Ashish Khetan & Raja Chowdhury - Amit Shah’s alleged illegal surveillance
The Stalkers
An important covenant in a democracy is that those voted to power shall protect the weak and the vulnerable. That is why when the system fails to protect a Nirbhaya or do justice to a Jessica Lal or protect the children of Nithari, even the most compromising among us take to the streets and demand a reckoning. That is why we collectively called for stricter laws and swifter punishment for crime against women and children in the wake of the brutal Delhi gangrape.
This story is, however, not about the inadequacies of the system or its indifference. It is far more sordid. This story is about the misuse of police machinery and powers of the State by a top minister in the Gujarat government to stalk a young woman from Bangalore, subjecting her to constant surveillance for reasons not immediately apparent.
Gujarat IPS officer G.L. Singhal, who is an accused in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case (Ishrat was killed, along with three others, by Gujarat Police in 2004) and out on bail, has handed over hundreds of recorded telephonic conversations to the CBI revealing how three key wings of the Gujarat Police—the State Intelligence Bureau, also known as CID Intelligence, the Crime Branch and the Anti-Terrorist Squad—misused their powers to stalk an unmarried young woman from Bangalore, who had her parents staying in Gujarat.
The entire surveillance-cum-phone interception operation was mounted in August 2009 on oral orders, without any valid legal authorization, and was meant only to serve the interests of someone whom the then minister of state for home, Amit Shah, addressed as ‘saheb’.
The illegal spying operation in which Singhal has confessed to his key role was initiated on the instructions of Shah sometime in the month of August 2009 and continued for several weeks thereafter. The 267 audio recordings submitted to the CBI primarily contain telephonic conversations between Shah and Singhal, who was at the time posted as SP with ATS. In at least half a dozen conversations, Shah is alluding to his saheb’s acute personal interest in the snooping of the woman. The conversations suggest Shah was passing minute-by-minute details gathered through this snooping operation to his ‘saheb’. A close confidant of Narendra Modi, Shah held his office as Minister of State for Home for seven years between 2003 and 2010. Modi besides being the CM has also been Gujarat’s home minister since October 2001. Shah was arrested in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case in 2010 and is out on bail, looking after BJP’s poll campaign in Uttar Pradesh.
Investigative news portals Gulail and Cobrapost have accessed both the entire set of recordings and the three explosive self-incriminatory statements given by Singhal before the CBI between April and June this year. We also have the 10-page panchnama prepared by the CBI, as the agency took possession of the phone recordings from Singhal. All conversations were recorded by Singhal who at that time was close to Shah. Apparently, it was only after the CBI arrested him in the Ishrat Jahan killing case in February this year that he cracked up and chose to cooperate with the CBI... read more:
