhi as he was not even there in the Prime minister’s house when two avenging Sikh bodyguards dispatched that evil women, Prime minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi. She was guilty of having ordered the June 1984 sacrilegious Indian Army attack on the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) the holiest Sikh shrine located in Amritsar, in the Sikh Homeland of Punjab. If it had not been the two Sikh bodyguards there would have been someone else to embrace the honor. No reprieve was offered to Sirdar Kehar Singh and he was hanged.
Condemned prisoner Afzal Guru’s wife, 5-years old son and mother managed to get an audience with the sympathetic Indian President Abul Kalam, a Muslim, at the British-built President’s House in New Delhi who forwarded their petition to the Home ministry for a commentary before he made a decision as head of state. The President of India was put in his place, a few days later, when out of the blue two judges of the Indian Supreme Court (Justices Arijit Pasayat and S.H. Kapadia), in cahoots with Indian Inetelligence agencies, in separate but concurrent judgments held that the power of pardon, clemency, reprieve or remission of sentence to a convict exercised by the President is subject to judicial review. (http://www.thehindu.com/2006/10/12/stories/2006101206680100.htm)
The above judgment said that: “The power of executive clemency is not only for the benefit of the convict but while exercising such a power the President has to keep in mind the effect of his decision on the family of the victims, the society as a whole and the precedent it sets for the future. It can no longer be said that prerogative power is ipso facto immune from judicial review. An undue exercise of this power is to be deplored. Considerations of religion, caste or political loyalty are irrelevant and fraught with discrimination. These are prohibited grounds. Rule of law is the basis for evaluation of all decisions. Exercise of Executive clemency is a matter of discretion and yet subject to certain standards. It is not a matter of privilege. It is a matter of performance of official duty. It is vested in the President or the Governor, as the case may be, not for the benefit of the convict only but for the welfare of the people who may insist on the performance of the duty." End quote. The Supreme Court ruling stamps ‘Paid’ not only on Mrs. Guru’s representations made to President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam seeking clemency for her husband, Mohammad Afzal Guru, sentenced to death in the Parliament ‘attack’ case but also on the mercy petitions sent to the Indian President in the case of another innocent, the well known Sikh Professor, Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar, who has been waiting on ‘death row’ for years.
By a strange coincidence, Senior Indian journalist Mr. Praful Bidwai in an article headlined, “Afzal must not hang” in the latest issue of FRONTLINE magazine (http://www.flonnet.com/fl2320/stories/20061020003511400.htm) has said that India's justice delivery system will undermine its own credibility if Mohammed Afzal, accused in the Parliament attack case, is hanged. Mr. Bidwai writes that, “OUR higher judiciary has come to play an ultra-conservative role that increasingly resembles its status in the 1950s and 1960s as a defender of privilege…Recent verdicts show a consistent conservative inclination, whether on the Narmada issue (which failed to uphold the imperative of rehabilitation), labour rights (subordinated to employers' profit), social policy (reservations, tribal rights, and so on), and urban issues (on which it is totally elitist), not to speak of the Hindutva-is-secularism judgment (1995). The courts' failures to deliver a modicum of justice to the victims of the Gujarat carnage in four-and-a-half years (barring retrial in the Zaheera Sheikh case), and to intervene to stop one of the greatest corporate frauds in India's history (Enron) contrast sharply with their zealous micro-management of urban issues, including large-scale demolitions in Delhi, which have destroyed thousands of livelihoods. All this has weakened the public's faith in the higher judiciary.”
We think it is about time the Indian Supreme Court stopped acting as a tool of Indian intelligence and the Brahmin caste minority elite. The Court could start by inducting some lower caste and minority judges. It could also let off Professor Davinder Pal Singh Bhuller and Mohammad Afzal Guru. These two have suffered enough The intelligence agencies in turn ought to wind up their ‘dirty tricks’ departments and own up to the December 13, 2001, murderous deed when they orchestrated a phony attack outside the Parliament building in New Delhi. That secret is public now!