"Pranesh Was With Me In Kerala"

How can the Indian government or courts believe the US double agent David Headley and not the findings of an “honest judge” like S.P. Tamang, wonders Gopinatha Pillai, 75, father of Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh.

In 2009, Tamang, then metropolitan magistrate in Ahmedabad, had in his 247-page report said that the killing of Ishrat Jahan, Javed Sheikh and two others was a cold-blooded murder of innocents. Says Pillai, “Till 2013, I had gone 18 times to Gujarat to depose. I have never met home secretary G.K. Pillai or former minister P. Chidambaram. I’m sure Chidamabaram too will change his stance, now that his son has been linked to some case.”

Gopinatha Pillai recalls that in May 2004, his six-year-old grandson was with him during the holidays, and since he could not get train tickets to Pune, his son Pranesh agreed to drive down with his wife and two other children, the youngest barely six months old, so that Pillai could see them. “He and his wife Sajida, another relative, a young girl, and the two children came down from Pune on May 31st in a blue Indica. They stayed a few days, visited my relatives and had meals with them. On June 6, at 5 am, they left. Pranesh was driving, and stopped a couple of times along the way. Their car broke down in Coimbatore, and he told me the repairs came to Rs 6,000. They stayed the night in Coimbatore and the next halt was in Bangalore. I know bec­ause he’d call every evening. From Bangalore they went to Latur and on to Ahmednagar to Sajida’s sister’s place for a function,” he says.

“I gather that, on the morning of June 9, while he was in Ahmednagar, he got a call. He told the family he had to go to Mumbai urgently and would be back in the evening. (While in Kerala, he told me a police officer named Vanzara had called him a few times.) Sajida called me on the evening of June 9 and asked if I had heard from Pranesh and I said no. His phone was switched off. There was no information for the next five days. On the evening of June 15, Sajida called to say there was news of terrorists being shot in Gujarat. When I saw the newspaper the next day, I recognised my son’s car and knew from the pictures my son was among the dead. Sajida was very upset because Pranesh did not even drink or smoke, and here he was being branded a terrorist,” says Gopinatha Pillai.

Pillai was summoned on September 2, 2004, to depose before the magistrate’s court in Gujarat. “I remember a head constable telling me, ‘Just go with the statement that your son was a terrorist and there will be no trouble. If you don’t, we’ll catch a terrorist in Kashmir or somewhere and make him say your son was given a huge sum to eliminate Narendra Modi.’ All I can say is, I believe my son was trapped. His call records were examined and there was evidence he had talked to Vanzara for two minutes. When I went to collect his body,  one of his arms was hacked at the shoulder and hanging by the skin. They were poisoned and then shot,” he says.

As for the Ishrat connection, he says, “Pranesh was sponsoring her education. He’d told me he was sponsoring a girl’s education. I understand she is the girl. I have never met her or her parents.”

Gujarat cops had told him Pranesh was missing for 14 days (before the enc­ounter) as he’d gone to Pakistan. But the somewhat resigned Pillai says, “My son had driven to Kerala and was with us before he drove back to Maharashtra during those 14 days.”

By Minu Ittyipe in Kochi