The Hindu : Trial and tribulations

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 13, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Trial and tribulations

THE ORDEAL OF Iftikhar Gilani will end shortly, but who can return the seven months during which he was made to languish for no earthly purpose? The bizarre case of the Delhi bureau chief of the Kashmir Times, who has been accredited to the Government of India since 1996, is a tragedy of errors. It is a story of a bumbling and callous prosecution and an insensitive establishment that behaved heartlessly and took unconscionably long to redress what was an obvious blunder. The exact circumstances which led the Government to withdraw the case against the Kashmiri journalist are not fully clear; if anything, the timing of the withdrawal is a cause for surprise since it was only a few days ago that the Union Home Ministry had opposed Mr. Gilani's discharge plea. However, what is much more mystifying is why the Union Home Ministry continued to maintain — at the risk of absurdity and against the opinion of military intelligence — that the material recovered from Mr. Gilani's possession was prejudicial to the security of the country and violative of the Official Secrets Act.

The manner in which Iftikhar Gilani, son-in-law of the Hurriyat leader and hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, became embroiled in this case is instructive. It began with a raid on the Kashmiri journalist's Delhi residence by the Income Tax Department, which around that time was conducting a joint probe with the police into the Hurriyat leader's source of funding. The journalist's problems really began when the Income Tax Department handed over to the special cell of the Delhi police a document downloaded from the hard disk of his computer that related to the deployment of Indian troops in Kashmir. Despite his counsel's plea that the allegedly incriminating documents were no state secret and that the Pakistani document on Indian troop deployment was available in libraries and could be freely downloaded on the Internet, Mr. Gilani's bail pleas were opposed. A chargesheet was finally filed in the case that suggested, among other things, that Mr. Gilani was a Pakistani spy, a tax evader and had a possible connection to the assassination of the People Conference leader, Abdul Ghani Lone.

The first error was committed by the military intelligence, which said the documents in Mr. Gilani's possession were sensitive and contained information detrimental to the country's security. On what basis this mistaken conclusion was drawn is not clear. What is really shocking though is that even though the Director-General of Military Intelligence (DGMI) revised this early opinion and finally certified that the documents were of "negligible security value", the Home Ministry and the prosecution disregarded this, resulting in the suspicion that there was a conspiracy to prevent Mr. Gilani's release on bail. The really ironic twist here is that the positions staked out by the Home Ministry were seemingly at odds with that of the Union Home Minister, L.K. Advani, who, reportedly on more than one occasion, had privately expressed the view that the case against Mr. Gilani under the Official Secrets Act was false and unsustainable.

The manner that this case was handled, from institution to withdrawal, has done nothing but cause damage. On one side, there is the trauma inflicted on Mr. Gilani and members of his family, who have suffered because of the flawed and misguided attitude of officials. At another level, there is the injury inflicted on the image of the nation. Recent events have only reinforced early suspicions that the Official Secrets Act was slapped against Mr. Gilani only because the police failed to find any other evidence against him. Handling a case in this manner will only encourage people to believe that Mr. Gilani's real crime is that he is the son-in-law of the separatist Jamait-e-Islami leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani. For a Government that proposes to engage representatives of Jammu and Kashmir in a dialogue, a case like this will only create doubts about the seriousness of such an endeavour and its true objectives.

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