Lawyer alleges Delhi pressure to 'go soft' in prosecution of Hindus over bombing

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/25/lawyer-delhi-go-soft-prosecution-hindus-bombing

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A prominent Mumbai lawyer prosecuting more than a dozen Hindus accused of bombing a Muslim neighbourhood has claimed that the prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government put pressure on her to “go soft” on the case.

Four people died and 79 were injured when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded in the textile manufacturing town of Malegaon, Maharashtra state, in September 2008.

Rohini Salian, the special public prosecutor in the case, told the Indian Express on Thursday that after Modi’s party came to power last year, an officer of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) told her “there is a message that I should go soft”.

She said: “The meaning was very clear: don’t get us [the prosecution] favourable orders.” Salian said the same officer told her this month that “higher-ups” did not want her to appear in the case.

The NIA categorically denied that one of its officers had briefed Salian “inappropriately”. Nor had any officer created any “impediments in her prosecution work”, the NIA said.

A similar bomb attack in Malegaon two years earlier killed 31 people and injured 312. At that time police implicated Muslim suspects, even though the bombs had gone off at a cemetery where hundreds of Muslims had gathered to mark an Islamic festival.

There were at least five similar attacks across India in 2006 and 2007, including the bombing of a Delhi-to-Lahore train in which 68 people died, that were initially blamed on either Pakistani or Indian Muslim terror groups.

The investigation into the 2008 bombing – Salian’s case – proved to be something of a turning point, implicating a radical Hindu group, Abhinav Bharat.

Even more startling was the identity of some of the accused: a serving Indian army colonel, a retired major, a saffron-robed seer and a young holy woman, whose motorcycle was used in the attack.

The investigation was led by Hemant Karkare, a Mumbai police officer later killed fighting Pakistani terrorists who attacked Mumbai in November 2008. Following his death, the case was transferred to the newly formed NIA, headquartered in Delhi.

Later investigations accused alleged Hindu extremists of being behind other attacks that were initially blamed on Muslims, including the Pakistan train bombing.

Salian said she had taken up the Malegaon case on Karkare’s insistence. “I have no inclination towards any party, any politician,” she said. “I am a pukka Hindu. Hindu means what? You should be straight, not have bias against anyone – Hindus, anyone who commits an offence is an offender.”

Colin Gonsalves, a human rights lawyer, saw Salian’s predicament as part of a wider malaise. “There is large-scale political interference with public prosecutors throughout the country, especially in political cases,” he claimed.