Journalism of Courage
The CBI investigations have found that D G Vanzaras now dead commando,Mohan Lala Kalaswa,had fired 42 rounds from two assault weapons,the highest rounds fired by a single policeman in the encounter squad that killed Ishrat Jahan,Javed Sheikh,Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana on June 15,2004.
Though firearms of four policemen were used in the killings,apart from one unidentified 9mm gun,the actual shooters,going by the CBIs chargesheet,were only two Kalaswa and Tarun Barot,then PI in the crime branch and now an accused.
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 at the victims and DSP N K Amins 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 said 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 Pandeys 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 Nanjis AK 47 rifle and fired from that too inside the Indica car and on the man who had by now fallen on the road near the divider (Amjad Ali Rana).
Menats 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.
Another retired unarmed ASI Nizamuddin Burhanmiyan Saiyeds account,also recorded in April this year,adds that he saw Kalaswa fire on Amins Gypsy as per his directions.
