Ahmedabad, September 11: The Gujarat Police had issued itself a licence to kill anyone from the minority community in fake encounters in the aftermath of the 2002 riots to serve the political agenda of the saffron brigade.
This was alleged by Gujarat’s former additional director-general of police (intelligence), R.B. Shreekumar in his controversial diary. The diary has been submitted to the Nanavati commission as well as the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the riots.
A diary entry on May 1, 2002, reads “DGP in a person to person discussion told me that the Chief Secretary, Shri Subbarao, was persuaded by the (Union) Cabinet Secretary, Shri (T.R.) Prasad belonging to Andhra Pradesh Cadre, to eliminate those Muslim extremists who are disturbing communal peace in Ahmedabad. I responded to the DGP that we (police) should not do anything illegal because it will be a cold blooded premeditated murder, if we kill anybody without justification in the form of exercise of right of private defence or as part of police action to control riots.”
In another entry dated June 28, 2002, Shreekumar talked about a high-level meeting, convened by the then Gujarat chief secretary G. Subbarao, on security arrangements for the rath yatra. Shreekumar wrote: “After the formal meeting, the CS talked to me personally and suggested that if someone is trying to disturb rath yatra or planning to spoil the same that PERSON BE ELIMINATED. He added that this is the policy and well considered decision of the Chief Minister Narendra Modi.” The chief secretary observed that such eliminations be resorted to on the basis of “SITUATIONAL LOGIC”, the diary notes.
Shreekumar said while not a single encounter took place during his tenure as the state intelligence chief, the first one took place just a month after he was removed from the position on September 18, 2002.
“The encounters stopped right after DIG Vanzara was arrested,” said Shreekumar.
“Does this mean that the LeT and other outfits have stopped sending their operatives in Gujarat or is there no intelligence input?” he added.
Given the Centre’s affidavit and the Gujarat government’s stand on the encounter, the question remains as to who authorised the police to kill Ishrat Jahan and others in an ‘encounter’ in 2004 instead of arresting them. Gujarat Minister of State Home Affairs Amit Shah said, “The state government maintains that such killings are not justified. Who told you that killings on mere intelligence input are justified? We never said so, only you people are saying it.”
–Agencies