Abolish Death Penalty India: A Muslim 'terror accused' tells his account of frame-up and torture

Thursday, May 28, 2015

A Muslim 'terror accused' tells his account of frame-up and torture

Zia Haq, Hindustan Times, New Delhi|

Updated: May 09, 2015 16:52 IST

Abdul Qayyum's autobiography reveals a shocking case intrigue, ruse, torture and devious framing, swerving the spotlight on some of India's questionable anti-terror operations.

At a simple ceremony on Friday, Abdul Qayyum--a madrassa teacher from Gujarat--unveiled in New Delhi a book the Gujarat police wouldn't allow him to launch in his home state. Judged by its cover, its unpolished English and utter lack of flair, it’s an unremarkable book at first sight. Brave the dead-eyed prose, and the reader is left with a rare, haunting account of a presumed terrorist on death row declared innocent in the end. Astounding still is how innocent Muslims can be witch-hunted, framed and put on trial on terror charges.

Qayyum was arrested in the 2002 Akshardham temple siege in Gandhinagar, in which 33 were killed when terrorists stormed the temple. In 2006, a Gujarat POTA court sentenced three of the six accused, including Qayyum, to death. That sentence was upheld in 2010 by the Gujarat high court. It then came before the Supreme Court, where the case began to unravel like a George Pelecanos thriller. On May 16, 2014, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept the BJP to a historic verdict, another extraordinary verdict was being delivered by the top court: all six accused in the case, including Qayyum, were found innocent.

Qayyum lived to tell his story: '11 Years Behind Bars', an autobiography that reveals a shocking case of intrigue, ruse, torture and devious framing, swerving the spotlight on some of India's questionable anti-terror operations. There isn’t a doubt that terrorists did kill innocent devotees in that famous temple in a commando-like strike, Qayyum says. “Some people may do it.” “But the war on terror targets the entire community. I am living proof. I can only thank Allah and honest Supreme Court,” he says.

To many Muslims, the war on terror often looks like a war on the community itself. While some have been found guilty on terror charges, many others have been acquitted in a series of cases. Qayyum’s account is not just to uncover a dangerous overzeal of police that prompts them to frame innocent people. It is the sinister anti-Muslim communal mindset that makes police act against innocent Muslims, he says. “Every time, they beat me, I would say Allah-u-Akbar. What else would a believing Muslim say? But they would abuse me for remembering my God”. Such accusations of torture by one man under arrest cannot of course be independently corroborated.

But beyond the moving story of hopelessness and human agony, it is the subterfuge of the system by police that is dreadful and proven on record. DG Vanzara, the former deputy inspector-general of Gujarat police and the former head of Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorism Squad, claimed to have solved the case within a day. As the head of the force, Vanzara was widely known for his precision as an anti-terror operation specialist. But Vanzara had to be in jail between 2007 to 2015 for a possibly questionable role in such shootouts.

Vanzara cracked the Akshardham attack speedily – it was plot hatched by Pakistani terror outfits, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Lashkar-e-Taiba as well as Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. Local Muslims like Qayyum ultimately helped pull it off, the police theory went. The dénouement however came in the Supreme Court judgement, which Qayyum quotes from frequently in his book. Page 188 of the verdict states: “…there was a serious attempt on the part of the investigating agency to fabricate a case against the accused persons and frame them…” As he left home after being picked up in August 2003, Qayyum writes he “stared” at his “favourite mosque” passing by, his father -- oblivious to his arrest -- sipping tea at a nearby shop. “I only waved because who knows I might not return.” His father died while Quyyum was moved from one prison to the other.

The day he returned a free man, 11 years later, there was “no sense in my feet.” “I was flowing on the flood of the crowd of people, with support on their shoulders”.

Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/from-death-row-terror-accused-to-innocent-a-muslim-s-account-of-frame-up-and-ruse/article1-1345348.aspx [last accessed 28.05.2015]

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The Death Penalty Scenario in India

India is one of the 193 countries that retains death penalty. There has always been a few imminent judges who have pronounced compelling verdicts upholding the rights of prisoners on death row. There has been increasing debate in various platforms advocating abolition of death penalty or at least to rethink sentencing policies in India. The Indian government has however always been committed to the retention of the death penalty, irrespective of their political ideology. India has voted against a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) draft resolution on the use of death penalty, saying it goes against the statutory law of the country where an execution is carried out in the "rarest of rare" cases. India retains the death penalty as punishment for a number of crimes including murder, kidnapping, terrorism, desertion, inducement to suicide of a minor or a mentally-retarded person and has more recently in 2013 come to include the offence of rape in certain circumstances. Most recently, there is an outrage over child rape and murder.

After observing an unofficial moratorium of 8 years in India, the Indian Government in November 2012 carried out the execution of Ajmal Kasab, convicted in the Mumbai attacks case, without public knowledge. This was followed by the secret execution of Afzal Guru, convicted in the Parliament attack case of 2001, in February 2013, under similar circumstances, without intimating his immediate family or affording a chance of judicial review. In both cases, the executions were carried out under covert operations conducted by the Government immediately upon rejection of their mercy petitions. Before these executions, the last execution to be carried out in India was that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee in 2004 who was convicted of rape and murder and which sentence was carried out after he had spent 13 years in solitary confinement. Following this, several mercy petitions of death row convicts have come to be rejected. The fear of execution of such convicts is imminent. Bolstered by the Government's unapologetic conduct and public outcry, especially in recent cases of rape and murder reported in the country, the courts are continuing to hand down death sentences at an alarming rate.

In the recent past, there have been a few empirical studies (mainly four) conducted with prisoners on death row. This has highlighted the situation of prisoners on death row.

(1) Most recently the India Exclusion Report 2017-18 found that fair trial rights and guarantees are reduced to a nullity and seeks to breach the citadel of the collective silence. It further said that Convicts on death row in India belong to groups marginalised along the axes of caste, religion, economic vulnerability and educational deprivation, and their fair trial rights, though a part of the Right to Life guaranteed by the Constitution, are invariably non-existent, a survey of 371 out of the 385 persons living under the death sentence and their families has revealed.

(2) Another study was The Death Penalty Research Project (2015) which was conceived with an aim to document the socio-economic profile of prisoners sentenced to death in India and map their experience within the criminal justice system.

There were two other academic studies that were done conducted by Dr. Reena Mary George –

(3)“Voices of prisoners surviving the death row in India” (2014) done through the University of Vienna under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Christoph Reinprecht (Sociology) and Prof. Dr. Manfred Nowak (Law and Ex-United Nations Rapporteur on Torture). George’s research highlights three salient features, namely: poverty, social exclusion and marginalisation are antecedent to death penalty; death penalty is a constructed account by the state machinery; and prisoners on death row situate dignity higher in the juxtaposition of death and dignity.

(4) Another one “Death Penalty – A Human Rights Perspective” (2009) done through the University of Mumbai under the guidance of Retired Justice Hosbet Suresh. This was a study in Maharashtra with the objectives to firstly study the impact of death penalty on the social, mental, and physical being of the inmate and secondly, to study the perception of opinion leaders on death penalty with reference to human rights. All the above reports are public documents.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Prison Statistics 2015, there are 101 prisoners sentenced to death. The actual figure of sentences originally awarded is much higher considering the death sentences of 49 convicts came to be commuted to life imprisonment in the said period. As of today, almost in 2019, the figures are unknown through government statistics, however, research centres claim this figure to be around 371 convicts. During the 1980s the Supreme Court sought to restrict the use of the death penalty by characterizing it as a punishment reserved only for the “rarest of the rare” cases. The doctrine has not had the desired effect. According to a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, Rajindar Sachar: “after the rarest of rare doctrine was introduced in 1980, the Supreme Court confirmed death penalty in 40 per cent of cases in the period 1980-90 while it was 37.7 per cent between 1970 and 1980. For the high courts it rose from 59 per cent in 1970-80 to 65 per cent during 1980-90”. Over the past two decades the death penalty has been extended to include more crimes and been handed down with increasing frequency.

Most recently while commuting a sentence in Supreme Court (2018), Justice Joseph did not seek the reconsideration of the Bachan Singh judgment, but only sought to re-examine the purpose and practice of the death penalty, and whether as a punishment, it serves any goal at all. In other words, the death penalty can continue to remain constitutionally valid because of the Bachan Singh judgment, but its application in substantive cases coming before the court must be restricted to only those cases which meet the criteria laid down in that case.

While updating the blog and conducting my own empirical studies, I observed the heinous nature of the crimes that were committed and thought about the families, about their loss, about the victims who for no fault of their own died. If I lost my relative or a dear friend, would I still oppose death penalty and would I still advocate to abolish the death sentence? Having worked in the criminal justice system and also having the seen the other side, where often it is the marginalized, vulnerable and oppressed who are on death row makes me want to advocate for abolition of this punishment. Victims should definitely get justice for their loss, for their pain. No one should escape the rule of law. As long as humanity exists; crime will exist. Should we not re-consider our sentencing policies?

Reena Mary George

Abolish Death Penalty India

Thursday, May 28, 2015

A Muslim 'terror accused' tells his account of frame-up and torture

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