The truth behind the Afzal Guru case.
Book: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament
Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 299
Price: Rs 299
It is foolish to think the secret execution of Afzal Guru in February earlier this year was the last word on the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. All Guru’s execution did was to blank out questions about who the real culprits were; or why its orchestrators chose a renegade under regular police-watch to carry out the audacious attack.
The Strange Case Of The Attack On The Indian Parliament, a collection of essays by journalists, lawyers, scholars and writers, attempts to resurrect exactly these questions.
This collection of essays was first published in 2006. The revised edition has a new introduction and an additional essay by writer-activist Arundhati Roy, who has also edited the collection. Roy’s introduction raises 13 discomfiting questions on what seems like a textbook case of manufacturing public opinion. Some of these questions have been asked since the Parliament attack, but the government has offered little more than deafening silence in reply.
The essays explore the shoddy manner with which the Delhi police put the case together, the acquittals in Delhi High Court (including that of Delhi college lecturer SAR Geelani), and the apex court’s confirmation of Guru’s death sentence despite questionable evidence.
The collection aims to point out the holes in the entire trial and appeal process.
Faced with an election where its prince-in-waiting is pitched against Narendra Modi, Roy’s essay points out how the Congress has gone after soft Muslim targets and played into the hands of the BJP. Roy also points out the BJP’s hypocrisy over those accused of terror on death row.
Roy even indicts a TV journalist, who she names while concluding the introduction. The media is indicted for eating out of the hands of the police instead of asking tough questions. “The media failed to do what they ought to have even after the High Court verdict — investigate police claims and revisit the case they had not yet examined,” says Sukumar Muralidharan from the International Federation of Journalists, in his essay.
Mirza Waheed’s essay ‘India’s message to Kashmir, the noose can extend beyond the gallows’ shows how all the government has done with Guru’s hanging is to give a face to the collective injustice that a citizen faces just because s/he is a Muslim. Guru’s hanging has set a dangerous precedent for terror investigations, Waheed says, while pointing out how it has vindicated shoddy probes characterised by falsehoods and fabrications and the record 17 days in which “a comprehensive” probe was completed!
In his essay ‘An execution most foul’, TR Andhyarujna makes the case that we have failed Guru as a nation by letting him hang. It should only be in the fitness of things to restore both the sanctity of our democracy and credibility of our judiciary by getting an independent probe into the attack, he argues. Else, history will mark us as a nation that conveniently chooses victims to satisfy its blood lust.
Read this collection if you want to understand the extent to which the rot has seeped into the system.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}