It has been a long struggle against accusations, media propaganda, physical and mental torture, and much more. Sadhvi Purna Chetnanandgiri (charge-sheeted under the name Pragya Singh Thakur by Mumbai ATS) and ten others finally saw a ray of hope when the MCOCA court in Mumbai upheld their plea to relieve them from the act that was meant to be applied only on habitual and organised gangsters. It is shocking to know the lengths to which Mumbai ATS, largely acting as an instrument of politics to its ruling masters in Mumbai, went in order to inappropriately impose this act on Sadhvi and others accused. The Mumbai ATS was adamant to impose MCOCA in the Malegaon case from the very beginning as they were completely broke with evidence in the case and wanted to misuse the act under which admission of crime against a police officer is admissible as confession of crime in the court. This is also the reason why, from day one, the ATS tortured the Sadhvi and others accused to their limits.
It is mandatory under the laws of MCOCA that there should be at least two chargesheets of heinous crimes against at least one of the accused within last ten years of imposing the act. There being no criminal records of any of those accused in the Malegaon case, the ATS falsely fabricated Rakesh Dhawde, one of those accused in the Malegaon case, in two blast cases in Jalna and Parbhani in Maharashtra that took place way back in 2006. All this was forged overnite by a ‘secular’ Congress-NCP alliance with the simple aim of framing the Sadhvi and others under MCOCA and then labelling them ‘Hindu terrorists’. The defence lawyers worked overtime to stop the imposition of MCOCA, but their voice went unheard. As soon as MCOCA was imposed, the ATS spread the word that the Sadhvi and others had confessed their role in Malegaon blasts and that their conviction was only a matter of time. Such off the record briefings to the media were clever moves to not only tarnish the image of Hindus as a society, but to also scare away and uproot any support that the victims of the ATS were getting, politically or socially.
At least in this, the ATS succeeded. The media held the Sadhvi and others guilty much before the trial began, and the political supporters quietly silenced themselves, waiting for the ‘law to take its course’. With tears in his eyes, Anant Bramhachari, a young sadhu who carries food for the Sadhvi to jail everyday says, “We are struggling to make ends meet here. There is extreme shortage of funds, and Mumbai is an expensive city to fight a legal battle. Had it not been for her generous lawyers, we would have had no legal support either. We cannot leave her alone, even if others do. She is humiliated everyday. Comments are made by prison authorities on her food, because of which she has gone on a fast. She is denied an ambulance from the hospital when she can’t even walk, despite court orders to do so.”
However, the truth of Malegaon case is that if law was actually to take its course, then the entire Mumbai ATS, along with its political masters would have been facing prosecution today for forgery, illegal detentions, kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, and last but not the least, outraging the modesty of a woman. According to Sadhvi Pragya’s lawyer Ganesh Sovani, she was picked up by Mumbai ATS on October 10, 2008, from her residence in Surat. None of the rules mandatory for a woman’s arrest were followed, and neither was the Sadhvi produced in any court of law within twenty four hours of her arrest. She was illegally detained and tortured both physically and mentally, and forced to watch blue films in order to kill her moral and ethical strength. It was only after 11 days of brutal torture that she was produced in the Nasik Court, in a badly shattered state of mind. Sadhvi Pragya was then forced to wear normal salwar suit by the ATS instead of her saffron dress in order to destroy her identity as a Sadhvi and in violation of all laws for arrested women in the country, she was seen being pushed into the court room by men of the ATS with no female constables accompanying her. The entire truth of Sadhvi Pragya’s illegal detention and her torture by the ATS first came to light when her lawyer Ganesh Sovani filed her eight page affidavit on November 17, 2009 in the Nasik court. The contents of the affidavit shook everyone who read it and exposed the illegal and manipulative means of the ATS. The Sadhvi then challenged the Mumbai ATS for a Narco analysis to be conducted on both herself and ATS officers to confirm the contents of the affidavit, to which the Congress government remained stoically silent.
The brutal criminal conduct of Mumbai ATS did not stop at just Sadhvi Pragya. In Indore, Dilip Patidar and Dharmendra Bairagi were illegally picked up in the middle of the night by men dressed in plain clothes, with no information given to Madhya Pradesh Police about their tour or arrests. Sudhir Kulkarni, who is the national general secretary of Abhinav Bharat, and had been in illegal detention and subject of ATS torture for many days, was brought to Jabalpur railway station and forced to make a call to Mayaram Jaiswani, who is another office bearer with Abhinav Bharat. Instead of Mayaram, the ATS ended up netting another worker Raju Rai, who when released late night, narrated the story to the media. Dharmendra Bairagi was dropped of at his house in Indore one night when his family filed a complaint with Indore police against Mumbai ATS for illegal detention. Dilip Patidar is still missing, and his family has filed an application with the high court of Madhya Pradesh alleging that the Mumbai ATS has killed him. The Indore bench of High Court has ordered an inquiry into the matter but surprisingly, the Senior Superintendant of Police in Indore Vipin Maheswari expresses complete ignorance on the issue.
The MCOCA against Sadhvi Pragya and others in the Malegaon case has been removed. It has not just saved them from torture and forceful confessions of crime but has also exposed to what limits the Congress led government has misused its agency for attaining cheap political gains of minority vote bank. The acquittal of Rakesh Dhavde in the Parbhani and Jalna cases and the fact that he was falsely implicated in them to impose MCOCA in another case indicates to a complete conspiracy against Hindus and a Hindu Sadhvi. The decision also means that the MCOCA court in Mumbai will no longer hear the case and that the forced confessions will have no meaning. The hearing will start from the beginning at the Nasik court under the IPC, and will take a long time to reach its conclusion. The ATS officers will get promotions for obeying their political masters. Then, even if Sadhvi Pragya and others accused get acquitted, justice would have been lost forever.
(The writer can be contacted on [email protected])
