A Grain In My Empty Bowl: A journalist remembers Shahid Azmi 1977-2010
By Ajit Sahi: "...martyr Azmi is, no less than Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist and human rights activist who had already become a western icon for her courageous campaign against Vladimir Putin himself when she was shot dead at her Moscow apartment three years ago. Indeed, Russian, Chinese and Iranian dissidents take much heart from the western might backing them. Azmi’s campaign was, therefore, more courageous, for his work was doubly tainted as he defended “terrorists” allegedly once removed from anti-US terror groups, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
We need to directly ask just who benefits from Azmi’s killing. The answer is a Who’s Who of Indian security: the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, RAW and the Intelligence Bureau, whose grand constructs on terrorism Azmi demolished each time he won a case. Maharashtra Police despised Azmi, for he represented, mostly successfully, many accused in a string of blast cases. Azmi had been preparing for the defence of dozens arrested since 2008 as members of Indian Mujahideen, which has been linked with last Saturday’s blast in Pune that killed 10 people. Azmi was also actively involved in organising legal defence for many arrested in Gujarat on charges of masterminding and carrying out terror attacks.
Last July, Azmi made enemies at Mumbai’s Central Prison winning a historic ruling from the Bombay High Court against jail warders who had assaulted several terror accused. “I grew up seeing the police barge in night and day in our slum, terrorising and kidnapping people,” Azmi told me on December 11 as we sat chatting after office hours, he on his chair, where he was shot dead exactly two months later...
By any account, Azmi led an incredible life: he was only 32 when he was killed. The third of five brothers, Azmi’s life turned the day sword-wielding Hindu fanatics rushed at him as he walked home from school just days after mobs razed the disputed Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh in 1992. A Hindu neighbour saved him. “Shahid was never the same again,” his oldest brother, Arif, said as I sat with him last week at Azmi’s house a block away from his office. One day, at age 16, Azmi upped and left, ending up first in the Kashmir valley, and then across the border, with a gun on his shoulder. But he soon came back, disillusioned with the insurgency.
NONETHELESS, POLICE arrested him from home in 1994 for conspiring to kill India’s top politicians. The only evidence was a confession he never made. Yet, he was given five years. While at New Delhi’s Tihar Jail, Azmi enrolled for graduation and began writing legal documents for other inmates. Freed in 2001, he came home and joined journalism and law schools. Three years later, he quit a paying sub-editor’s job to join defence lawyer Majeed Memon as a junior at Rs 2,000 a month. “I want to work for the poor,” Azmi told his brother, Arif. It was widely known that Azmi wouldn’t charge any fees from a majority of his clients.
But his past never left him. Some years ago, in a heated moment, Azmi argued in court that even Lord Ram had waged violence to secure justice. The media screamed blue murder. A police case was launched. The judge called in Azmi for a chat. “But it’s true,” Azmi said when the judge cautioned that there were rumours he had been convicted for terrorism. “I wear that conviction as a badge of honour.” The judge told the police he never heard Azmi speak of Lord Ram. The case collapsed. On Monday this week, another judge wept in court. People stood around in silence. Outside that court, Azmi’s long-time lawyer-partner, Saba Qureshi, hung out listless, trying to talk to clients, some beyond grief. “I see him everywhere,” she said, looking out from the balcony. “What will I do?”.."
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main43.asp?filename=Ne270210a_grain.asp
