Questions Galore
Why was Dilip Patidar (right), an important witness in the Malegaon blasts case of 2008, who is now missing, allowed by ATS to go home on his own?- Where was the need to bring him from Indore to Mumbai if the same officers who went to pick him up were to question him?
- And couldn’t his statement have been recorded before a magistrate in Indore itself?
- If he was an important witness, why wasn’t he put under a witness protection programme?
- Is he in hiding? Is ATS trying to cover up a mishap? Has he been eliminated by those who want investigation into the Hindutva terror angle scuppered?
***
He is a key prosecution witness in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case. He has been missing for nearly four years now. And the CBI, after investigating his disappearance, is set to chargesheet officers of the Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS), the very agency that considered him its key witness. The case of Dilip Devisingh Patidar is a window to the scary, shadowy world of terror investigations, where the usual dubious practices of police—such as coercion, pitting suspects against one another, forced confessions, and especially illegal detention—are used with impunity. Such methods come under blazing light only when things go wrong, as they seem to have in Patidar’s case.
| | | | The CBI has found fault with some ATS officers in its report to the MP High Court. It awaits clearance for prosecution. | | | | |
|
But there is more than just an individual’s rights—which are certainly important—involved in this case. While the focus had always been on Islamist terror, the two Malegaon blasts (the earlier one was in 2006) are perhaps the first instance in which Hindutva groups are believed to have been involved. Among those held in the 2008 blasts case is Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, who worked for Military Intelligence. Another prominent suspect is Sadhvi Pragya Thakur. Already, the information blitz from various investigating agencies has fogged these labyrinthine cases at the cost of credibility. It’s in this context that the disappearance of a key witness raises alarm, for it could put paid to the investigation of the “Hindutva terror” angle.
The Malegaon 2008 blasts took place on September 29, leaving six people dead and 101 injured. The Maharashtra ATS homed in on some Hindutva groups, and on November 1 that year came to search the house of Shivnarayan Kalsangra, a suspect now under arrest, in Indore. (His brother Ramnarayan, one of the main accused, is still absconding.) This was when the ATS first came in touch with Patidar, the Kalsangras’ neighbour. Obtaining the house keys from Patidar, the ATS conducted the search in his presence. Then, on the night of November 10, the ATS is said to have picked up Patidar, then 26 years old, from Indore after allegedly uncovering his cellphone links with Kalsangra and other suspects. From November 11 to 18, the ATS is said to have questioned him at its Mumbai offices. But inexplicably, he was said to have been allowed to go to Indore on November 18 to collect his ID proof to enable him to record a statement before a magistrate. The last Patidar’s family heard from him was on November 20, when he called Alkesh Solia, a cousin.
After vain attempts to file missing complaints with the Khajrana police station in Indore, Patidar’s family members filed a habeas corpus petition with the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. It was admitted on November 24, and the court asked a joint team of the ATS and Indore police to locate Patidar. Filing a report on behalf of the joint team on February 24, 2010, the Indore police told the court Patidar was not in the custody of any investigating agency—he was in hiding.
When Patidar could not be located for nearly eight months, the court ordered the CBI to take up investigations on October 1, 2010. Over the last 21 months, the CBI has filed seven status reports with the court. For now, the Madhya Pradesh High Court has closed the case, in the expectation that the CBI will soon obtain clearance to prosecute the ATS officers its status reports have damned.
Here are some of the CBI’s findings from its status reports, which Outlook has access to. These findings, based on the scrutiny of ATS and Madhya Pradesh police documents and examination of some 60 witnesses, question the methods adopted by the ATS’s officers:
Detention illegal: The CBI’s status report of July 11, 2011, says, “...Patidar was taken by the ATS Mumbai team on the intervening night of 10-11 November 2008 from his residence and they detained him in illegal custody even till 20 November 2008...their procedure of taking him away was not as per the legal provisions. No notice or summons was issued. Neither any written willingness of Patidar obtained by the ATS. Patidar was kept in wrongful confinement till 20 November 2008, when the last phone call was received by his cousin.”
Patidar was scared: His cousin Solia told the CBI that Patidar sounded “unnatural”, “frightened” and “under pressure” in his November 20 call. He said “he was in the custody of the ATS and would be released in a day or two”.
Unusual release: The CBI says it’s difficult to believe two claims of the ATS: a) that Patidar, when he was being questioned in Mumbai, was allowed to visit his friend’s house and hence wasn’t illegally detained; b) that Patidar was allowed to go and collect his ID proof from Indore. There’s no address or contact number of the so-called friend. And a man “lifted from his residence” is unlikely to be allowed to leave on his own.
Discrepancies in movement reports: Patidar apparently “attended” the ATS’s unit in Vikhroli, Mumbai, on a couple of days, but there’s no reflection of these movements in the diary notings of the ATS’s Kalachowky unit, where he was originally kept. His movements on some other days, however, are noted. As police officers will admit off the record, not making proper diary entries, or faking them, is not unusual in the interrogation of suspects detained illegally.
One call a day: The ATS claimed Patidar was in constant touch with his friends and relatives, and therefore, was not in illegal detention. The CBI doubts this, saying, “There’s one peculiarity...he has made only one call on some days while in ATS custody. No other phone calls were made or received during this period of custody (November 11-20, 2008).” Clearly, the ATS was allowing him to make one call per day to family members, a common tactic to keep them from getting worried and seeking legal aid.
Local cops inactive: The CBI found that Patidar’s family members made missing person complaints with the Khajrana police station in Indore on November 14, 20 and 22, but the SHO did not make official entries. Usually, special investigating agencies such as the ATS are able to exert pressure on local stations to stall missing-person complaints about suspects they have picked up.
The CBI has concluded that “there is nothing to show that Patidar came back to Indore from Mumbai”. So where is he? The cash reward for any information on him has gone up from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh. But there is no answer. And while investigators may not admit it openly, privately many believe Patidar’s disappearance will seriously affect the 2008 Malegaon blasts trials, confounding the investigation of “saffron terror”.