My Seditious Heart

by Arundhati Roy

  For all these reasons it is critical that we consider carefully the strange, sad, and utterly sinister story of the December 13 Parliament attack. It tells us a great deal about the way the world’s largest “democracy” really works. It connects the biggest things to the smallest. It traces the pathways that connect what happens in the shadowy grottos of our police stations to what goes on in the cold, snowy streets of Paradise Valley; from there to the impersonal malign furies that bring nations to the brink of nuclear war. It raises specific questions that deserve specific—not ideological or rhetorical—answers.

  On October 4 this year, I was one among a very small group of people who had gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to protest against Mohammad Afzal’s death sentence. I was there because I believe Mohammad Afzal is only a pawn in a very sinister game. He’s not the Dragon he’s being made out to be, he’s only the Dragon’s footprint. And if the footprint is made to “become extinct,” we’ll never know who the Dragon was. Is.

  Not surprisingly, that afternoon there were more journalists and TV crews than there were protesters. Most of the attention was on Ghalib, Afzal’s angelic-looking little son. Kind-hearted people, not sure of what to do with a young boy whose father was going to the gallows, were plying him with ice cream and cold drinks. As I looked around at the people gathered there, I noted a sad little fact. The convener of the protest, the small, stocky man who was nervously introducing the speakers and making the announcements, was S. A. R. Geelani, a young lecturer in Arabic literature at Delhi University. Accused Number Three in the Parliament attack case. He was arrested on December 14, 2001, a day after the attack, by the Special Cell of the Delhi police. Though Geelani was brutally tortured in custody, though his family—his wife, young children, and brother—were illegally detained, he refused to confess to a crime he hadn’t committed. Of course you wouldn’t know this if you read newspapers in the days following his arrest. They carried detailed descriptions of an entirely imaginary, nonexistent confession. The Delhi police portrayed Geelani as the evil mastermind of the Indian end of the conspiracy. Its scriptwriters orchestrated a hateful propaganda campaign against him, which was eagerly amplified and embellished by a hypernationalistic, thrill-seeking media. The police knew perfectly well that in criminal trials, judges are not supposed to take cognizance of media reports. So they knew that their entirely cold-blooded fabrication of a profile for these “terrorists” would mold public opinion and create a climate for the trial. But it would not come in for any legal scrutiny.

  Here are some of the malicious outright lies that appeared in the mainstream press:

  Neeta Sharma and Arun Joshi, “Case Cracked: Jaish Behind Attack,” Hindustan Times, December 16, 2001:

  “In Delhi, the Special Cell detectives detained a Lecturer in Arabic, who teaches at Zakir Hussain College (Evening) … after it was established that he had received a call made by militants on his mobile phone.”

  “DU Lecturer Was Terror Plan Hub,” Times of India, December 17, 2001:

  “The attack on Parliament on December 13 was a joint operation of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist groups in which a Delhi University lecturer, Syed A. R. Gilani, was one of the key facilitators in Delhi, Police Commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma said on Sunday.”

  Devesh K. Pandey, “Professor Guided the ‘Fidayeen,’” Hindu, December 17, 2001:

  “During interrogation Geelani disclosed that he was in the know of the conspiracy since the day the ‘fidayeen’ attack was planned.”

  Sutirtho Patranobis, “Don Lectured on Terror in Free Time,” Hindustan Times, December 17, 2001:

  “Investigations have revealed that by evening he was at the college teaching Arabic literature. In his free time, behind closed doors, either at his house or at Shaukat Hussain’s, another suspect to be arrested, he took and gave lessons on terrorism.”

  “Professor’s Proceeds,” Hindustan Times, December 17, 2001:

  “Geelani recently purchased a house for 22 lakhs [2,200,000 rupees ($44,300)] in West Delhi. Delhi Police are investigating how he came upon such a windfall.”

  Sujit Thakur, “Aligarh se England tak chaatron mein aatank-waad ke beej bo raha tha Geelani” (From Aligarh to England Geelani Sowed the Seeds of Terrorism), Rashtriya Sahara, December 18, 2001:

  “According to sources and information collected by investigation agencies, Geelani has made a statement to the police that he was an agent of Jaish-e-Mohammed for a long time … It was because of Geelani’s articulation, style of working and sound planning that in 2000 Jaish-e-Mohammed gave him the responsibility of spreading intellectual terrorism.” (Translation mine.)

  Swati Chaturvedi, “Terror Suspect Frequent Visitor to Pak[istan] Mission,” Hindustan Times, December 21, 2001:

  “During interrogation, Geelani has admitted that he had made frequent calls to Pakistan and was in touch with militants belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed … Geelani said that he had been provided with funds by some members of the Jaish and told to buy two flats that could be used in militant operations.”

  “Person of the Week,” Sunday Times of India, December 23, 2001:

  “A cellphone proved his undoing. Delhi University’s Syed A. R. Geelani was the first to be arrested in the December 13 case—a shocking reminder that the roots of terrorism go far and deep.”

  Zee TV trumped them all. It produced a film called December 13th, a “docudrama” that claimed to be the “truth based on the police charge-sheet.” (A contradiction in terms, wouldn’t you say?) The film was privately screened for prime minister A. B. Vajpayee and home minister L. K. Advani. Both men applauded the film. Their approbation was widely reported by the media.9

  The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal to stay the broadcast of the film on the grounds that judges are not influenced by the media.10 (Would the Supreme Court concede that even if judges are beyond being influenced by media reports, the “collective conscience of the society” might not be?) December 13th was broadcast on Zee TV’s national network a few days before the fast-track trial court sentenced Geelani, Afzal, and Shaukat to death. Geelani eventually spent eighteen months in jail, many of them in solitary confinement, on death row.

  He was released when the high court acquitted him and Afsan Guru. (Afsan, who was pregnant when she was arrested, had her baby in prison. Her experience broke her. She now suffers from a serious psychiatric condition.) The Supreme Court upheld the acquittal. It found absolutely no evidence to link Geelani with the Parliament attack or with any terrorist organization. Not a single newspaper or journalist or TV channel has seen fit to apologize to S. A. R. Geelani for their lies. But his troubles didn’t end there. His acquittal left the Special Cell with a plot but no “mastermind.” This, as we shall see, becomes something of a problem.

  More importantly, Geelani was a free man now—free to meet the press, talk to lawyers, clear his name. On the evening of February 8, 2005, during the course of the final hearings at the Supreme Court, Geelani was making his way to his lawyer’s house. A mysterious gunman appeared from the shadows and fired five bullets into his body.11 Miraculously, he survived. It was an unbelievable new twist to the story. Clearly somebody was worried about what he knew, what he would say. One would imagine that the police would give this investigation top priority, hoping it would throw up some vital new leads in the Parliament attack case. Instead, the Special Cell treated Geelani as though he was the prime suspect in his own assassination. They confiscated his computer and took away his car. Hundreds of activists gathered outside the hospital and called for an inquiry into the assassination attempt, which would include an investigation into the Special Cell itself. (Of course that never happened. More than a year has passed, but nobody shows any interest in pursuing the matter. Odd.)

  So here he was now, S. A. R. Geelani, having survived this terrible ordeal, standing up in public at Jantar Mantar, saying that Mohammad Afzal didn’t deserve a death sentence. How much easier it would be for him to k
eep his head down, stay at home. I was profoundly moved, humbled, by this quiet display of courage.

  Across the line from S. A. R. Geelani, in the jostling crowd of journalists and photographers, trying his best to look inconspicuous in a lemon T-shirt and gabardine pants, holding a little tape-recorder, was another Gilani. Iftikhar Gilani. He had been in prison, too. He was arrested and taken into police custody on June 9, 2002. At the time he was a reporter for the Jammu-based Kashmir Times. He was charged under the Official Secrets Act.12 His “crime” was that he possessed obsolete information on Indian troop deployment in “Indian-held Kashmir.” (This “information,” it turns out, was a published monograph by a Pakistani research institute and was freely available on the Internet for anybody who wished to download it.) Iftikhar Gilani’s computer was seized. Intelligence Bureau officials tampered with his hard drive, meddled with the downloaded file, changed the words “Indian-held Kashmir” to “Jammu and Kashmir” to make it sound like an Indian document, and added the words “Only for Reference. Strictly Not For Circulation,” to make it seem like a secret document smuggled out of the home ministry. The directorate general of military intelligence—though it had been given a photocopy of the monograph—ignored repeated appeals from Iftikhar Gilani’s counsel, kept quiet, and refused to clarify the matter for a whole six months.

  Once again the malicious lies put out by the Special Cell were obediently reproduced in the newspapers. Here are a few of the lies they told:

  “Iftikhar Gilani, 35-year-old son-in-law of Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is believed to have admitted in a city court that he was an agent of Pakistan’s spy agency.”—Neeta Sharma, Hindustan Times, June 11, 2002

  “Iftikhar Gilani was the pin-point man of Syed Salahuddin of Hizbul Mujahideen. Investigations have revealed that Iftikhar used to pass information to Salahuddin about the moves of Indian security agencies. He had camouflaged his real motives behind his journalist’s facade so well that it took years to unmask him, well-placed sources said.”—Pramod Kumar Singh, Pioneer, June 2002

  “ Geelani ke damaad ke ghar aaykar chhaapon mein behisaab sampati wa samwaidansheil dastaweiz baramad” (Enormous wealth and sensitive documents recovered from the house of Geelani’s son-in-law during income tax raids).—Hindustan, June 10, 2002

  Never mind that the police charge sheet recorded a recovery of only 3,450 rupees ($69) from his house. Meanwhile, other media reports said that he had a three-bedroom flat, an undisclosed income of 2,200,000 rupees ($44,300), had evaded income tax of 7,900,000 rupees ($159,000), and that he and his wife were absconding to evade arrest.

  But arrested he was. In jail, Iftikhar Gilani was beaten and abjectly humiliated. In his book My Days in Prison he tells of how, among other things, he was made to clean the toilet with his shirt and then wear the same shirt for days.13 After several months of court arguments and lobbying by his colleagues, when it became obvious that if the case against him continued it would lead to serious embarrassment, he was released.14

  Here he was now. A free man, a reporter come to Jantar Mantar to cover a story. It occurred to me that S. A. R. Geelani, Iftikhar Gilani, and Mohammad Afzal would have been in Tihar jail at the same time (along with scores of other less well-known Kashmiris whose stories we may never learn).

  It can and will be argued that the cases of both S. A. R. Geelani and Iftikhar Gilani serve only to demonstrate the objectivity of the Indian judicial system and its capacity for self-correction; they do not discredit it. That’s only partly true. Both Gilani and Geelani are fortunate to be Delhi-based Kashmiris with a community of articulate, middle-class peers—journalists and university teachers—who knew them well and rallied around them in their time of need. Geelani’s lawyer Nandita Haksar put together an All India Defense Committee for her client (of which I was a member).15 There was a coordinated campaign by activists, lawyers, and journalists to rally behind Geelani. Well-known lawyers Ram Jethmalani, K. G. Kannabiran, and Vrinda Grover represented him. They exposed the case for what it was—a pack of absurd assumptions, suppositions, and outright lies, bolstered by fabricated evidence. So of course judicial objectivity exists. But it’s a shy beast that lives somewhere deep in the labyrinth of our legal system. It shows itself rarely. It takes whole teams of top lawyers to coax it out of its lair and make it come out and play. It’s what in newspaper-speak would be called a Herculean task. Mohammad Afzal did not have Hercules on his side.

  For five months, from the time he was arrested to the day the police charge sheet was filed, Mohammad Afzal, lodged in a high-security prison, had no legal defense, no legal advice. No top lawyers, no defense committee (in India or Kashmir), and no campaign. Of all the four accused, he was the most vulnerable. His case was far more complicated than Geelani’s. Significantly, during much of this time, Afzal’s younger brother Hilal was illegally detained by the Special Operations Group in Kashmir. He was released after the charge sheet was filed. (This is a piece of the puzzle that will only fall into place as the story unfolds.)

  In a serious lapse of procedure, on December 20, 2001, the investigating officer, assistant commissioner of police Rajbir Singh (affectionately known as Delhi’s “encounter specialist” for the number of “terrorists” he has killed in “encounters”) called a press conference at the Special Cell.16 Mohammad Afzal was made to “confess” before the media. Deputy commissioner of police Ashok Chand told the press that Afzal had already confessed to the police. This turned out to be untrue. Afzal’s formal confession to the police took place only the next day (after which he continued to remain in police custody and vulnerable to torture, another serious procedural lapse). In his media “confession” Afzal incriminated himself in the Parliament attack completely.17

  During the course of this “media confession,” a curious thing happened. In response to a direct question, Afzal clearly said that Geelani had nothing to do with the attack and was completely innocent. At this point, assistant commissioner of police Rajbir Singh shouted at him, forced him to shut up, and requested the media not to carry this part of Afzal’s “confession.” And they obeyed! The story came out only three months later when the television channel Aaj Tak rebroadcast the “confession” in a program called “Hamle Ke Sau Din” (Hundred Days of the Attack) and somehow kept this part in. Meanwhile in the eyes of the general public—who know little about the law and criminal procedure—Afzal’s public “confession” only confirmed his guilt. The verdict of the “collective conscience of the society” would not have been hard to second-guess.

  The day after this “media” confession, Afzal’s “official” confession was extracted from him. The flawlessly structured, perfectly fluent narrative dictated in articulate English to deputy commissioner of police Ashok Chand (in the deputy’s words, “he kept on narrating and I kept on writing”) was delivered in a sealed envelope to a judicial magistrate. In this confession, Afzal, now the sheet-anchor of the prosecution’s case, weaves a masterful tale that connected Ghazi Baba, Maulana Masood Azhar, a man called Tariq, and the five dead terrorists; their equipment, arms, and ammunition; home ministry passes, a laptop, and fake ID cards; detailed lists of exactly how many kilos of what chemical he bought from where, the exact ratio in which they were mixed to make explosives; and the exact times at which he made and received calls on which mobile number. (For some reason, by then Afzal had also changed his mind about Geelani and implicated him completely in the conspiracy.)

  Each point of the “confession” corresponded perfectly with the evidence that the police had already gathered. In other words, Afzal’s confessional statement slipped perfectly into the version that the police had already offered the press days ago, like Cinderella’s foot into the glass slipper. (If it were a film, you could say it was a screenplay, which came with its own box of props. Actually, as we know now, it was made into a film. Zee TV owes Afzal some royalty payments.)

  Eventually, both the high court and the Supreme Court set aside Afzal’s confession,
citing “lapses and violations of procedural safeguards.” But Afzal’s confession somehow survives, the phantom keystone in the prosecution’s case. And before it was technically and legally set aside, the confessional document had already served a major extralegal purpose: On December 21, 2001, when the government of India launched its war effort against Pakistan, it said it had “clear and incontrovertible proof” of Pakistan’s involvement.18 Afzal’s confession was the only “proof” of Pakistan’s involvement that the government had! Afzal’s confession. And the sticker-manifesto. Think about it. On the basis of this illegal confession extracted under torture, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were moved to the Pakistan border at huge cost to the public exchequer, and the subcontinent devolved into a game of nuclear brinkmanship in which the whole world was held hostage.

  Big Whispered Question: Could it have been the other way around? Did the confession precipitate the war, or did the need for a war precipitate the need for the confession?

  Later, when Afzal’s confession was set aside by the higher courts, all talk of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba ceased. The only other link to Pakistan was the identity of the five dead fedayeen. Mohammad Afzal, still in police custody, identified them as Mohammed, Rana, Raja, Hamza, and Haider. The home minister said they “looked like Pakistanis,” the police said they were Pakistanis, and the trial court judge said they were Pakistanis.19 And there the matter rests. (Had we been told that their names were Happy, Bouncy, Lucky, Jolly, and Kidingamani from Scandinavia, we would have had to accept that, too.)

  We still don’t know who they really are or where they’re from. Is anyone curious? Doesn’t look like it. The high court said the “identity of the five deceased thus stands established. Even otherwise it makes no difference. What is relevant is the association of the accused with the said five persons and not their names.”