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goes on to recount the quirky, ordinary story of her life and
that of those affected by her death. For the dead dohave stories to
tell. They are only a statistic till they get a backstory, and when
a personality is fleshed out, theytoo can touch a chord with
ordinary citizens. Especially if the end was brutal and the victim
young.
Ishrat J ahan was just 19 when she was shot dead at point-blank
range in what has become one of the mostfamous, controversial and
contested fake encounters in contemporary Indian history. Nine
years after her bodywas found dumped on a road in Ahmedabad, she
could become the face that haunts the very ambitious plans
ofGujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. She makes an attractive
victim, so her story has adequate appeal for themedia to keep
playing it up at every twist and turn the case takes in a general
election year.
Conversely, BJ P leaders have begun to argue in private that a
Muslim victim and her very Muslim-looking familycould also become a
pivot for polarisation and Hindu support for Modi as he tests his
national ambitions. Clearly,for all his ambitions to be the great
icon of development, growth and purposeful leadership, Modi must
know thatgiven his past, when push comes to shove, he must also
hope for the raw emotion of Hindus reacting to theexistence of
Muslims, especially those his regime presented as terrorists and
who have now turned out to bevictims. The day after the Ishrat J
ahan chargesheet was filed by the CBI, Modi was in Delhi to attend
a meetingon the BJ Ps campaign plans. And it was apparently
business as usual. Yet it would be interesting to see if Modiwould
be willing to sacrifice his former home minister Amit Shah, already
charged in the Sohrabuddin encountercase, if the supplementary
chargesheet (expected to be filed later this month) links the
encounters to a larger pol-itical conspiracy. Now elevated to BJ P
general secretary, Shah is in charge of Uttar Pradesh where Modi
hopesto make substantive gains. Can a man who hopes to be PM depend
so much on an individual charged withplotting murder at a time when
encounters have become an issue of national discourse?
As it is, in the age of coalitions, there is something illogical
about a politician ploughing a lonely furrow with noregard to
regional parties who will play a role in converting support into
seats. As an RSS insider put it, India isnot Gujarat and it will be
a challenge for him without allies. Issues like the Ishrat case
reduce the chances ofregional cooperation...we know that. Sources
in the BJ P also believe that Modis anxiety to become
campaigncommittee chief at the partys Goa meet last month was
possibly also influenced by the need to get a foot in theDelhi door
before the encounter cases gave rope to adversaries like L.K.
Advani to try and throttle Project Modi.
Indeed, now that the CBI chargesheet has been filed, it is
fairly elementary to predict that Modi will also presenthimself as
the man playing for big stakes against all odds with a grand
national conspiracy against him. In thego-it-alone strategy the BJ
P has now staked all on, the presentation of Modi must continue
with great enthusiasmfor the cadre, even if a tad forced at the
leadership level. And so perverse is the political discourse that
as moresordid details are fleshed out about the fake encounters, it
is Modi who will try to position himself as a victim of
sorts. A victim of a CBI witchhunt, of diabolical Congress
plans, of an unforgiving minority community thatpresumes to stand
between him and Absolute Power for the Greater Good, of misguided
secularists who play toan Anti-National Plot.
The script would certainly work for die-hard NAMO fans. But it
can also make some people cringe when the likesof BJ P spokesperson
Meenakshi Lekhi raises questions about Ishrats character (What was
a young girl doingwith three men?) and subsequently adding that
since the college student came from a deprived background,she was a
fit case for getting drawn into terrorism. Clearly, slandering the
dead will be part of the BJ P arsenaleven at the risk of offending
finer liberal sensibilities.
Where the BJ P does have a point is when they point out that
this isnt the first fake encounter to take place inIndia. It
happens across the country every day, sometimes as part of a bigger
plan as it did in Punjab when Sikhmilitancy was snuffed out, in
Andhra when the Greyhounds stepped it up against the Naxalites, or
in Maharashtra
for decades against the underworld. False encounters continue
with impunity in Chhattisgarh, Kashmir and theNortheast. But what
is also pertinent is the fact that the Gujarat encounters do not
fit any logical pattern of fightinga genuine insurgency or
movement. Instead, all the FIRs in the encounters state that the
dead terrorists came tokill the chief minister during a certain
time-frame. The Gujarat police always seemed to be aware of their
plans ingood time to bump them off. The terrorists strangely
stopped coming after Modi attempted an image shift toEfficient
Development Man. For several years now, he has apparently been
quite safe from terrorist threats.
Now this is why the Ishrat J ahan story is so compelling. It
makes us take a look at fake encounters as a policythat the state
and intelligence forces have all too often resorted to across
India. It makes us ask questions aboutwhy this happens. It actually
cracks open the issue of false narratives being fed to the public.
Beyondinconveniencing Narendra Modi and Amit Shah and making them
seek legal and political counsel, the case issignificant and
fascinating because it also raises questions about the workings of
intelligence operatives in our
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