SNOOP SHAME
Charges of illegal surveillance by Gujarat government put BJP on the defensive in the vicious campaign for 2014
Narendra Modi hard sells the future. But the past haunts him. As the BJP’S prime ministerial candidate flies from one rally to another blockbuster one in a hurricane campaign, he is most eloquent when reciting the transgressions and travesty of power as exemplified by the Congress-led UPA Government. Whenever new ghosts appear at the biggest campaign banquet of the season, he blames such spectral onslaught on the desperate witch doctors in the Opposition. This time he is not blaming anyone. He is silent. Strangely so considering that the allegations seeking an answer from him involve the same issues with which he slams UPA: The state’s misuse of power and the evasions of the powerful. The damning script of a snooping Gujarat government features his most trusted aide, a police officer,
a suspended IAS officer, a woman landscape architect, and, most curiously, a nameless Saheb. The Congress, struggling for a counter-argument to Modi, could not have hoped for a more rewarding scandal. BJP is obliging it by its feeble defence.
This is what happened, as revealed by two investigative websites, which uploaded audio excerpts from taped conversations between senior police officer Girish L. Singhal and then Gujarat minister of state for home Amit Shah. In an operation that lasted through August and September 2009, Singhal and seven subordinates kept a close watch on the movements of a 35-year-old architect ‘Madhuri’ Soni working from Ahmedabad and Bhuj. Her father, Pranlal Soni, 63, ran one of Kutch’s best known jewellery shops, Narbheram Ramji Jewellers, in Bhuj’s Saraf Bazaar. He played an active role, along with district collector Pradeep Kumar, in the reconstruction of Saraf Bazaar after the 2001 earthquake. Three years later, the revamped market was inaugurated by Modi. According to sources, his sons Chintan, 38, and Harit, 29, set up a Bangalorebased energy saving company, Ecolibrium Energy, in 2008, of which Madhuri was a director. The company had dealings with the Gujarat government. Pranlal Soni was close to Modi, who even attended Madhuri’s wedding to an Ahmedabad-based businessman at Kensville Gold Club in 2010.
Added to this cast of characters was Singhal, superintendent of police (operations) in the Anti-Terrorist Squad and considered to be Amit Shah’s favourite officer. According to the tapes, Shah also asked Singhal to mount
surveillance on Pradeep Sharma, who became Bhavnagar municipal commissioner. The surveillance involved tailing Madhuri as well as accessing her call records. Over 62 days, Singhal and his team kept tabs on where she went, with whom and how. She was tailed by policemen in cars and on motorcycles, from airports to hotels, shopping malls to gym. Details of her movements were also accessed from mobile metadata— her location, the number of calls she got, from whom and for how long. On one occasion, a police officer was put on the same flight with her from Ahmedabad to Mumbai.
At one point in the tapes, Shah tells Singhal: “Today they are going out for a meal in a hotel. Saheb got a call about this. It is the boy who is coming to see her. Pay attention. Saheb gets all the information so our loopholes might be found out.” Singhal, who seems to have lost contact with his quarry, can only reply helplessly, “Sir, our men are there and I am constantly checking the location with the mobile company.”
Arrested in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case in February this year,
Singhal, who recorded all his conversations with Shah, submitted 267 clips on two pen drives to CBI in June. Sources in BJP allege that CBI allowed Singhal bail in May by not filing charges against him within the stipulated 90 days after the IPS officer promised to cooperate with the agency in collecting evidence against Modi and Shah in the fake encounter case at the behest of the UPA Government. Singhal told friends that he was doing so because the political leadership did not stand up for officers like him. On November 15, Singhal’s recordings blew up in BJP’s face. News portals Cobrapost and Gulail ran the audio clips, exposing how Shah was involved in an illegal operation of snooping on a woman architect at the behest of his Saheb. They did not identify the Saheb or the woman.
THE DEFENCE IS FALLING APART
BJP was blindsided by the revelations. “This came like a bolt from the blue. It was too personal and it was awkward defending something like this,” admits a BJP spokesperson. Modi carried on with his rallies. As senior party leaders—among them Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, party President Rajnath Singh, Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ravi Shankar Prasad, MP Shahnawaz Hussain and party spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi— struggled for an appropriate response to the media, Modi’s team in Gujarat obtained a letter from Pranlal Soni and released it to the media the same day. The letter said the surveillance was done at his request because he feared for his daughter’s safety. But circulating the letter actually amounted to admission of guilt, causing more damage than it could contain. Inadvertently, Modi’s defenders admitted that the state machinery was misused for spying on a private citizen.
Team Modi justifies the surveillance on two counts. They argue that Soni and his daughter themselves don’t want an inquiry into the surveillance— then what’s the problem? Their other defence is that the woman’s father wanted protection for his daughter who he believed was in an “inappropriate” relationship with the already married Pradeep Sharma. The Gujarat government has been at odds with Pradeep Sharma, a 1984-batch IAS officer who was suspended by the Modi government after his name figured in five cases of corruption in land deals during his tenure as Kutch collector between 2003 and 2007. He was arrested in 2010 and jailed for over a year before he got bail. He remains suspended. In an affidavit to the Supreme Court in April 2011, Pradeep Sharma said he was being victimised by the state government because it had problems with his elder brother, 1978-batch IPS officer Kuldeep Sharma, who is now adviser in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
In the 200-page petition, Pradeep Sharma asked for transfer of investigations into the five cases against him to CBI. He disclosed details about Modi’s proximity to Madhuri. He also said he feared the state machinery was bound to be “prejudiced and biased” against him because he knew of Modi’s
relationship with her. The Supreme Court bench of Justices Aftab Alam and R.M. Lodha asked Pradeep Sharma to remove the “personal details” regarding Modi and Madhuri as they did not have any bearing on the case.
A source close to Modi told INDIA TODAY that Shah, as home minister, had been planning action against Pradeep Sharma since April 24, 2007, when the IAS officer, then Rajkot district collector, expressed his delight to a group of government officers at the arrest of IPS officer D.G. Vanzara and two IAS officers in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case. According to the source, Modi resisted Shah’s pressure because he didn’t want to appear vengeful and continued to give good postings to Pradeep Sharma. Later in 2009, when Shah confronted Modi with evidence of the IAS officer’s anti-government activities, the chief minister took it seriously. That was the time Pranlal Soni approached Modi with the complaint about his daughter. An inquiry was ordered into Pradeep Sharma’s alleged corrupt land deals. Surveillance of him and Madhuri also began. In the bargain, institutional probity and due process of law were given a go-by. On whether due process was followed in
authorising surveillance, according to 2007 Supreme Court guidelines, a senior state police officer says, “Procedure must have been followed but such records are destroyed in less than a year. Only Amit Shah can clarify and he has chosen to remain silent.”
BJP’S DESPAIR IS CONGRESS’S DELIGHT
The Congress is having a field day. At 11 a.m. on November 19, noted women’s rights activists from 10 NGOs gathered at 24 Akbar Road, the Congress headquarters. Among them were Ranjana Kumari of the Centre for Social Research and Mohini Giri of Guild of Service—all invitees to a special interface between All India Mahila Congress ( AIMC) and NGOs. The meeting was fixed almost a month ago to invite suggestions on issues related to women for the Congress poll manifesto. But the agenda was hijacked by AIMC President Shobha Oza who, in the middle of the discussion, raised the snooping scandal. Later, Oza claimed that the NGOs present were also outraged at the scandal and they resolved to raise the issue further. Oza clearly mentioned two names, Ranjana Kumari and Mohini Giri.
But by the time the issue was raised in the meeting, Giri had left. For the others it was an uncomfortable situation. “We were invited to discuss something very important—on Women’s Reservation Bill and other issues—but I feel sad that the Congress is trying to take political mileage out of this,” says an irked Kumari. “It was totally unfair that the issue was raised and all of us were not ready for this. Now I am told that the party is using our presence as support for their Modi-bashing, which is totally incorrect.”
The campaign is in full swing. On November 19, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, who was present at a Cobrapost-Gulail press conference four days earlier, requested the Supreme Court for an expedited hearing on the matter. He told INDIA TODAY that he would seek an independent probe into the snooping controversy. “It will establish that the state government was vindictive towards Pradeep Sharma since he was aware of the woman,” Bhushan said. Even as the next hearing is fixed for December 3, Pradeep Sharma is planning to move an application against Shah. “The snooping scandal has validated everything that he has been saying. The state machinery is inimical to him,” a source close to him says.
The same day, former DGP R.B. Sreekumar accused Modi of being a habitual snooper who is prone to misusing the state machinery for personal vendetta. Sreekumar, at a press conference in Delhi, said he was being targeted by BJP. He said while serving in Gujarat, he was asked to tap the phones
of Congress leader Shankarsinh Vaghela in 2002, and of Haren Pandya, another Modi detractor who was mysteriously shot dead in 2003. He claimed that he refused to do so.
There is also the question of the integrity of Modi’s government. “While the state has powers to carry out surveillance under the Indian Telegraph Act, it can be carried out only in a situation of public emergency where the security of the state or public order is threatened,” senior advocate and CBI standing counsel Vikas Pahwa told INDIA TODAY. “But in a case like this, none of these conditions is met. So it’s a clear case of just invading one person’s privacy. If she presses charges, serious action can be taken against the officials responsible.”
To duck such uncomfortable questions, Pranlal Soni wrote a letter, on his daughter’s behalf, he claimed, to the National Commission for Women on November 18, saying they did not want a probe as Madhuri was disturbed “by the intrusion into her personal life and privacy”. NCW, however, ordered a probe to establish the authenticity of the letter which was dropped at its office in Delhi.
BJP national General Secretary Ananth Kumar tried to brazen it out saying the party was not bothered about the Congress’s “dirty tricks” department. “We are going to ignore all this and continue with our campaign on a positive plank,” he said. But can Modi,
currently raging against the UPA Government for all its sins in governance, afford to ignore the scandal that has brought to light the dark arts of the government he heads?
At the core of the snoop shame is the blatant violation of procedural codes of administration. Modi’s dilemma is acute. An admission of procedural violation will amount to an admission of guilt, and it is the fear of guilt that stops Modi from saying that magical word ‘sorry’ —be it for the riots of 2002 or for the dealings of his rogue lieutenants. Such an admission will also make the position of his most valued political partner Amit Shah untenable, and Shah, after all, is the protagonist of all the earlier allegations against the Modi Raj. The asset is fast turning out to be liability. Yet, the Gujarat chief minister is reluctant to act. He refuses to accept that silence in the face of questions about the style of his governance is not the mark of a leader who aspires to rule India.