Cops have ‘dirt’ on Gilani: an anti-Pak email in his inbox!

Try Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf as war criminals. How could Pak troops send so many innocent youths from PoK to be killed as mercanari...

Try Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf as war criminals. How could Pak troops send so many innocent youths from PoK to be killed as mercanaries during the Kargil war? Pak has been sending unemployed youths from PoK across the line of control for engaging in terrorism and religious cleansing.

This chain email from a PoK-based organisation, the Balawaristan National Front (BNF), should be music to New Delhi’s ears but watch out if it pops up in your inbox.

For, the Delhi police have cited this e-mail—and only this e-mail—as evidence that jailed Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Gilani ‘‘has an inclination towards liberation of Kashmir.’’

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If that seems absurd, read the chargesheet filed on September 6 in the Official Secrets Act case against Gilani, booked on June 9 following the discovery of a document in his computer about the deployment of forces in Kashmir.

Gilani has since been in custody even though just three days after his arrest, his wife Aanisa (daughter of the detained Kashmir separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani) gave the police a photocopy of the same document printed in a Pakistan security journal, Islamabad Papers, way back in January 1996.

The chargesheet shows that the police sent the document in both forms to the Army for its opinion.

On June 14, the Directorate General of Military Operations gave a report saying that the information contained in the seven-year-old document ‘‘is prejudicial to the security of the country and has serious ramifications on our operational plans in J&K.’’

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But these grim forebodings fly in the face of the fact that a Pakistan think tank has already published the document in its journal which has been freely available all these years in several Indian libraries.

The police make no mention of this inconvenient fact in their chargesheet and instead claim that Gilani confessed to them that ‘‘in the garb of a press reporter, he has been conducting espionage in India for Pakistan and it was he who had supplied this information to Pakistan.’’

But then Gilani’s alleged confession, if any, has no evidentiary value because it was not recorded by any magistrate.

The police have also charged Gilani with the offence of peddling obscene material. Reason: The hard disk of his computer contained email ‘‘indicating that the accused is involved in/inclined towards group sex.’’ The reference is to some pornographic e-mail Gilani received from sites such as ‘‘naughty links,’’ ‘‘ebony fantasy,’’ ‘‘dark obsession,’’ ‘‘killer blonde,’’ ‘‘naughty phone sex’’ and ‘‘naughty shopping.’’