Remembering Irfan

It's a familiar story. On the surface, yet another witness turning hostile,yet another botch-up by the police, yet another case collapsing. The differenceis that this one cuts too close to the bone. For it was a colleague who wasmurdered, only because they wanted to rob him of his car. The case had beengoing on for seven long years.

The verdict by Additional Sessions Judge Talwant Singh who acquitted all thefive people accused of killing Outlook cartoonist Irfan Hussain waseerily reminiscent of the Jessica Lal case. The judge said the prosecution had"not been able to link the accused with the commission of crime beyondreasonable doubt". He also said that the prosecution’s version of eventslooked like a "scene from a book or a movie".

The similarity did not end there. This one too had a key witness who turnedhostile: one Banwari Lal, in whose presence Irfan’s bag, according to thepolice, had been recovered from the house of one of the car-jackers,

The police scenario was that the gang of five - Mohammad Mustafa Ansari,Heera Singh alias "Bullet", Sanjay Kumar, Mohammad Jaseem and Mohammad Sahid- had spotted Irfan's car as he drove along the highway near Gazipur Dairy Farmon March 8, 1999. According to the police, the gang tried to stop and rob himand when Irfan resisted, he was brutally stabbed 28 times, strangled, and hisbody was dumped as they drove off with his car.

The police claimed to have cracked the case when a car-thief Fahim was caughtby the Krishna Nagar police in Kashipur, Uttar Pradesh, and, based apparently onhis confession, Irfan's car was recovered from Anantnag in J&K. About howthis was handled, the court remarked:

"Now, whom should the court believe, a responsible Sub-Inspector fromDelhi, Vivek Tyagi, who recovered the car after covering a distance of only 50to 60 yards from the checkpost, or SI Ramesh Lal, who came all the way fromJammu and Kashmir and deposed that the car was chased up to one-and-half km andthereafter the driver made good his escape?"

In any case, Fahim had also, according to the police, named the others in thegang who were already being tried for another car-theft case. They were arrestedon December 14, 1999 for Irfan’s murder. The police claimed that all thosearrested, part of an Udham Singh Nagar-based gang of highway robbers operated onlonely highway stretches around Delhi and adjoining areas, and disposed of therobbed cars in J&K.

Based on the interrogation of the accused, the police claimed to haverecovered Irfan's bag from the Sonepat house of one of the accused, SanjayKumar. This is where the witness testimony comes in as the police claimed tohave recovered the bag in the presence of Banwari Lal.

Banwari Lal went back on his testimony in September 2003 in court. He deniedthat he was present at Sanjay Kumar's house when the bag was recovered. Incross-examination, when confronted with his signed statement, he claimed thatthe police had made him sign on a blank piece of paper. It was on the basis ofthis turnaround that the court dismissed the prosecution claim over the recoveryof Irfan's bag and belongings.

It was a classic case of police ham-handedness, with no co-ordination worthits name. After he left office on March 8, 1999, and did not reach home, Irfan'swife Muneera had filed a missing person complaint at Sarojini Nagar PoliceStation on March 9, 1999. On March 10, this was changed to a kidnapping FIR.

Irfan's body was finally found in Gazipur, and because of the jurisdictionissues, the Kalyanpuri police-station opened a murder case on March 13. Insteadof transferring the original kidnapping case from Sarojini Nagar to Kalyanpuri,they continued with what they called their investigation after simply addingSection 302 (murder) to the kidnapping FIR. They were to transfer the case toKalyanpuri only on December 8, 1999.

The Krishna Nagar police, the one responsible for catching Fahim andrecovering Irfan's bag and belongings, meanwhile started its owninvestigations after registering a robbery and murder case. There were thus asmany as three police stations which were all carrying on their investigationsbecause of "jurisdiction issues". And yet simple things such as takingthe blood-samples of the accused and matching them with the blood-stains foundon the car were not done. It was not till September 1999 that they transferredthe case to Kalyanpuri.

Irfan’s wife Muneera had even filed an application with Delhi High Court inAugust 1999 expressing dissatisfaction over the progress of the probe into themurder. She had sought the transfer of the case to the CBI. She had laterdisputed the police version of events, saying Hussein’s murder was more than ahighway robbery that ended in murder.

Even if it was a random highway robbery as per the police version that ended up in such a grusome murder, the trouble is that the glaring discrepancies and contradictions in various policeaccounts only underline the fact that it was not because of just one witnessturning hostile that the case collapsed, but because the police botched up the case with its shoddy handling when the bare-minimum of a rigoroushard-nosed investigation that tied up the loose-ends would have ensured conviction of the accused. But perhaps all that isbest saved for a later date, for this is the time to reach out to the grievingfamily and friends and decide what legal steps can be taken to ensure thatIrfan's murderers are brought to book. Perhaps Irfan would just have commented wryly that the judgment was delivered merely a day too soon.