16 years after arrest, a case drags on

Besides the group hearded daily to Court No 38 in Tis Hazari for sunwai (hearings), there are the others whose fate is only a bit better. They are the OSA accused who may be out on bail but whose trials plod on interminably, tangled in uncomplicated cases in which a few scraps of paper or published material have been recovered.

Two other OSA accused, arrested in 1991, are still seen hanging around at the OSA court — former Ministry of Defence employees, Hassinuddin, a carpenter and Mohammad Israr, a clerk.

They spent six years in jail before they were granted bail. Here too, the last of 36 witnesses is to be paraded before and interestingly, during one hearing, the prosecutor admitted eight witnesses had turned hostile. The case is listed for final arguments on Wednesday.

Hassinuddin belongs to Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, and says his troubles began when he had a scuffle with an officer from the Intelligence Bureau while boarding a bus in Delhi.

‘‘He said he will teach me a lesson, caught me and took me for questioning. There they made me write names and locations of units where I was posted and produced the slips of paper as evidence.’’ Mohammad Israr, who was clubbed in the same OSA charge, rues how his pension was stopped after his arrest.

‘‘I have sold all my land in my village to pay for the lawyers’ fees,’’ the retired clerk says. ‘‘Witnesses are not coming forward and many who did have falsified the police version. Twelve years have passed since this case began. How long will the nightmare go on?’’

Many others are asking the same question, but no one is listening. Take Ahmed Mian Siddiqui, an assistant with a Deputy Secretary in Parliament House. He was arrested in September 2000 by the Special Cell, on allegations of passing on ‘classified’ reports to a Pakistani national, Mohammad Riaz (who managed to get an Indian passport in 1997).

Siddiqui’s case hinges on the 15 reports he passed on to Riaz — annual reports of ministries like sports, water resources, urban affairs, programme implementation and so on. He later told the police that he met Riaz at a mosque near Parliament House and was asked for help since he (Riaz) wanted a permanent job in Zee TV.

This is what Siddiqui’s interrogation yielded for the police, ‘‘He (Riaz) told me Zee TV had accepted my reports (the annual reports) and had also paid me Rs 1,500 for them… later he asked me whether I was aware of the defence exercises going on in the Gujarat sector and I refused. Then he asked me to provide reports of Parliament’s Standing Committee and Consultataive Committee on Defence.’’

The trial against the two men is continuing and while Riaz remains in Tihar Jail, Siddiqui was let off on bail six months ago. He was not given a reprieve despite the fact that Riaz, too, gave him a clean chit during interrogation. A part of it read, ‘‘I asked him (Siddiqui) to supply some reports pertaining to the MoD. He told me he had no direct access to such documents and can only supply old reports of Ministries…’’

The point several undertrials and their defence lawyers make is that the concerned Department or Ministry has not filed a single complaint about documents going missing. Among them is Subhash Dutt, the lawyer from Tis Hazari who was arrested along with Brigidier Z I Abbasi, the military attache of the Pakistan High Commission in 1988. He spent six years in jail and was recently convicted. ‘‘The questions people must ask is how do the so-called secret documents come out? Who is the custodian of these documents and why doesn’t the concerned department file a complaint that they have been stolen?’’

In fact, so flimsy is the evidence being flogged before the OSA judge that even Government prosecutors are now giving vent to their scepticism.

B R Handa, who was the government’s senior prosector in the landmark Coomar Narain and Frank Larkins espionage cases, admits that an amendment of the 1923 OSA is now long overdue.

‘‘The only amendment to the Act was in 1967 and much water has flown even after that. The police need to make a further scrutiny of documents before registering so many cases. After all, not every piece of information jeopardises the country’s sovereignity and integrity.’’ (Concluded)

Part III: In custody in Valley but held again in Delhi
Part II: Pak fooled with fakes but OSA sticks
Part I: Nothing official about these secrets