Six Suspects (51 page)

Arun Advani's column, 1 April

>J'ACCUSE!

Dear Madame President,

As a concerned citizen of this great democratic country, I am
compelled to write this letter to you. You are the highest
constitutional functionary in the land. On you rests the
mantle of upholding the Constitution. I felt it my duty, therefore,
to remind you that the 'Right to Life and Liberty'
guaranteed by Article 21 of our Constitution was denied
yesterday to an Indian citizen by the name of Jiba Korwa.

Jiba Korwa who? you might ask. According to the police,
he was a dreaded terrorist belonging to the outlawed Maoist
Revolutionary Centre, who was shot dead yesterday afternoon
by Sub-Inspector Vijay Yadav as he attempted to escape
from the Mehrauli police station lock-up, where he was
being detained in connection with the murder of industrialist
Vicky Rai. Ballistics evidence had already proved conclusively
that the bullet which killed Vicky Rai was fired
from the gun which was discovered in Korwa's possession on
the night of the murder. Apparently, before he was killed
Korwa even signed a confession statement. His death, therefore,
marks a neat, tidy ending. As I write this, the police
must be patting themselves on the back for having solved this
high-profile murder case without having to toil at the courts.
A few gallantry medals are probably being doled out to the
valiant Inspector Vijay Yadav and his team, who shot dead
the feared Naxalite and made our capital a safer, more secure
place. The media has already moved on to other stories. Who
is interested in the life of a wretched Naxalite from some
dusty village in Jharkhand anyway? And the death of a
terrorist has become so banal and commonplace that we do
not linger over it for more than a few moments, before moving
on to much more interesting things, like the shenanigans
of Shabnam Saxena or the gossip behind the latest Cabinet
reshuffle.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, I come to bury Jiba, not to
praise him. But what if I were to tell you, Madame President,
that the man the police killed was not Jiba Korwa at all? That
far from being a Naxalite terrorist, he was the custodian of an
almost extinct heritage, one of the last of the planet's first
humans? There, I think I am finally getting your attention.

Jiba Korwa's real name was Eketi. He was not from
Jharkhand, but from an island called Little Andaman in the
Bay of Bengal. He belonged to the Onge tribe, a Negrito race
of primitive hunter-gatherers which still uses bows and
arrows. At the last count, there were ninety-seven Onge left.
Thanks to Sub-Inspector Vijay Yadav, now there are only
ninety-six.

How do I know all this? you might ask, Madame
President. You see, I met Eketi the day before he was killed.
At three p.m. on 30 March, I presented myself at the
Mehrauli police station and produced an ID which identified
me as Akhilesh Mishra, Joint Director in the Intelligence
Bureau looking after Internal Security, with special oversight
for the Naxalite Cell. Inspector Rajbir Singh, the Station
House Officer, saluted me smartly and took me to the lockup
where Jiba Korwa was being held.

It was a small, claustrophobic space, ten feet by eight
feet, with mouldy walls, a cracked stone floor and a small
grilled window framing a sliver of blue sky. It contained a
metal bed with a torn and tattered mattress, an earthen pot for
water, and a filthy plastic bucket. The day was unusually
warm and the heat in the cell was almost suffocating. But
more than by the heat, my senses were assailed by a fetid,
cloying smell, the odour of neglect. 'The bastard refuses to
wear clothes, doesn't bathe, and they don't use a deodorant
where he comes from, Sir,' Inspector Singh offered by way of
explanation.

The prisoner was lying curled up in a foetal position on
the ground, underneath the window, with his back towards
us, so I couldn't see his face. His skin was very dark, the
colour of polished ebony, and he had close-cropped, peppercorn
hair. He was naked save for a red loincloth, which
appeared to have been fashioned from the remains of a
T-shirt. He seemed oblivious to our presence and didn't wake
up even when the Inspector prodded him with his cane.

'Get up, you bastard!' the Inspector commanded and
kicked him in the back three or four times. I winced. But the
blows didn't seem to register on the prisoner at all. He
remained in his curled-up position, as if in a catatonic trance.

'You don't need to get physical,' I said to the Inspector
and gently patted the prisoner on the shoulder.

It was like a magic formula. The prisoner reacted
instantly, turning around and sitting up with alacrity. He was
quite short, just under five feet, but it was a shock to see how
young he was. He had a chiselled, oval face, with high cheekbones
and full lips. There was not an ounce of extra fat on his
body. He had the lean, toned physique of a prizefighter, but I
could see clearly the welt marks where the police had
whipped him. His teeth were even and dazzling white, but it
was his eyes which had me riveted. Clear white, with small
black irises, they seemed to ooze an elemental force. They
bore into me like twin points of a laser, unsettling me.
Dressed in my crisp white shirt and brown corduroy trousers,
I felt exposed, naked and vulnerable in his presence.

It was only then that I noticed he was chained by his leg
to the bed and there were manacles on his hands. 'This is for
our protection, Sir, this chap is very dangerous, one of the
ringleaders of the Naxalites,' the Inspector added, and
walked out, leaving me alone with the prisoner.

I did not introduce myself. I simply took his hand in
mine, looked into his eyes and said, 'I know you are not a
Naxalite. I know you did not kill Vicky Rai.'

He appraised me with frank curiosity.

'Tell me your story, and I promise to get you out of here,'
I assured him.

He was shy and reticent at first, but under my gentle
prodding, opened up to me. What he didn't tell the police,
despite three days of continuous torture, he told me in three
hours, simply because I treated him as a fellow human being.
He spoke in simple Hindi, but once he began his story, there
was no stopping him. It was a cathartic outpouring of all the
pent-up emotion bubbling inside him ever since he landed on
the shores of our peninsula six months ago. He spoke of the
people he had met and the experiences he had had. He spoke
of his dreams and his desires, his hurts and humiliations, his
hopelessness and helplessness. Above all, he spoke of his
yearning for his island and his love for a blind, deformed girl
called Champi, better known as the Face of Bhopal.

Did you know, Madame President, that the word 'Onge'
means 'Man'? Eketi was a true man, the last of a vanishing
breed.

He had ventured knowingly into what his tribe calls the
land of the
kwentale
, or foreigners. For a brief while he was
blinded by the glare of our civilization, entranced by the
alluring traps of modernity, but very soon he saw through
the artificial glitter of our lives to glimpse the darkness which
festers in our cities and in our hearts. He was horrified by the
elaborate cruelty we perpetrate on each other in the name of
war and religion. He was shocked by the way we treat our
women as sex objects and violate them to satisfy our lust.
Within six months he had seen enough. He wanted to return
to his island, to his own primitive way of life where want
exists but war doesn't, where disease exists, but depravity
doesn't.

He was an unlikely prophet, a memento mori who held
up a mirror to our faces, but we did not heed him. He tried to
correct us; we tried to corrupt him. He extended a hand of
friendship; we chained him and manacled him. He sought
our understanding; we killed him. His death serves as a
précis of our culture, a withering indictment of all that is
wrong with us. This is the bare truth, Madame President, and
it is terrifying.

Even more terrifying is the fact that he had nothing to do
with Vicky Rai's murder. Eketi had come to mainland India
on a quest, having taken a vow to recover an ancient stone,
shaped like a phallus, which had been protecting his tribe for
centuries but which had fallen prey to the greed of an Indian
welfare officer posted on Little Andaman. Another welfare
officer called Ashok Rajput offered to help the tribe recover
the sacred stone and smuggled Eketi to our shores. The quest
for the
ingetayi
took Eketi from Kolkata to Chennai, to the
ghats
of Varanasi and the Magh Mela in Allahabad, then to
the desert sands of Jaisalmer and finally to our capital city.
The sacred rock was last seen in possession of the now disgraced
guru Swami Haridas in Allahabad. That is where it
was stolen by Ashok Rajput, who, unknown to Eketi, had his
own agenda.

You see, Madame President, Ashok Rajput was the
brother of Kishore Rajput, the forest ranger working in
the wildlife sanctuary in Rajasthan who was eliminated
twelve years ago because he would have implicated Vicky
Rai in the killing of the two black bucks. Ashok Rajput was
in love with his brother's wife, a fiery woman called Gulabo,
but the widow had made a condition before she would agree
to marry him – that he must first avenge his brother's death
and kill Vicky Rai. You probably know more about these
Rajasthani women, Madame President, but I know something
about revenge. It does not have an expiry date.

So Ashok Rajput spun Eketi a yarn that the
ingetayi
was
now in Vicky Rai's farmhouse and brought him to Delhi.
Eketi stayed in the Bhole Nath Temple in Mehrauli, close to
the farmhouse. While the tribal befriended the blind Champi,
Ashok Rajput made his plan. On the night of the murder, he
entered the farmhouse well before Eketi did, through an
unused rear door. He came in wearing a blue suit, planted the
shivling
in the small temple in Vicky Rai's garden, and then
merged with the other guests. Eketi was instructed to come in
at ten o'clock, switch off the mains just after midnight, run to
the temple, take the sacred rock and quickly dash out of the
farmhouse through the same rear gate. The lights were
switched off at exactly five minutes past midnight. That is
when Ashok Rajput shot Vicky Rai at point-blank range.
Then he rushed out of the hall, stole into the temple which
Eketi had already reached and deposited the murder weapon
in the tribal's open canvas bag. When Eketi retrieved the
sacred rock from the temple and put it in his canvas bag, he
inadvertently also took the gun. Ashok Rajput was hoping
that Eketi would manage to smuggle the murder weapon out
of the farmhouse, but the tribal was nabbed by the police and
subsequently framed for murder.

The police tortured Eketi for three days, but he
adamantly refused to squeal on Rajput, sticking to a code of
honour that we abandoned long ago.

Yesterday, according to police accounts, Eketi ripped out
his manacles, broke open the chain, used his teeth to bite
through the iron bars of his window and slithered out of it.
Sub Inspector Yadav, who happened to be standing behind
the police station, saw Eketi escaping and challenged him to
stop. The tribal charged at him, forcing Yadav to shoot him
dead.

I wonder, Madame President, if you saw the pictures they
put out of Inspector Yadav and his team grinning over the
tribal's bloated body. Eketi's face is twisted at an absurd
angle, showing the impossibility of his escape. There is a
grimace frozen on his face, mocking the scales of justice.

In a way we are all responsible for Eketi's death, complicit
in the act through our conspiracy of silence and our
tolerance of injustice. There is an epidemic of apathy in
our country which will result in the deaths of many more
Eketis, unless we do something to restore the moral fabric of
our society.

But this letter is becoming far too long, Madame
President, and it is time to conclude it.

I accuse retired welfare officer S. K. Banerjee of stealing
the sacred rock from the Onge, which compelled Eketi to
undertake a hazardous journey to mainland India, where he
eventually met his death.

I accuse Sub Inspector Vijay Singh Yadav of torturing
and killing Eketi, in complete contravention of the laws of
the land and without due process. This police officer has a
history of sadistic behaviour, which has resulted in several
custodial deaths over the years. It is time that we divested
him of his uniform and put him on trial for murder.

I accuse Police Commissioner K. D. Sahay of being
complicit in Eketi's death by failing to ensure his safety in
the police lock-up and accepting his 'signed' confession
when Eketi didn't even know how to write.

I accuse Inspector Rajbir Singh of falsely implicating
Eketi as a Naxalite without verifying his antecedents. One
does not expect inspectors to be amateur anthropologists, but
surely anyone with common sense will know that there are
no jet-black
adivasis
in Jharkhand with negro-style peppercorn
hair.

I accuse the crime-scene experts of not exerting due
diligence and failing to establish the connection between
Eketi and Ashok Rajput.

Finally, I accuse Ashok Rajput of murdering Vicky Rai
and framing an innocent tribal.

In making these accusations I am aware that I am opening
myself to libel. I also freely admit to having transgressed
the law by impersonating a government officer. I expose
myself to these risks voluntarily, in the interest of serving the
ends of justice.

Let the police come and arrest me. I am waiting. But my
voice will not be stilled. Come what may, I shall continue to
dare to tell the bare truth.

With my deepest respect, Madame President,

Your fellow citizen and loyal Indian,

Arun Advani.