Tidings 2004

Troop pullout in Jammu and Kashmir came with PM Manmohan Singh’s first visit to the state in November and ahead of the first visit of his Pak counterpart Shaukat Aziz to India. The first group of about 1,000 soldiers moved out of Anantnag town on November 17. Army officials, however, said the Army would not vacate any of the strategic positions on the Line of Control or in the hinterland. The move, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said, had generated a lot of goodwill though infiltration bids by militants into the state had gone up through November. The Opposition also hailed the move. Former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee said the move would improve relations with Pakistan.

WORST CASE SCENARIO

The Best Bakery trial moved to Maharashtra. So did Zaheera Sheikh. On January 30, the SC admitted prime witness Sheikh’s plea challenging a Gujarat HC order upholding the acquittal of all accused and shifted the case. The Godhra panel got down to inspecting the coach of Sabarmati Express. The trial threw up conversations between officials during the riots. Former DSP of Bhavnagar district told the Godhra Commission that then minister of state for home, Gordhan Zadafiya, had told him that the ’ratio of the death figures in police firing was not good’. The twist came on November 3 when Zaheera alleged that Teesta Setalvad had threatened her. She skipped two hearings. Her elder brother, meanwhile, retracted. On December 13, the special judge reported threatening mails. Zaheera’s mother soon followed up the allegations against Setalvad. On December 21, Zaheera turned hostile. The final twist came on December 22 in a Tehelka sting operation alleging Zaheera got Rs 18 lakh to recant.

MANIPUR: IN THE LUP

The alleged rape and murder of suspected militant Thangjam Manorama, in custody on the night of July 10 rocked the state and the country in a series of violent agitations against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

The Army denied the charges and said Manorama was killed while trying to escape.

Protests by the Apunba Lup, an umbrella organisation of 32 outfits, turned violent in the following days. Home Minister Shivraj Patil drew a lot of flak for his alleged failure in handling the situation. After several postponements, the Minister visited the state in the first week of September 7. Talks with the Lup failed and Patil said the situation could not be solved at once. “All dialogues are useful. We will solve the problem but all of it may not be solved in one go … But we can go ahead in the right direction,” he said.

The Lup members then arrived in Delhi to hold talks with Patil and the Prime Minister. The government said it could consider a review of the AFSPA which was then followed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Imphal on November 20 and the long-awaited transfer of the historic Kangla Fort to the Manipur government.

GETTING TO TOMORROW

Forgiveness has always been the attribute of the strong — much like the life of Gladys Staines. The widow of the slain Australian missionary could have left the country that choked her husband’s vision. But she chose to stay on his mission in the country, she chose to forgive and she chose to carry on with her husband’s hope for the

leprosy-afflicted people of Baripada and Rairangpur. Finally, she decided to leave for her daughter, but she wasn’t giving up. “I am going for personal reasons but I will come back,” she said when asked if she was leaving the country for good. “Please tell everyone that I have nothing against India where I received a lot of love and affection. But I am going for Esther’s education and personal reasons,” she said.

FAMILY PRIMETIME

This is not your regular love story scripted across the border. Mohammad Arif left Gudiya just 10 days after their marriage, on duty. On September 16, 1999, in the Drass sector of Kashmir, he disappeared. Four years later, Gudiya agreed to marry a close relative, Taufiq. She had settled down and was expecting a child when Arif returned on August 9 from a Pakistani jail. He wanted his wife back but not the child. The story moved from within the four walls of the house to a televised panchayat. In full glare of TV cameras, experts said Gudiya should go back to Arif. And Arif decided to accept the boy until he was old enough to go to Taufiq.

Special task over

In the end, it took two shots to end nearly four decades of Jungle Raj. On October 18, after a meticulously laid plan and a carefully planted mole in Veerappan’s gang, the Tamil Nadu Special Task Force (STF) managed to place a hole in the head of the ruthless forest brigand. But not before he had killed at least 120 people and over 2,000 tuskers. The toll also included over 88,000 pounds of ivory, and sandalwood worth crores. As STF chief T Vijayakumar basked in his moment of glory, the human rights groups chimed in with their usual concerns over “ torture”. Some may remember the brigand as the Robin Hood of India, but for most he would always be a beast whose run in with the law lasted much longer than desired.

MURDER AND THE MUTT

The Kanchi Mutt made it to the headlines for the wrong reasons with the arrest of Jayendra Saraswati on November 11. The police swooped down on the Shankaracharya while he was on a trip to Mehboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh. He was charged with the murder of Sankararaman, the manager of the Sri Varadarajan Temple in Kancheepuram.

The case opened a can of worms with several other cases, including the mysterious death of two students of the Mutt’s Vedic pathasala coming to light. The Acharya allegedly spoke to the five men hired to kill Sankararaman within the temple compound. The Shankaracharya was sent to Vellore jail, sparking protests from the BJP and several religious outfits. On November 24, two of the co-accused in the murder case retracted their statements, saying they were coerced by the police to testify against the pontiff. November-end, noted Tamil writer Anuradha Ramanan accused the seer of sexual harassment in 1992. A day later, reports linked a woman, Usha, to the Acharya. Reports said she had been receiving large sums of money from the seer and spoke to him for long duration. Appu, alias Krishnaswamy, one of the main accused, surrendered on December 20. Allegations were also made against the junior Shankaracharya, Vijayendra Saraswati who was called by the police for interrogation.

COURSE FOR TERROR

On June 15, a Mumbai college student, Ishrat Jehan Raza, and three others were gunned down by the police in Ahmedabad who suspected them to be Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives. Their mission: Gujarat CM Narendra Modi’s assassination. The killings sparked massive furore. But a month on, the LeT added to the confusion by claiming that Ishrat was indeed an operative of the outfit.

Lessons in death

TV images showing dozens of children piled upon one another like burnt plastic dolls will forever remain etched in memory. At least 93 children — all aged between eight and 10 years — were charred to death on July 17 as a fire raged through the Saraswathi Nursery, being run in the Sri Krishna Girls’ High School premises in Kumbakonam town of Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur district. Some teachers were accused of fleeing for their lives, leaving the kids behind. For the record, the school’s licence was cancelled, 17 persons arrested and a probe ordered. Nothing came of the investigation, though.

For a few more yards

The incident sent shockwaves across the nation, but BJP leader Lalji Tandon explained away the heart-rending deaths as something that ‘could have happened elsewhere and anywhere’. The tragedy that struck in Lucknow — former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s constituency — on April 12 may end up as a footnote in the saffron party’s history, but it did leave 22 poor women dead and several injured. The incident took place when a stampede broke out during distribution of sarees. That the freebies were being offered to mark Tandon’s birthday and happened to coincide with the Assembly elections wasn’t lost on the electorate who handed a drubbing to the party with the most “shine”.

• A promise of a better living prompted Antaryami to borrow money from relatives and head for Kuwait.

The trauma that followed — for him and two other countrymen, Tilak Raj and Sukhdev Singh — is beyond description. Abducted by Iraqi insurgents on July 9, freedom came only on September 5.

• VAIKO released 18 months and much protests after he was imprisoned under POTA, now defunct

• Five women from Nagpur decided to end the terror run of AKKU YADAV. The women from Kasturba Nagar led a mob of chilli-powder wielding women and lynched the gangster who had terrorised their slums.

• Dhananjoy Chatterjee, convicted of rape and murder of a 14-year-old, went to the gallows on his 41st birthday on August 14, but not before a propaganda war for and against capital punishment unfolded in the media and other fora.

• KETCHUP KILLINGS saw off Colonel H.S. Kohli who faked the encounters in the North-east to claim gallantry medal. Major Surinder Singh of Gorkha rifles followed him out after a court martial found him guilty of ‘faking killings’ in Siachen.