The Hindu : Govt. drops case against Gilani

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 11, 2003

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Govt. drops case against Gilani

By Anjali Mody

NEW DELHI JAN. 10. Three days after the Government rejected a Military Intelligence report clearing the journalist Ifthikar Gilani as "without authority" and "untenable", it has decided to withdraw its case against him. Mr. Gilani has been incarcerated since June last and charged under the Official Secrets Act for possessing part of a published journal article.

Although defence counsel had very early in the case established that the document, which was the basis for Mr. Gilani's arrest was a public one, police had pressed charges on the basis of the Military Intelligence's opinion, which claimed the information contained was collected by an "enemy agent" and that its possession posed threat to national security.

Police had alleged that Mr. Gilani was in the pay of the Pakistan Government. They produced e-mail messages from Pakistani journalists to suggest that Mr. Gilani had dubious links with Pakistan and also tried to link him to the assassination of the People's Conference leader, Abdul Ghani Lone. It was on this basis that Mr. Gilani was repeatedly denied bail.

Following the defence arguments that the document was not "secret", the Sessions Court before which a bail application was pending, directed the prosecution to obtain a "fresh" opinion from the MI. The second opinion, overturned the first, calling it "erroneous". But, in one of the many curious twists in this case, police presented in the court on December 12 a reproduction of the earlier adverse opinion signed by a junior Home Ministry official.

The court summoned the DGMI, who confirmed on December 23 that a second opinion had been sent. The Joint Police Commissioner and Home Ministry officials denied all knowledge of it.

In what was seen as a vindictive act, Home Ministry officials called a meeting on December 26 in which they concluded that the MI's second opinion was "untenable" and that the publicly available information in Mr. Gilani's possession was indeed a threat to national's security.

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