Sanver killings fit in the familiar pattern | N.D.Sharma

Published on 17-11-2007 In National

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Sanver killings fit in the familiar pattern

The Sanver killings conform to the design so familiar in the BJP-ruled States. The initial nonchalance of the administration and its subsequent attempt at spreading disinformation also fits in the pattern.

Sanver is a suburb near Indore and a reserved (SC) Assembly constituency which had elected Prakash Sonkar in 2003 for the fourth time. A member of the Council of Ministers, Sonkar died of a heart attack in June. The by-election at Sanver is slated for December 12.

The BJP in Madhya Pradesh is going through bad times. It has lost two Assembly by-elections at Shivpuri and Lanji. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan is facing grave corruption charges. The Special Police Establishment (SPE) of the Lokayukta Organisation has registered, on orders of a special court in Bhopal, a criminal case against Chauhan, his wife Sadhna Singh and others under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The allegation is that Sadhna Singh had received pecuniary benefits from the JP Associates for "illegal allotment" of lease of mining sites by Chauhan to the company for its cement factory.

It did not help the sagging morale of the BJP that it failed to capture the Kolar Municipality. Kolar area is just on the fringe of the Bhopal Municipal Corporation limit. New colonies are developing there. The agricultural land in the Kolar Panchayat area was owned or managed mostly by contractors and colonisers owing allegiance to the BJP leaders. Obviously, it was to help them that the BJP upgraded the Panchayat area into a Municipality with the fervent hope that it would be easy to effect land diversions and allow other facilities to colonisers through a BJP-controlled Municipality. The first elections for Kolar Municipal Council gave a jolt to the BJP. A Congresswoman won the election for the office of chairperson. Of the 21 wards, only ten returned the BJP candidates while the Congress won in nine and independents in two. (Incidentally, this is the only Municipality in the State which adjoins a Municipal Corporation --- that of Bhopal).

The Sanver by-election thus becomes crucial for the party and the chief minister. However, the problem was about a winning candidate. The late Prakash Sonkar's wife Nisha Sonkar was an aspirant for the party ticket claiming that the family deserved it in view of the good work done in the area by her late husband in the past 27 years. Uma Bharati's Bharatiya Jana Shakti had announced Santosh Malaviya as its candidate and he was supposed to be more formidable.

Last week, the BJP lured Santosh Malaviya into the party with the promise of making him the BJP candidate. State BJP chief Narendra Singh Tamar had himself admitted Malaviya, his mentor Jeetendra (Jeetu) Patel, said to be a Bajrang Dal activist, and several other Bharatiya Jana Shakti workers into the party. This was not received well by Sonkar's supporters.

Sanver had witnessed communal killings on November 12, that is within days of admission of Santosh Malaviya and Jeetu Patel into the BJP. It all started on an innocuous issue.

From the varying reports, it appears that a Hindu youth had spilled tea from his cup onto a Muslim youth in a tea stall, situated not far from the Sanver police station, in the morning. This led to an altercation.

The members of the two communities converged there and clashed. The shops were hurriedly closed. On receiving the news of the clash between the two communities, Indore Collector Vivek Agrawal and Superintendent of Police Anshuman Yadav reached Sanver with additional reinforcements. The police brought the situation under control.

By the afternoon, the town had almost returned to normal and the shops had started reopening. Anwar khan was going to the market to reopen his shop when a bullet hit him. He succumbed to the injuries in a hospital the same day. Zakir Patel and his mother-in-law Mehraj Bi received bullet wounds elsewhere in the town around the same time. They died in the hospital a day later.

The police, as usual in such cases, had been feeding conflicting reports to the media, the latest being that Anwar Khan might have been killed by members of a family with whom Anwar's family had a feud. However, there is no plausible explanation for firing elsewhere in which Zakir Patel and his mother-in-law were killed.

Former Congress chief minister Digvijay Singh says that Collector Vivek Agrawal and SP Anshuman Yadav were very much at Sanver when the firing took place but they did not take any precautionary measure. Anwar Khan, he said, was a Congress worker. The killings were aimed at terrorising the minority community on the poll-eve, he feels.

According to Bharatiya Jana Shakti leader and former Union minister Prahlad Patel, Jeetu Patel (named in the FIR) had met chief minister Chauhan at the Chief Minister's residence on November 11 and communal killings took place at Sanver on November 12. Chauhan wants, Patel says, to win the Sanver by-election by communalising the situation there. Prahlad Patel should know better. He had been part of the BJP all his life till 18 months back when he joined Uma Bharati to form Bharatiya Jana Shakti.

The region has a substantial Muslim population and they are not submissive. Even Sanver Assembly constituency has an estimated 20 per cent Muslim vote. Christian missionaries are also active in the tribal areas like Jhabua. The RSS leaders, its supremo K.Sudarshan included, have been visiting the Malwa region (comprising largely Indore and Ujjain divisions) more often than any other part of the State. The Hindutva organisations like the RSS, Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), are naturally quite active and aggressive there.

Communal disturbances in the region, particularly in Indore and Jhabua, are not infrequent, in Indore involving the Muslims and in Jhabua the Christians. This year alone, nearly 20 clashes with communal overtones have been reported in Indore. Most of these have started from minor issues.

Prahlad Patel's observation that a panicky Shivraj Singh Chauhan may have engineered the communal riot in Sanver thus becomes significant. He has urged the Governor and the Director-General of Police to investigate what had transpired between Chauhan and Jeetu Patel a day before communal killings took place in Sanver.

Tailpiece: State BJP president Narendra Singh Tamar seems to be endowed with a fantabulous sense of humour. See his statement: "never before in the State had there been a government as corruption-free as the present one"!!!

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