‘Dead commando was deadliest’

Though the CBI defined roles for eight policemen,including Kalaswa,in its first chargesheet,it filed an abated summary against Kalaswa because he died on October 29,2007. However,testimonies by at least three policemen,who are not on this chargesheet,add up a huge role for Kalaswa in the encounter and make him out as an abusive and belligerent participant in the shootout,grabbing weapons of his chickened out colleagues,to fire on the victims,and DSP N K Amin’s Gypsy,to prove that the fatal shooting was in self-defence.

Kalaswa,also known as ‘Mohan Lala’,belonged to Sabarkantha and is said to have died in 2007 of cancer in his mid 40s. Sources say his testimonies were last recorded by the then ACP in crime branch,Parixita Rathod,who probed the encounter in 2004 and then by the sub-divisional magistrate.

Ibrahim Kalabhai Chauhan,then police sub-inspector in the crime branch working under Tarun Barot,told the CBI in March this year that Kalaswa came to the crime scene at Kotarpur,with then ACP G L Singhal and as Amin and Barot fired on Rana,he saw Kalaswa fire several rounds on the Indica car and Rana.

Chauhan says that when he began to walk away from the scene realising it was a staged encounter,Barot snatched his .38mm revolver and emptied its three bullets on the blue Indica. Around this time,he says “…commando Mohan Lala had come towards Mohan Nanji (Mohan Nanji Menat,Joint Commissioner P P Pandey’s commando) and asked him to fire too. As Mohan Nanji was saying he was only asked to accompany Amin saheb,Mohan Lala told him abusively that he had not come there to do mujra,took Mohan Nanji’s AK 47 rifle and fired from that too inside the Indica car and on the man who was by now fallen on the road near the divider (Amjad Ali Rana)”. Chauhan also adds that Kalaswa,“… pushed the kneeling man (Rana) forward to fall on his face across the divider and placed the AK rifle near his right hand”.

Menat’s statement of April this year corroborates this and says that when he refused to fire,“… Shri Mohan Lala started abusing me and took my AK 47 rifle. I did not fight with him because he had said that Shri Amin had ordered that rounds had to be fired from my weapon also”. He counted the rounds left to conclude that Kalaswa had fired 10 rounds from his weapon. This was after Kalaswa had fired 32 rounds from his own AK 47 rifle.

Another retired unarmed ASI Nizamuddin Burhanmiyan Saiyed’s account,also recorded in April this year,adds that he saw Kalaswa fire on Amin’s Gypsy as per his directions,“…from the AK 56 rifle which Shri Amin had given Mohan Lala. After that,Mohan Lala had put that AK 56 rifle near the right hand of the man lying dead on the road divider (Rana) as per instructions of Shri N K Amin”.

The CBI’s math on the fatal shots,therefore,shows Tarun Barot as having fired six rounds from his own revolver,and three from Chauhan’s revolver,of which one bullet was found from Rana’s body and another from Javed’s body. Kalaswa’s two bullets were found from the bodies of Johar and Javed,while there were two 9 mm bullets found,one from Rana’s body and part bullet from Ishrat’s clothes,whose weapon is not yet identified. Pandey,Vanzara,Singhal,Barot,Amin,retired PI J G Parmar and commando Anaju Chaudhary are on the CBI’s first chargesheet.