Everyone's missing the point of the Ishrat case

As we all watch a public fight between the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the CBI (and the fight between the Congress and the BJP each of whom support one side) play out over the killing of 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan, I keep thinking about the other very public process we were witness to not so long ago.

As these players throw various for and against arguments to prove that Ishrat was either an innocent Mumbai college girl or a suicide bomber on a mission to kill Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, it is important to point out how we treated a man who was also accused of being a terrorist.

Unlike Ishrat — against whom even the most committed intelligence officer admits there isn’t clinching evidence to prove she’s a Lashkar terrorist — Ajmal Kasab was more or less caught on camera as one. And yet, our judicial system gave him the benefit of telling his account, of fighting his case and of even allowing his word on his confessional statement to be put on record.

Even though we all saw the picture of Kasab walking around looking for people to kill and decided his guilt, the Supreme Court went by ballistics reports and forensic evidence to decide that Kasab had killed at least six people, including police officer Tukaram Ombale, because the bullets recovered from their bodies matched those of the AK-47 that Kasab was carrying.

While Ishrat has politicians bickering amongst themselves to score for their own ends, 26/11 terrorist Kasab had the benefit of the best legal minds. While some lawyers protested and refused to represent a terrorist who had committed such a brutal act, the Supreme Court chose former additional solicitor general Raju Ramachandran for his track record to represent Kasab. Once entrusted with this responsibility, Ramachandran fought hard on Kasab’s behalf and argued that he should not be clubbed with the other terrorists who came in with him on 26/11. Ramachandran argued that Kasab’s trial had been vitiated in the initial stages because he didn’t get fair representation, and that he didn’t get the Pakistani lawyer that he so wanted.

Kasab’s defence in the Supreme Court also included the argument that his actions did not amount to ‘waging a war’ against India as prescribed by Section 121 of the Indian Penal Code. All these arguments were, of course, thrown out by the Supreme Court, but let’s not forget that the country’s top court spent time hearing them. The court then, in a 398-page judgement, laboriously explained why it bought Maharashtra state government counsel Gopal Subramanium’s arguments over Raju Ramachandran’s, and why Kasab deserved the death penalty.

Now it seems, all those people who’ve been justifying Ishrat’s killing think that Justice Chandramauli Kumar Prasad wasted his time in hearing Kasab’s case and giving him the benefit of our legal system. Why else would the IB start its defence by pointing out how Ishrat was a terrorist and how their input was genuine? The IB keeps pointing out how 26/11 plotter David Headley told the NIA that Zaki-ul-Rehman Lakhvi introduced him to Muzameel Bhat who told him that Ishrat was trained to be a bomber and planned to attack the Akshardham temple, Somnath and Siddhivinayak temples. The IB or any other intelligence agency does not explain why the other government body, the National Investigation Agency, dismisses this as hearsay.

The IB also uses the fact that a Lashkar website claimed Ishrat was one of their own, but does not explain why this was then retracted. If IB officer Rajendra Kumar along with crime branch officials of Gujarat didn’t plan to kill Ishrat, shouldn’t the IB just focus on proving he had nothing to do beyond generating an alert? Why go into proving that Ishrat was a terrorist?

By dwelling on whether Ishrat was a terrorist or not, the IB, the Congress, the BJP, and even the CBI, are just insulting our legal systems which gives everyone the right to a fair trial.

As the political game refuses to end, as the Congress tries to defend the CBI, and as the BJP has officially taken up a position to defend the IB (which has never seen love like this from any quarter before), trust the judiciary to speak some sense.

Thank God, the Gujarat High Court has reminded them all about what is important: finding and punishing whoever it was that killed Ishrat Jahan and her associates, whether they were plotting terrorists or not.

Sunetra Choudhury is an anchor/reporter for NDTV and is the author of the election travelogue Braking News.