Chilling Tale

The cover story in the latest issue of Outlook on Mohammed Afzal makes frightening reading; and what makes it even more chilling is the fact that just beneath our veneer of patriotic jingoism and hard-coded beliefs of ‘police is good’, we all sense the terrible murkiness that the law and order machinery is capable of. Even in relatively untroubled, read ‘unaffected by terrorism’ state, corrupt policemen and blatantly tampered cases are legion. What would one expect in Kashmir then?

I was first disturbed, and as I continued reading (its a terribly long piece, what else would you expect from Arundhati Roy!?) the anxiety soon progressed to shock! I fear I’ve been guilty of ignorance, indifference and above all, a childish belief that the SC could be depended on to always deliver justice. If the court has chosen to deliver the sentence that it has, in the face of the glaring inconsistencies that this article points out, then three’s something deeply wrong. You will have to read the piece and think and figure out for yourself; I for one need to introspect deeply on what it is that we as citizens can expect from our state machinery. And more important, what we as citizens need to to with regard to our state machinery.

I’ve been a long standing and fairly offensive commentator on Roy’s verbose and pedantic writing style; but despite its length, I found this article almost terse and the ending too abrupt. Ms Roy has written well, and not in her usual style.

From the article:

In its August 4, 2005, judgement, the Supreme Court clearly says that there was no evidence that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group or organisation. But it also says, “As is the case with most of the conspiracies, there is and could be no direct evidence of the agreement amounting to criminal conspiracy. However, the circumstances, cumulatively weighed, would unerringly point to the collaboration of the accused Afzal with the slain ‘fidayeen’ terrorists.”

So: No direct evidence, but yes, circumstantial evidence.

A controversial paragraph in the judgement goes on to say, “The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender. The challenge to the unity, integrity and sovereignty of India by these acts of terrorists and conspirators can only be compensated by giving maximum punishment to the person who is proved to be the conspirator in this treacherous act” (emphasis mine).

To invoke the ‘collective conscience of society’ to validate ritual murder, which is what the death penalty is, skates precariously close to valorising lynch law.

And also, and very appropriate:

None of the inconsistencies that I have written about so far are the result of spectacular detective work on my part. A lot of them are documented in an excellent book called December 13th: Terror Over Democracy by Nirmalangshu Mukherji; in two reports (Trial of Errors and Balancing Act) published by the Peoples’ Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi; and most important of all, in the three thick volumes of judgements of the trial court, the high court and the Supreme Court. All these are public documents, lying on my desk. Why is it that when there is this whole murky universe begging to be revealed, our TV channels are busy staging hollow debates between uninformed people and grasping politicians? Why is it that apart from a few sporadic independent commentators, our newspapers carry front-page stories about who the hangman is going to be, and macabre details about the length (60 metres) and weight (3.75 kg) of the rope that will be used to hang Mohammed Afzal (Indian Express, October 16, 2006).

Read the complete article.