IPS officer Rahul Sharma should have been decorated for his initiative.
Photo: Javed Raja/Indian Express
Let it be said of Narendra Modi that
he is petty, that he does not forget easily, and that he never forgives. He had
long disliked The Times of India(TOI), which was once the only really liberal newspaper
in Ahmedabad.
When Dileep Padgaonkar (then TOI managing
editor), BD Vergese, and
I went to Modi for an inquiry report in 2002, Modi took up the “Newton’s third
law” story that the TOI had run,
being most upset with it because it revealed how casually Modi took retaliatory
violence.
I remembered that
meeting years later when my friends Bharat Desai and Prashant Dayal,
the editor and senior reporter for TOI in
Ahmedabad, were charged with sedition. Now the TOI can
be accused of many things, but sedition is hardly among them.
Modi was then, as he
is still, the home minister of Gujarat and he must have enjoyed the panic with
which the journalists would have reacted to this heavy-handedness from the
state.
What should we expect
from a Modi Sarkar? I predict: no quarter and no mercy.
He will continue his
tyrannical (I use the word in the classical sense) ways as he has in Gujarat.
One of the things all
Indians, including Modi voters, should be ashamed of is how we have allowed
Modi to treat Rahul Sharma.
This brave Indian Police Service, or IPS, officer tracked the movements of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) thugs who
participated in the rioting. He did so by going to mobile phone operators and
securing data from their signal towers to track cellphones. This is how we came
to establish that Modi’s minister for women and child development, Maya
Kodnani, was involved in the murder of 97 Gujaratis, among them 33 children and
32 women, in Naroda Patiya, Ahmedabad.
Sharma should have
been decorated for his initiative, but instead he is persecuted.
Modi charged him
under the Official Secrets Act for not handing over this data, instead giving
it to a commission of inquiry. Why on earth would Sharma give such vital
evidence to the people trying to conceal it? He acted correctly, courageously
and patriotically. But Modi sees him as an implacable enemy and thus began an
ordeal for Sharma, which has continued for over a decade.
Last month, the media
reported that Sharma “has filed three petitions in the CAT (Central
Administrative Tribunal) alleging harassment by the state government and other
superior officers to him stating that as he had submitted various crucial
evidences before Justice Retd K.G. Nanavati (actually, G.T. Nanavati) and
Akshay Mehta commissions probing 2002 riots indicting the government, he is
being targeted.”
“In one of the three
petitions, he contended that the state government has issued charge sheet and
held back his promotion with malafide intentions.”
“On December 6 last
year ahead of December 7—the day when the promotions were declared—he was
charge sheeted for the case of a missing CD, which contains crucial records of
2002 riots,” he said in the petition.
“Charges of fake
signature were also made by the state government with malafide intentions to
stop his promotion,” he alleged in the petition.
“While serving as
Rajkot DIG, Sharma was given six show-cause notices and 52 letters were sent to
him alleging his misconduct as an officer.” Some notices, he says, “were issued
giving frivolous reasons. One such reason was ‘giving cash awards’ to driver
and other subordinates while another was doing spelling mistakes,” the second
petition said.
Yes, spelling
mistakes. Let it not be said, as I have told you, that Modi is not petty or
vindictive.
Now the only reason
Gujaratis have got any justice for the crimes against them is the work of
social activist Teesta Setalwad and
her husband Javed Anand.
Not the Supreme Court, not the Congress party, not the media or its columnists.
Setalvad’s dogged persistence in following up on cases that everybody had moved
on from and begun to view with some irritation has given Gujaratis dignity and
a sense of resistance.
She is a genuine
heroine who is being slowly martyred and tortured by Modi, as a disinterested
nation looks elsewhere. The latest that Modi has done against Setalvad is to have
Gujarat’s crime branch go through her credit card statements and accuse her of
buying booze from money donated for her activism. This is the sort of
third-rate pettiness Modi likes descending to, because as a nation we allow him
to. This constant mischief from Modi keeps Setalvad away from the work Modi is
afraid of.
He has always abused
the home ministry under him and I wish my bookie would offer me odds against
Modi keeping the Union home ministry. Modi has no restraint and little sense of
boundaries. Even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS, remains upset with
him after the Sanjay Joshi episode.
There are others. I
shudder to think of what will become of Sharma and Setalvad and people like
them after 16 May.
Like all tyrants,
Modi has a fundamentally primitive view of criticism. Those who oppose, those
who write against what he says and does are enemies and he must fix them before
they harm him. They should watch out.
(The Mint,
Wall street Journal Dt.20 April 2014)
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