State of slow simmer

The Sohrabuddin case is creating ripples in Gujarat. The silence seems to be cracking, in bits and pieces, this summer

After the Ides of March 2002, the heat is on in Gujarat after five years, not raging but smouldering quietly. This time it is not due to any national television channel or the English press, neither the Left nor the Congress, or because of any perceived Outsider — the usual suspects for self-styled Gujarati Gaurav. The state is afire with controversies, all homemade Gujarati.

First Gujaratis learned that lions are being poached in the Gir sanctuary while politicos and officials paraded their increasing numbers. Then came the scandal of tribal BJP MP Babubhai Katara, hailing from one of the 100 poorest districts of country, arrested on an international flight in an immigration scam. The hat-trick has been completed by Gujarat government’s admission in the Supreme Court that their star cop carried out a fake encounter — and that the victim’s wife Kausar Bi was burnt and killed too — even as BJP spin masters find it difficult to conjure up some criminal antecedents for Sohrabuddin Sheikh. There is also the killing of Tulsiram Prajapati in the same case.

The Sohrabuddin case has the Gujaratis hooked as never before. More than the street, the bureaucracy and police ranks are watching it closely. The dramatic arrest of D.G. Vanjhara who enjoyed unfettered political patronage, has rattled the police force.

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The developments have Gujaratis riveted to every small bit of news. The stories are being recounted — from newspreads in competitive exclusives to editorials in the leading Gujarati dailies — in Divya Bhaskar and Gujarat Samachar and Sandesh. It is these Gujarati dailies — the latter duo were indicted by the Editors’ Guild for their inflammatory and biased coverage during the 2002 riots — that are telling the stories of how Vanjhara fancied himself as an actor in Gujarati films, or speculating on how Modi could let the law take its course to keep up his righteous posture as a good administrator. And why should a housewife — even if she were to be somehow proved to be married to a criminal — be killed in this manner, they ask.

The official narrative of the Sohrabuddin encounter case goes like this: An LET operative out to kill the chief minister, was killed in an encounter in 2005. The criminal who operated in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan is bumped off not by the police of these two states, but by the Gujarat police, and that too when traveling in a bus from Maharashtra to Andhra Pradesh. All this happened without any official paperwork. Not surprisingly, post 2002, the system, its political bosses and their pets in the police force did not feel the need for paperwork or the rule book.

But the rule book seems to be catching up finally.

The 2002 riots propelled Modi to a saffron victory; he was hailed as Gujarat ka sher (lion); he could encash votes not in the name of BJP, but in his own name. Modi, who works for Gujarat ka gaurav. Modi, who wants 5 crore Gujaratis to surpass the growth rate not just of India, but of the world. This could be changing.

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There could be a parable in an unrelated event that happened exactly a year ago on May 1, 2006 in Vadodara. A dargah was razed by Vadodara Municipal Corporation ostensibly for road widening. Modi then, perhaps for the first time ever in his tenure as chief minister, chose to visit Muslim victims of the violence. Both the police and civic chiefs were transferred. Now two police trucks watch permanently over the spot, while the traffic inches around it.

The silence seems to be cracking, in bits and pieces this summer in Gujarat. It is a section of the Gujarat police force that was trying to trace Kausar Bi’s remains and indict their guilty colleagues. The 48th Gujarat Day celebrations were marked by a state-wide strike of state government employees, for the first time ever in the last five years. The political fallout in this election year is not clear yet. But after the smouldering March, May has been unusually overcast with clouds.