ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Clean Chits, Deaths, Acquittals: The Unending 'Tricks of Fate' in Saffron Terror Cases SHARIB A ALI Sharib A Ali ([email protected]) is a human rights practitioner based in Delhi. His research focus is on terror prosecution in India. Vol. 53, Issue No. 17, 28 Apr, 2018 The author would like to thank Monica Sakhrani for her comments on the first draft of this article and for help in thinking through the subject. The article looks at the "experiment of saffron terror," its link with the ruling dispensation, and how the cases of saffron terror have unfolded since the National Democratic Alliance came to power in 2014. Looking at the character of Swami Aseemanand as a product of the contradictions of the experiment, it makes a case for the arrival of dual law in the country. From a criminal justice point of view, the Mecca Masjid blast case against the Abhinav Bharat members was a strong one. A confession under Section 164 in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 with all its checks and balances, corroborating evidence, witnesses and a series of documents, files, and minutes of meetings, put together strong documentary evidence of a larger conspiracy. However, on 16 April 2018, the special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court acquitted all the five accused in the Mecca Masjid blast case (Indian Express 2018). As the judgement remains unavailable, it is difficult to ascertain the judicial reasoning that went into the acquittals. As many as 66 witnesses (of the 226 deposed) turned hostile in the case (Ahuja 2018). In cases of such political magnitude, witnesses turning hostile is not an unusual phenomenon. However, immediately after the verdict, Justice K Ravinder Reddy resigned. Once his ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 resignation was refused, he applied for voluntary retirement, making it clear that he wanted nothing to do with the judicial profession any more (Muthai 2018). The events around Reddy’s resignation are yet to unfold. This is a crucial issue because it raises a pertinent question: what made such a step necessary? The resignation is the latest in a long series of “tricks of fate” that have characterised the legal discourse of “saffron terror.” Such tricks of fate are like meteors—residual energies that sometimes shine very brightly in divinely managed legal–political constellations. And it is possible, as it is in the universe, that such an anomaly might provide an extraordinary glimpse into the brilliant forces and hidden laws that go into the making of such episodes. Families of the Mecca Masjid blast victims are planning to appeal to the high court to reopen the case, while the NIA is under pressure to appeal against the acquittal (B Nitin 2018). However, this pressure is unlikely to yield due diligence from the NIA. It has displayed an active reluctance in prosecuting the Abhinav Bharat accused ever since it took over cases of saffron terror. As some have pointed out, it is possible that NIA was handed over the cases precisely because of this (Hindustan Times 2016). The importance of the Mecca Masjid blast case derives itself from its location—at the epistemic node of a discourse of Hindutva terror that came into the public domain almost surprisingly. Hence, the judgement as well as the performance of the NIA need to be seen within this larger context. Saffron Terror The saffron terror discourse includes seven blast cases between 2004 and 2008 at different sites—Jalna in 2004; Malegaon in 2006 and 2008; the Samjhauta Express, Ajmer Dargah, and Mecca Masjid in 2007; and Modasa in 2008. Christophe Jaffrelot's (2010) perusal of the evidence (internal conversations and minutes of meeting of Abhinav Bharat in some of these cases) pointed towards a conspiracy being hatched in several parts of the country, with Madhya Pradesh at its centre. Some of the key leaders of Abhinav Bharat, all in close touch with the present ruling party, were Major Ramesh Upadhyaya, Lt Colonel Srikant Prasad Purohit, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Indresh Kumar, Swami Aseemanand, and Sunil Joshi (Jaffrelot 2010; Reghunath 2014). In that, Joshi was the most important person in the conspiracy as the main link between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), part of the larger Sangh Parivar. However, he was murdered in 2007 just when the first arrests in the saffron terror cases were being made. Since then, Swami Aseemanand has been at the centre of the discourse. It was with Aseemanand's confession (which his lawyer later retracted) and statements in Reghunath (2014) that the scattered pieces of the puzzle came together to suggest how terror attacks were planned and executed across the country with active support from the RSS, and other Hindutva organisations. ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 The problem with the discourse of saffron terror is that it is greatly disruptive of what is often claimed to be a peaceful project—Hindu unity and nationalism. While organised anti- Muslim violence has been intrinsic to the rise of the Hindu right in India, the ruling dispensation has worked hard to dissociate itself from Abhinav Bharat. This disassociation is almost impossible considering that the top brass of both BJP and the RSS have been publicly seen with members of Abhinav Bharat and records of the same exist (Jaffrelot 2010; Reghunath 2014). Swami Aseemanand was even honoured by the RSS with an award marking the birth centenary of M S Golwalkar (Reghunath 2014). It is due to this complex relationship that witnesses keep turning hostile or are killed. The acquittals are very important because this is an existential crisis for the ruling dispensation. Post 2014, since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power with a huge majority, all the saffron terror cases have taken unexpected, though not surprising turns. A quick look at the legal status of the cases and the status of the five key people, gives an overview. Samjhauta Express trial: Three months after the NDA government came to power at the centre, Aseemanand was granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in August 2014. The bail was not opposed by the prosecuting agency, the NIA. The NIA also gave a clean chit to Colonel Purohit who was earlier chargesheeted by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in the case. 2007 Ajmer blast trial: In 2017, Aseemanand was acquitted by a local court in the case. Sunil Joshi, who was murdered in 2007, was convicted in the case along with two foot soldiers who were accused of planting the bomb. The court, while giving life sentences to the two, questioned the NIA’s clean chit to Sadhvi Pragya and Indresh Kumar, among others, thereby pointing out that the NIA’s actions are bad in law (Khan 2017). Malegaon case: In 2016, the NIA again dropped Sadhvi Pragya’s name from its charge sheet, giving her a clean chit. In 2017, the Bombay High Court granted her bail. In the same year, Colonel Purohit, prime accused in the case, also got bail from the Supreme Court and rejoined the army. Modasa blast case: The case was closed by the NIA in 2015, citing lack of evidence. The Mecca Masjid blast case was the last and the most important part of the series of trials, and it has resulted in acquittals too. A decade after the first arrests were made, all the key people, many of whom would have otherwise received death penalties for the role they played in the violence, are free. The Experiment In retrospect, the seven blasts taken together constitute a sociopolitical experiment that was carried out in the last decade in the country. This experiment had a triple edged ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 strategy. First, as part of a larger radicalisation movement, it gave birth to a terrorist wing of the Hindu nationalist movement, separate from the militant wings constituted by the Bajrang Dal and the various senas/vahinis across the country. This wing was potent because of its constituents. It had access to weapons and explosives through Colonel Purohit and it was in direct contact with parallel power centres (top brass of the RSS and the BJP) that had little or no accountability (Jaffrelot 2010; Reghunath 2014). Second, blasts within the country would fit neatly within the discourse that lay at the core of the RSS–BJP project—national security, Muslims as terrorists and outsiders, and the Congress’ Muslim appeasement. The powerful international discourse of the war on terror that came into being in and after 2001 provided the perfect cover for such an experiment to unfold. It also allowed for calculations about the sheer power of the discourse of terrorism; it would allow the successful prosecution of Muslims for bombing their own mosques and killing fellow Muslims, without any questions being asked. An overwhelming majority of those killed and maimed in the blasts, and those initially accused of orchestrating them, were all Muslims. Third, the legal cases would allow the BJP and RSS to carry out their campaign of branding Muslims as terrorists, while the sheer rage of being wrongfully prosecuted, tortured, and imprisoned would further alienate Muslims, and even possibly radicalise them. All of this together, however, neatly constituted a two-decade long project of religious polarisation. It is important to remember here that this was just one of the projects being executed parallelly. The others, for example, included violent campaigns around cow slaughter and consumption of meat, targeted violence against minorities, and the slow Hinduisation of neighbourhoods. Tricks of Fate and the BJP Link The complex constellations of such a tightly organised experiment produced its anomalies.