Creating a climate of terrorism

The intelligence agencies are powerful. They have a network of informers. They use journalists to plant stories in the press and create a certain climate. A climate in which the courts can come out and say things like “the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender” (as observed by the Supreme Court in its judgement against Parliament attack accused Mohammad Afzal Guru). This complete impunity is getting alarming...

...A “climate of terrorism” has been created. Many players — political parties, intelligence agencies, militant outfits — benefit from the attacks. Nothing is ever investigated; if an enquiry is ever set up, it’s usually a smokescreen, a way to defuse a crisis. Whether it was the Parliament attack case, the burning of the coach of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra, whether it is the killing of the main witness of the Nithari murders or the fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, or the killing of the main witness in that case too. The establishment ensures that no one gets to the bottom of anything. It all sinks into the marsh, and then everybody puts their own political spin on it...says Arundhati Roy in an excellent interview with Mihir Srivastava.

It’s an unholy nexus. Whatever you touch falls like a house of cards. But even when there is an exposé — like what happened in the case of the Parliament attack, or what we’re seeing now in the Red Fort attack — when it is shown that evidence was fabricated, that we have been lied to, when we know what those lies were and who told them, still nothing happens.

The police get medals, the judges get promoted, the journalists get salary hikes. In the case of the attack on Parliament, we’re talking about a case which could have resulted in a nuclear war. A case in which, on the basis of what has turned out to be false and fabricated evidence, the government of the day moved half-a-million troops to the border where they remained for eight months. But speaking of cover-ups, look at how it all works in Gujarat, it’s more than a coverup, it’s criminal collusion. It’s happening now, right now, while Tata and Reliance call Gujarat a dream destination for corporate capital, while the CII sucks up to Modi, while Sunita Williams accepts accolades and shares a stage with him.

After the carnage in which thousands of ordinary Muslims were butchered and about 1,50,000 driven from their homes, the man who presided over it all, Narendra Modi, is still the chief minister. No one from the UPA government has so much as squeaked about it. Of the 287 cases filed under POTA, 286 are against Muslim and one is against a Sikh. Offences under POTA, as we know, are non-bailable, so they’re all still in jail. The property of those accused in the Godhra massacre was attached. The property of those who were released on bail in the post- Godhra carnage was not. Different laws for Hindus and Muslims.

In the case of several massacres, the lawyers that the Gujarat government appointed as public prosecutors had actually already appeared for the accused. Several of them belonged to the RSS or the VHP, organisations that proudly owned up to the killings. Survivors found that when they went to the police to file FIRs, the police would record their statements inaccurately, and refuse...

...When it comes to these things, I can no longer believe what I’m asked to believe, I have no faith in what I read in the papers, in what I see on TV. It’s mostly crap. No one ever gets to the bottom of anything. It’s all left hanging, the air is thick with the ghosts of the victims of unsolved crimes. We seem to suffer from a pathological lack of curiosity.

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