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Journalism of Courage
Even after putting in his papers this evening, Jagdish Tytler did not abandon the desperate attempts he has been making over the last three days to pick holes in the Justice G T Nanavati Commission8217;s findings against him.
In his resignation letter to the Prime Minister, Tytler asserted that his name had been 8216;8216;dragged 8230; without any reason8217;8217; and that 8216;8216;various inquires, commissions including investigations by CBI have exonerated me of all these false charges.8217;8217;
This flies in the face of records.
To begin with, there is no basis to his claim that allegations against him surfaced for the first time only before the Nanavati Commission, set up by the NDA Government in 2000.
One of the two affidavits cited against Tytler by the Nanavati Commission was actually filed way back in 1987 before an administrative committee appointed by the Rajiv Gandhi Government as a follow-up to the first judicial inquiry conducted by the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission.
Jasbir Singh had filed his affidavit before the Jain-Banerjee Committee which could not, however, function on account of a stay order obtained by one of the accused persons.
In the event, it was left to the second judicial inquiry conducted by the Nanavati Commission more than a decade later to dust out Jasbir Singh8217;s affidavit.
That is how the Nanavati Commission came to quote Jasbir Singh8217;s allegation that he had seen Tytler berating his followers on November 3, 1984 for not carrying out a 8216;8216;large scale killing of Sikhs8217;8217; in his Sadar constituency as compared to H K L Bhagat8217;s East Delhi constituency or Sajjan Kumar8217;s Outer Delhi constituency.
While suppressing the antecedents of Jasbir Singh8217;s affidavit, Tytler has been waving the two contradictory affidavits filed before the Nanavati Commission by another riot victim, Surinder Singh.
In a bid to undermine the credibility of the findings against him, Tytler has been blatantly ridiculing the Nanavati Commission8217;s finding that it was at his instance that Surinder Singh had filed the second affidavit resiling from the first.
Apart from denying that he had procured Surinder Singh8217;s second affidavit, Tytler has so far not addressed any of the reasons given by the Commission for accepting the first affidavit rather than the second filed seven months later. Tytler also suppressed the fact that the second affidavit was filed after Surinder Singh had already owned up to the first one in the course of his deposition before the Commission in January 2002.
Another misleading claim made by Tytler in the wake of the Nanavati Commission8217;s report is that none of the earlier inquiries made any adverse observation against him.
This is contradicted by the fact that the Justice R S Narula Committee appointed by the Madan Lal Khurana Government recommended in 1994 that the police re-open a case booked against Tytler.
The reference to the CBI investigation made under the orders of the Delhi High Court is irrelevant because that related to a different police station and had nothing to do with two specific cases mentioned by the Nanavati Commission thanks to the affidavits of Surinder Singh and Jasbir Singh.
