The Congress' sympathy for the minorities stands to scrutiny

Ishrat Jahan was killed in May 2004. Nine years later, the accused have been found to be policemen in a state ruled by the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. The Congress is thrilled, though it sanctimoniously maintains that the whole investigation is the result of a Gujarat high court order.

It won’t mention it, but the Congress’ home ministry played its own part in slandering the 19-year-old, describing Ishrat as a terrorist in an affidavit filed in 2009 in the Gujarat high court.

The BJP has pointed this out, but it should have also pointed to identical crimes in Congress-ruled states — the killings in police and even judicial custody of so-called Muslim terrorists. But the BJP cannot say this, for one of its articles of faith is that all terrorists are Muslims. And it has never upheld the principle that Muslim accused must get a fair trial. It cries itself hoarse only for Hindu accused.

That’s good for the Congress. But the party should be aware that not everyone else has such double standards.

Ten years ago, Dubai-based engineer, 27-year-old Khwaja Yunus, was killed while in custody of the Maharashtra police. He was holidaying in Chikaldhara when he was arrested as a suspect in the bomb blast that took place in a BEST bus at Ghatkopar on December 2, 2002, killing two. Sixteen days after his arrest, Yunus was dead. His family never saw his body.

It took four years to establish that Khwaja Yunus had not escaped from custody, as the police claimed. A CID inquiry ordered by the Bombay high court concluded that the police had tortured him to death. But the Congress-NCP government took an entire year after that to close that escape case against Yunus, and to sanction the prosecution of the cops found responsible for his death.

The trial of the four indicted cops is yet to begin. Meanwhile, Yunus’ father died a year after his son’s ‘’disappearance’’. His mother fights on, travelling from Parbhani to Mumbai and Delhi to file petition after petition.

Part of the delay in this case has been due to the normal snail’s pace of our legal system. Additionally, the indicted cops have challenged the government’s moves to prosecute them, as is their right. But has the secular Congress-NCP shown any willingness to try its cops for killing an innocent Muslim? All the 17 Muslims accused with Khwaja Yunus for the Ghatkopar bomb blasts were found not guilty. Nine did not even have to stand trial — they were discharged, having spent almost two years in jail for a crime for which they should never have been arrested. The remaining eight were acquitted eight years ago.

Forget getting the cops to trial, the Congress-NCP government has actively thwarted attempts to get justice for Yunus. First, when the Bombay high court ordered that the statement of Yunus’ co-accused be treated as the FIR in the case against the cops, the government went all the way to the Supreme Court against the order. Even after the apex court rejected its appeal, it did nothing, till Yunus’ mother filed a fresh petition.

The trial of the four indicted cops, including encounter specialist Sachin Vaze, who resigned from the police force over this case, and joined the Shiv Sena, was to start in January this year. But before it could begin, the PP handling the case for the CID all these years, resigned, citing “personal reasons’’.

This was in February. It’s five months now, and the government has not yet found another lawyer to argue its case against the accused cops!

The author is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist.