In custody,for mentor’s murder

The irony is not lost on Saeed Khan—ten of his kin,including his wife,mother,grandchild and nephews,were killed that day in Gulbarg—who points to the photo and says,“The man in the grey safari suit is Meghsingh,and the one with white hair and specs on his left is Jaffri saheb.”

Chaudhary’s father Rupsingh was Khan’s friend,and Chaudhary used to address him as ‘Chacha’.

Jaffri,says Khan,helped Chaudhary get a Congress ticket for the councillor’s post. “But the second time,Jaffri saheb did not help him,” recollects Khan,at his electrical shop on Vejalpur Road. Formerly employed in a textile mill,Khan relocated to the neighbourhood soon after the riots.

“Meghsingh was different in those days. He was not a bad man,” Khan says. “His father was a nice man too,we were friends. He would address me only as Chacha. His office was right opposite the gate of Gulbarg Society,where we lived.”

On the day of the massacre—March 28,2002—Chowdhary was allegedly part of the armed mob,egging them on to kill the Muslims,along with VHP leader and BJP councillor Bipin Patel and others from the neighbourhood. “Perhaps we became just Hindus and Muslims that day,nothing else mattered. Or he may have been unhappy with Jaffri saheb for not recommending him for a ticket for a second term,” Khan says.

Khan and others have testified to Chaudhary’s presence in the mob in their affidavits before the SIT. The mob was armed with swords and threw burning tyres,refusing to heed Jaffri’s pleas to stop and spare women and children. Khan’s testimony gives an account of how Jaffri was killed and how the women—some of them his relatives—were stripped and raped as he watched helplessly through the window of a toilet he hid himself in.

It also describes the role of the police. “That police inspector K.G. Erda—now a deputy SP whom the SIT has arrested—ensured that there was no evidence left. Late in the night,with the help of a bootlegger,Chothmal,petrol was poured and dead bodies burnt. Koi pehchaan nahin sakta tha (nobody could identify them)”,recollects Khan,a young police constable now standing outside his shop to protect him.