#dnaEdit: Who framed him?

The charge sheet filed by the National Investigation Agency accusing nine officers of the Delhi Police Special Cell of trumping up charges to frame former Kashmiri militant Liyaqat Shah in a terror plot merits serious attention from the Union home ministry. In its first charge sheet, after 22 months of investigation, the NIA appears to have recommended only departmental action against the officers and has desisted from slapping criminal charges on the delinquent officers. However, the special cell informer, Sabir Khan Pathan, who is alleged to have planted the arms and explosives in an Old Delhi hotel, and is missing under suspicious circumstances, was chargesheeted under various Indian Penal Code, Explosive Substances Act and Arms Act provisions. Despite finding that the police officers trumped up serious charges, even those carrying the death penalty, against Liyaqat, the NIA appears to have erred on the side of caution, choosing to further probe the conspiracy to frame Liyaqat and has avoided bringing charges against the policemen. Even the question of Pathan’s mysterious disappearance remains unresolved.

It is unfortunate that the Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi has chosen to defend his subordinates, noting that “there can be difference of opinion on evidence”. Bassi is mistaken if he thinks that such defence of erring colleagues can lift morale and restore credibility. Rather than live in denial any longer, Bassi should initiate measures to ensure that no policeman will ever dare to plant evidence and frame innocent persons on charges, small or big. Bassi’s claim that his police officers were taking preemptive action to thwart terror attacks is not borne out by the evidence in this case. Soon after Liyaqat’s arrest, the Jammu and Kashmir government and police, in uncharacteristic fashion, came out strongly in defence of Liyaqat. They claimed that they were aware of the circumstances of his flight from Pakistan to India through Nepal and that he was availing of a governmental rehabilitation scheme for surrendered militants. The special cell clearly did not anticipate that the J&K government would come out in support of a man with little means, who was a one-time militant, and had even spurned India to move to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

The Union home ministry correctly recognised the political implications of the special cell’s actions for Kashmir. At a time when Afzal Guru had just been executed, the MHA must be credited for quickly divesting the Delhi Police of the case and handing it to the NIA for an impartial probe. Liyaqat’s claim that nearly 1,500 former militants and their families are hesitating to return to J&K from PoK points to the damage that the special cell’s actions have done to State policy. Beyond Kashmir, the importance of justice for Liyaqat lies in the particular context of the times we live in. In 2011, a Delhi court acquitted two Muslim men, who were framed as Al-Badr terrorists by four special cell officers. By then, the men had spent six years at Tihar jail. Liyaqat has been spared of a similar long spell in judicial custody and the round of courts because of the initiative shown by the political leadership. Rather than denial, as Bassi has preferred, public confidence in the police improves when penal action is taken against erring police officers. Besides, it also serves as a deterrent against such extra-legal methods of securing convictions and promotions. The NIA investigation, linking special cell officers to Pathan and a Kashmiri native who informed the special cell about the arrival of a batch of PoK returnees, including Liyaqat, is satisfactory. But its logical end, lies not in departmental action, but in these officers facing a criminal trial.