AHMEDABAD: Desh bhakti ka kaam hai . This was
the straightforward message from DIG D G Vanzara
to his subordinates in Gujarat police, which
finds itself embroiled in the disgraceful controversy
of fake encounters.
Probe into the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin
Sheikh and related killings of his aide Tulsiram
Prajapati and, his wife Kauserbi, reveal that
the DIG under arrest used his network in the
police to give the encounters a touch of authenticity.
Confronted with the simple dictum of deshbhakti,
whenever policemen or their informers were asked
to bend, they crawled.
Vanzara's wish was their command. This patriotic
fervour seeped down to the rank-and-file and
the latter knew they had to get work done even
if it meant procuring weapons from an informer
or stealing vehicles to be planted at the site
of an encounter.
Policemen who did their jobs thinking they were
indeed doing something patriotic, are now spilling
the beans, knowing that they were not being
used to bust the elaborate terror network but
just to fix petty gangsters who had become inconvenient
to the political establishment.
CID (Crime) is banking primarily on testimonies
of such police officers who were taken in by
a misplaced patriotic zeal because they’re
not aware of the real agenda.
