The recent revelation of snooping incident in Gujarat relating to illegal surveillance of phone calls and movements of a young woman architect at Narendra Modi’s behest in 2009 raises serious questions about the state of civil liberties besides offering a glimpse into the illiberal, authoritarian nature of the government run by BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in his home state. Do Indians want to replicate this at the national level?
The release of taped conversations between then Gujarat home minister Amit Shah and superintendent of the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) G L Singhal pertaining to the snooping is not disputed, nor is it denied that the ‘sahib’ referred to in the tape is the chief minister. A state government subjecting a young woman to extraordinary, invasive and meticulous surveillance of a kind that should make partisans for liberty shudder is a grave issue.
The police force in Gujarat was easily complicit in this operation as in several other earlier operations that resulted in dead bodies now being investigated for fake encounters. The saving grace is that one police officer felt it prudent to record the instructions he received from the minister and the audio tapes have now been aired by news portals. A case filed by an IAS officer charging the Gujarat government with foisting false corruption cases on him - he is the same person that Shah wanted the police to keep tabs on to check if he had any contact with the woman - provides indirect support.
The suspended officer, who has been fighting a legal battle against the Modi-led Gujarat government, on Saturday filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court, saying that the audio tapes contain proof of how the state government had tried to frame him in frivolous cases and urging that the CBI be told to probe the surveillance of the young woman as it was done illegally.
The affidavit said he had been victimised by the Gujarat government as he had knowledge of the alleged intimacy shared by Modi with the young lady architect and also because his younger brother, a senior IPS officer in the state, has unmasked many misdeeds of the Modi government since the Godhra riots.
The state government is yet to explain the snooping. But it has made available to the press a statement made by the woman’s father, saying that he requested the chief minister, ‘an old family friend, a father to his daughter’, to keep an eye on her since he was concerned about her security.
Subsequently, in a letter to the national and the state women’s commissions, he has claimed that his daughter was also aware of the surveillance. The father’s statement, more than anything else, confirms that the police operations did take place and it was carried out at Modi’s behest.
The issue is not whether Modi had the woman followed by anti-terrorism snoops out of regard for her father’s request or for some other reason. But the nature of the surveillance, the agencies conducting it and the disposition of the information being sought seem so wildly disproportionate to the purported request. According to the recorded conversation, the woman was tailed as she visited shopping malls, ice-cream parlours, gyms, cinema halls and hotels. She was also followed when she visited her ailing mother in an Ahmedabad hospital and was not let out of sight even when she was on a flight from Ahmedabad to Mumbai, with a policeman, incognito, keeping an eye on her.
The aggressive surveillance is of the order one would expect for a major national security threat. The law lays down a rigorous process for authorisation of such surveillance. But no such procedures were followed in this case. S K Saikia, then Ahmedabad’s police commissioner, has told a television news channel that he was not aware of any paperwork for such surveillance, and that he should have been informed had it been legal. If regulations were not fully followed, then it amounts to an illegal invasion of privacy, whether or not the woman’s father sought or knew about it.
This is probably the first known case of state-sponsored stalking of a young woman reportedly on the oral orders of top government leaders. The matter calls for thorough investigation as such illegal surveillance carried out has considerable bearing on Modi’s eligibility to become the head of India’s democracy.
The BJP has rushed to his defence claiming that this is a private matter. How could it be when the government’s most sensitive wing, the anti-terrorist squad, was involved in the snooping? Is this what ATS was set up for?
The Congress, on the back-foot in the face of the growing Modi challenge ahead of the 2014 elections, has been quick to seize the issue. It has fielded its senior women leaders to target the Modi government for “stalking” and demanded a probe headed by a Supreme Court judge. Central Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde was not far behind in issuing a statement that the central government could consider ordering a probe. According to sources, the central government has already asked security agencies to look for evidence of the alleged “snooping” in the “interception records” that telecom service providers maintain.
While the Congress’s display of uncharacteristically sharp reflexes is not surprising, given that the gloves are off in campaign season, the BJP cannot seek comfort in attributing motives. A party, that had stalled parliament over revelations that the phone of its senior leader had been tapped, must explain its underwhelming response to allegations that the state’s security apparatus was used as a private intelligence agency in a BJP-ruled state, a state it projects as a model for the nation.
While Modi and Shah maintained a studied silence on the controversy, the Gujarat government formed a two-member commission of inquiry to investigate the charge on Monday. “It’s an eyewash. Nothing has come out of previous commissions. Illegal surveillance is a criminal offence and an FIR should be filed in the case,” demanded the Congress.
Even assuming the sincerity of the probe, the issue of law and principles is not settled. The wanton ease with which such stalking was ordered speaks of a deeper rot. The main players of the Gujarat episode need to come clean and far greater accountability is to be fixed if people are not to lead paranoid lives fearful of state machinery.