In the name of preserving law and order in the hours following the hanging of Afzal Guru, the Delhi police detained a senior and well-respected Delhi journalist, Iftikhar Gilani, for no reason other than that he was the son-in-law of the Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani. While Mr. Gilani was illegally confined for five hours, his children were locked up in a room in his house. When he was finally freed, he was not offered any explanation either for his detention or for his being let off without charge. The actions of the police officers involved in this fiasco need to be seriously probed, and those found guilty should be, as Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju has suggested in a letter to Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh, placed under suspension and criminal proceedings instituted against them in quick time. Enforcing security measures is serious business, and should not be left in the hands of officers who see no contradiction in abusing their authority. What makes the confinement of Mr. Gilani even worse is that the Delhi Police appears not to have learnt any lesson from the time it threw him in jail on trumped up charges. The unfortunate journalist spent nine months in Tihar Jail charged with violating the Indian Official Secrets Act for possessing an article published by a Pakistani think-tank on its website!
None of the errant officers involved in the foisting of this bogus case were taken to task then, nor was he compensated for the malicious prosecution he was subjected to. If those involved in harassing him this time around are allowed to get away with their illegal behaviour, what is the guarantee that Mr. Gilani — or any other innocent Kashmiri — is not subjected to the ‘midnight knock’ again? While curfew and preventive arrests are not uncommon in situations where the police anticipate a law and order problem, the ham-handed harassment of Mr. Gilani and the manner in which Kashmir has been virtually shut down since Saturday suggests the Union Home Ministry went through a seizure of panic right after the Afzal Guru hanging. Cable television services were suspended and restrictions placed on the dissemination of news. Mobile internet services were deactivated, and newspapers forcibly kept off the stands, according to some reports. All of these are symptoms of an undeclared state of Emergency. Political and executive mismanagement of situations like these could have very harmful long-term consequences. The government will urgently need to restore the people’s confidence, not in its ability to maintain law and order, but in its ability to uphold the principle of equality before the law, in the equal treatment under the law for all citizens.
Keywords: Iftikhar Gilani, Delhi police, Official Secrets Act, Afzal Guru hanging, Press Council of India, Markandey Katju
It is purely a political hegemony and police hooliganism. The system has
failed terribly in safeguarding the fundamental rights of the people and
particularly of the minority which is so undemocratic.
Well one would not argue on the verdict of the supreme court & preventive measures to prevent the fallout of Afzal Guru execution. But what threat did the meeting of his family pose prior to execution?
And has the fallout of the execution been prevented?
One is baffled by this rationale of people at helm at times, maybe most of the times now a days.
there will always be some threat or other in the Nation. That cannot be a reason to curb fundamental rights of an individual or a group or an ethnicity. This is increasingly being violated now-a-days or we are being increasingly aware of this violation. Either way, the Govt. can do much better in not violating Fundamental rights. I would like to know, whether Law enforcing agency read their suspects their rights every time they take them to custody. Does those rights include fundamental rights too (Right to remain Silent).
"The government will urgently need to restore the people’s confidence,
not in its ability to maintain law and order, but in its ability to
uphold the principle of equality before the law, in the equal treatment
under the law for all citizens." wellsaid..
I have been reading Hindu's edit's on the hanging of Afzal Guru. I know the Hindu is against capital punishment. But, you should keep such dislikes aside while writing edits reserving such lectures to an opinion piece. But, the edit is more sacred and responsible.
Besides, your edits have been showing a certain sense of pusillanimity rather than liberty. The question of liberty should be applied to people at large and not mass murderers. The way a death sentence is carried out is a minor detail on which people such as you have been scratching their head and body. Once you have decided to kill a mouse, how much does it matter whether you kill it by poison or immersion in water or by euthanasia?
There is absolutely no need to lose sleep over the way Kasab or Guru have been hanged.
I fully agree and support your view. Any attack against every limb of media must be opposed with all our might as media is one of the sentindels of our freedom of expression. Decisions to detain journalist like Mr. Iftikhar Gilani should have been screened and cleared at the heighest level so as to avoid serious blunder.
We talk about a Democratic country, but Is it Democracy. Where The basic right, Right to life, is not even enjoyed by the people. Our constitution has given us right to free speech expression and the govt accuses people of violating itn The biggest violater of our rights today is the Govt itself who is snatching the rights from the hands of the people. Sheer injustice..
It is high time that the concerned police officers are booked for
infringement of fundamental right of an individual and over action. The
Home Ministry also cannot claim to be overboard. Hence it should be
dealt with iron hand so that such repetition do not occur since they
feel next to politician who are above law of the land
the suspicious killing of hemant karkare was hidden dramatically by the execution of ajmal kasab similar to the execution of afsal guru who was heinously supposedly trapped as exposed by his letter to his counsel. in the name of such fascist acts by the power-hungry, a muslim name is always under threat in india, where we can expect arrest, killings, and all forms of atrocities against this community without abettal.
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