The tapes show that the then Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah monitored the minute-by-minute intrusive surveillance of a young womans personal life, to relay information to their Saheb.
The BJPs defence actually authenticates the tapes and identifies Saheb, and exposed the womans identity which the media web sites that revealed the tapes had kept private. The BJP issued a letter supposedly written by the womans father, claiming that the surveillance was actually protection which he had requested for his daughter from his family friend Narendra Modi. So the BJP does not deny the tapes, and in fact tacitly admits that Saheb is Modi.
It is ironic that the Chief Minister who turned a deaf ear to Ehsan Jafris repeated calls for help, is today claiming that he provided round-the-clock ATS protection to a woman (including cops following her in a flight) in response to a worried fathers request!
Several questions arise. Why did protection for a woman require surveillance by the ATS? Why wasnt the surveillance legal? The Telegraph Act mandates that phone-tapping can be allowed only in a public Emergency that endangers public safety, on receipt of a Home Secretarys order. The Supreme Court verdict in the 1996 PUCL case further ordered that a Review Committee must verify the Home Secretarys order to ensure that the tapping was required because of an authentic threat to public safety. While the BJP trots out absurd defences, the otherwise voluble Gujarat CM is silent on whether his Government can show the required written order by Home Secretary and authentication by Review Committee.
Further, the actual transcripts leave us in no doubt that the surveillance was not to protect the woman. Not a single line in the tapes does Amit Shah express any concern for the womans safety, rather the ATS cops tell him that they laid a trap for her which she was too clever and so escaped. Far from protecting her, Amit Shah tells the ATS cop to identify the boy she was meeting, so that he could be jailed for longer than Vanzara has been jailed. Why did Saheb have such an obsessive interest in details of the womans personal life, including even who was with her in her hotel room at night? The BJPs excuse that the father asked for it is extremely weak because the tapes show that the womans parents phones and her conversations with them were also tapped.
This kind of obsessive illegal snooping on a womans intimate personal life by anyone constitutes stalking under the new law. The fact that it was done by Gujarat Government machinery is yet more proof after genocide and fake encounters - of the fascist criminalisation of the entire Government machinery under Modi.
The BJP is asking why others are objecting if the woman herself hasnt complained. They need to be told that the Governments violation of laws protecting Constitutional liberties is not a private matter to be arranged between an individual citizen and the Government. It concerns each citizen and our entire democracy. The Gujarat Government or any Government cannot be allowed to say We are allowed to violate the law as long as the victim has no complaints. Any politicians private life is their personal business that does not concern us. But the violation of laws and Constitution by a Government is every citizens business.
The BJPs claim that a fathers request for protection is enough to justify illegal snooping on a womans personal life is itself dangerous. It is not accidental that women protesting rape last year demanded that their freedom be protected, as opposed to violating freedom in the name of protection. BJPs argument implies that the Government must act as a Khap Panchayat for aggrieved parents.
The BJP stalled Parliament for several days over Arun Jaitleys phone being illegally tapped. Why this airy dismissal of the violation of privacy by Saheb? BJP demanded a probe into who tapped Jaitleys phone. There is damning evidence that Modi Saheb, Shah and Gujarat ATS cops tapped Madhuris phone and illegally followed her. Yet the BJP wants us to condone and justify it, without even a probe! If the PMs silence on his role in scams is unacceptable, isnt Modis silence on stalking and illegal snooping unacceptable? Why the double standards?
This grave matter cannot be sacrificed at the altar of Congress-BJP shadow boxing. The CBI, which is in possession of the tapes, must initiate criminal proceedings without further delay. The violation of a single citizens constitutional rights by a Government endangers every other citizen. Gujarat is BJPs model state, and Modi is BJPs Prime Ministerial candidate. So the whole country has a right to demand the truth about the illegal snooping on a woman by the Gujarat Government on the orders of Modi.
