KISHTWAR COMMUNAL RIOTS ENQUIRY

NC planning to bring judge in the dock in Yatra Bhawan demolition episode

PDP wants Dy CM Nirmal Singh to silence BJP’s Young Turks on ex-Minister’s indictment by Justice Gandhi Commission

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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Jammu, March 30: The ruling coalition partners in Jammu and Kashmir, Bharatiya Janata Party and Peoples Democratic Party, appear to be divided over political exploitation of Justice R.C. Gandhi’s indictment of the National Conference Member of Legislative Council and former Minister of State for Home Sajjad Ahmad Kichloo in the infamous Kishtwar communal riots of 2010.

Sensing the mood of its cadre in Kishtwar district, PDP is understood to have developed cold feet on raking up Kichloo’s indictment in the State Legislature. Some of the grass-root workers are said to have communicated to the PDP high command that many of the Muslim community people, who had been on the forefront to ensure Kichloo’s defeat in the Assembly elections last year, were not in favour of highlighting the communal riots of August 2013.

“They have voted against Kichloo and deposed against him before the Commission of Enquiry but they don’t want to fall on the wrong side of the fence in an issue of communal implication that would benefit none other than NC”, said a source.  

Highly placed political sources revealed to Authint Mail that PDP was trying to rope in senior BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh to ensure that his party’s MLAs do not agitate Kichloo’s indictment in the Assembly.

However, the BJP Young Turks led by Ravinder Raina, are understood to have conveyed to the party leadership that “the Sangh Parivar interests” could not be compromised for political considerations or for PDP’s advantage. “Too much of compromise has already been done”, said an insider. He insisted that BJP would aggressively demand action, including registration of FIR, against the NC leader and all the Police and civil officers censured by Justice Gandhi.

Judge in the dock?

On the other hand, both, NC as well as the censured Police officers, have begun working on a “protective mechanism”. Then IGP of Jammu Rajesh Kumar, then DIG of Doda Ashkoor Wani and then SP of Kishtwar Sunil Kumar, have been reportedly indicted for their role during the riots. The report has been submitted to General Administration Department which, in turn, would present it to the Cabinet for consideration later this week.

According to some reports, a senior IPS officer has told his colleagues that he would question the Commission’s credibility while exposing an incident in which he had been requested to “recover an amount of Rs 15 crore from some people who had grabbed the money from the judge”. “Had I exerted pressure on those people and forced them to return the money, I wouldn’t have been held guilty of anything”, the IPS officer is said to have told his colleagues.

Sources disclosed that NC too has started a tirade to bring into question Justice Gandhi’s integrity inspite of the fact that none other than the party’s acting President and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had selected him for the inquiry. In the last two days, NC leaders have repeatedly pointed out that Justice Gandhi had given clean chit to Kichloo in his interim report during the NC-Congress regime but held him guilty in the final report submitted during the BJP-PDP rule.

According to these sources, a team of NC’s loyalist lawyers, which includes a former Advocate General and a senior Supreme Court of India advocate, has taken out an old case to dispute the retired judge’s credibility. It was over a decade ago that a Division Bench of J&K High Court, headed by then acting Chief Justice V.K. Jhanji, had passed severe strictures against a fellow High Court judge Justice Gandhi---albeit withholding his name---reversed his order given in favour of a hotelier and got the building of Yatra Bhawan hotel at Indira Chowk demolished.

The four-storey hotel complex was razed to rubble after Supreme Court of India upheld the High Court DB judgment. Justice Jhanji had proceeded on anonymous complaints and turned them into a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) when it was brought to his notice that Justice Gandhi had heard a matter between Jammu Municipal Corporation and the hotel owner Munshi Ram Gandhi despite being marginal witness as a lawyer in the same hotel’s sale deed years back.

In the dispute over violation of the building permission between JMC and the hotel owner, Justice Gandhi had dismissed JMC’s objections and permitted Munshi Ram to go ahead with the construction.

Justice Jhanji got the dismissed petition revived and his DB heard the matter afresh before ordering the hotel’s demolition. Being the first of its kind in Jammu, the demolition was telecast live by Star News and other television channels. Thereafter, Justice Gandhi was transferred to Rajasthan High Court.

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