A book for UAPA judges

The book is peppered with stories showing the deep state has gone rogue

All judges hearing cases under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) must read Josy Joseph's masterly The Silent Coup: A History of India's Deep State. The book will tell them that the accused in terror cases are, not uncommonly, innocent citizens either tortured into accepting the blame for crimes they did not commit or becoming victims of manufactured evidence. They languish in jail as their cases drag on for years.

A deep state is traditionally defined as a network of influential members of police, federal intelligence agencies and the military working secretively and independently of elected executives to implement their own agenda. In India, though, both work in tandem to create tendentious narratives and subvert the Constitution.

This involves recruiting journalists willing to echo the dubious theories of the deep state. Joseph turned down several offers of regular payouts by intelligence agencies during his journalistic career. But this choice police informants do not have, for they are often petty criminals or in need of money.

It is to them the security agencies turn after every terror attack. These informants implicate a person with whom they have a score to settle, or to justify their payoffs, innocent citizens, whom sleuths torture in the hope of extracting information. Even informants are framed as terrorists. Some are let off; a few are turned into accused, chargesheeted, and left to rot in jail.

Josy Joseph's The Silent Coup: A History of India's Deep State.

Joseph discloses the deep state's dark secrets through the story of Wahid Deen Mohammed Sheikh, a school teacher in Mumbai. After the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was banned in 2001, Wahid was accused of being its activist. He was not. But the police preferred to believe the claim of a cleric, an informant with whom Wahid had differences over an Islamic doctrine. Wahid was repeatedly summoned for questioning. From there on, every terror attack in Mumbai had the police swooping down on him.

Wahid's life turned into a nightmare on July 11, 2006, when bomb blasts ripped apart Mumbai's suburban trains, killing 189 people. Wahid was taken to the torture chamber, stripped naked, and mercilessly beaten; Surya Prakash oil was injected into his rectum; he felt his body was on fire, making him hop around in pain. He was given the choice of becoming a state witness or getting clubbed with 12 other Muslims accused of triggering the train blasts. He chose the second.

In 2015, Wahid was exonerated, five were sentenced to death, and the remaining seven given life sentences. Their appeal is pending in the High Court. Were they guilty? Consider this: A fortuitous twist enabled the Mumbai Police to nab Sadiq Israr Sheikh, an operative of the Indian Mujahideen, which was responsible for several terror attacks across India. Lodged in the same jail as the 13 accused, Sadiq told them that the IM had carried out the train blasts. He even came to the court to testify to the innocence of the 13, but was dissuaded from doing so by his father at the last minute.

The Silent Coup is peppered with stories showing the deep state has gone rogue. Its victims are in Kashmir, Punjab, the Northeast and the tribal areas. The deep state learned to play diabolic games under the Congress regime. It has now become increasingly ruthless and ideological. Even the educated middle class, unlike in the past, has become its pawn, sacrificed to promote the narrative that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ideological foes want to assassinate him. For obvious reasons, Joseph calls it the Gujarat Model, which inspired a Major in the Military Intelligence, in 2015, to plant explosives on a Muslim in Ranchi, Jharkhand, and build a phoney case that his plan was to bump off Modi.

The Silent Coup tracks the history of what is known as the Hindutva terror attack cases that date to the 2006-2008 period. These attacks were blamed on Abhinav Bharat, a radical Hindu group allegedly comprising an army officer and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh members. Joseph quotes a former intelligence agency chief saying the idea of propping up Abhinav Bharat germinated in 2003 and "was, almost certainly, a creation of one of the intelligence agencies". A veteran Central Bureau of Investigation officer told Joseph that they had requested permission from their chief to allow them to interrogate three prominent Hindutva ideologues over their role in the terror attacks. Their request was denied.

The Silent Coup also has its heroes. Late police officer Hemant Karkare's diligence in cracking the Hindu terror attacks is etched in the nation's memory. But forgotten is the story of police officer Vinod Bhatt, who had assured Wahid and others that he would rather die than implicate them in false cases. Under pressure from his bosses to do so, Bhatt committed suicide. Brig Pramod Kumar refused to stage an encounter in Kashmir - and found his career growth slowed.

As you leaf through The Silent Coup, you are reminded of all those denied bail under UAPA. For instance, those accused of scripting the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence and the 2020 Delhi riots. Judges must read the book to mull what they can do to prevent the deep state from engulfing the nation in darkness.

The writer is a senior journalist. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.