magazine of the Manorama.
Ashok was
Abduction of a photojournalist
Bihar is not an exception
A. J. Philip
I HAD barely got up on the morning of
December 28 when the coach attendant
handed to me a copy of the Dhanbad
edition of the Hindustan Times. I was
stunned to read the report of the abduction
of Ashok Karn, a staff photographer of the
HT at Ranchi. The report said he and his
wife were kidnapped from their ancestral
home in Nalanda district. She was released
after a few minutes with the instruction to
make arrangements to pay a ransom of Rs
10 lakh for his release. The newspaper
carried several reports from Patna and
Ranchi quoting journalists and political
leaders on the sensational incident.
It was beyond my comprehension why the
kidnappers chose Ashok Karn. How could
his wife raise such a large sum? These
were the questions that nagged me as I
continued my journey to Bhubaneswar.
After all, Ashok was my colleague for 10
years and we knew each other very well. I
still remember him proudly showing me his
first Nikon SLR camera. He had not yet
become a full-fledged news photographer.
For his livelihood, he depended on
occasional assignments from newspapers
and news magazines, which were notorious
for cheating freelancers.
When it came to making payments, even
big newspapers were no better. The first
time we collaborated was when the
Malayala Manorama gave me an
assignment to do a story on the toilet
revolution brought about by Bindeshwar
Pathak's Sulabh movement in Patna. Ashok
went around Patna's Gandhi Maidan for a
few days to take some eye-catching
photographs. He was to be paid Rs 25 for
every published photograph. The toilet
story was the lead item in the Sunday
thrilled to find several of his photographs
appearing in the newspaper along with my
story.
One day, out of compulsion, he asked me
for payment and I settled his account. The
payment had not come from the
Manorama. When it finally arrived, it was a
princely sum of Rs 150, which was roughly
the payment I had made to Ashok. That
left me a net loser. But the satisfaction that
my parents were able to read my
dispatches egged me on to contribute to
the Manorama as and when occasion
demanded. I did several stories for the
Malayalam daily and the photographs were
invariably Ashok's.
We travelled together in Bihar doing
several stories for the Hindustan Times. On
most of these visits, he was my guide,
navigator and interpreter. Once on a visit
to Nalanda, he showed me the village
where he was born. For some reason he
did not show any interest in taking me to
his ancestral home where his brother, an
Inspector in the Bihar Police, stayed. It was
from this village that he was kidnapped.
Ashok is a born journalist. I vividly
remember that day when he virtually ran
up the stairs and barged into my room on
the first floor of the HT office on Budh Marg
in Patna. He put his heavy camera bag on
my table and began telling me the
breathtaking story he had brought from
Bhagalpur. It was literally breathtaking!
The heavily panting and perspiring
lensman, who had covered innumerable
incidents of death and destruction, could
not control his emotion as he narrated
what he saw in the city of weavers.
Obviously, he was conscious of what he
had brought from the riot-hit area - a story
that will forever be etched in the memory
of all those who had anything to do with
one of the worst-ever communal riots in
the country. Since the deadline for the first
edition was fast approaching and most of
our staff had assembled in my room to
listen to him, I asked him to cut his story
short and, instead, get me the
photographs he had brought.
Among the gruesome pictures he brought -
of corpses of men, women and children,
burning houses and shops and destroyed
looms - the most poignant was that of an
army jawan pulling out a girl from a dirty
pond so full of weeds that water was
invisible. "It was from this pond that
several bodies were recovered. They had
all been hacked to death and dumped
there," said Ashok.
In the morning as an army vehicle passed
by, the jawans heard a human sound
emanating from the pond. They stopped
their vehicle, got down and looked around.
The sound was feeble. There she was, a
girl - 15 or 16 - gasping for breath. One of
the jawans stretched out his hand to pull
her out of the lake but there was no
response from her. She had lost her
consciousness. The jawan did not give up.
He stepped into the pond full of slime and
excreta, clutched her hand and pulled her
on to the shore.
Then they realized why she was there. One
of her feet had been cut off and blood was
still flowing from the joint. Had she
remained in the pond for a few more
minutes, she could well have been one
among the dozen or so bodies that were
recovered from the pond. It was a grand
betrayal that landed them in the pond on
October 28, 1989. Twelve years had
passed since the horrific incident when I
met her at Sadaruddin Chak under
Habibpur police station in Bhagalpur but
Malka Begum remembered even the
minutest details of that betrayal.
Bihar was at that time in the grip of
communal violence sparked by the
Ayodhya campaign the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad had launched. Chanderi, a small
village on the outskirts of Bhagalpur and
close to the Rajendra Agricultural
University, was one of them. In the Muslim
locality of the village lived Malka Begum
with her parents, two brothers and two
sisters. Her father did sundry jobs to keep
the hearth burning. Her elder brothers also
chipped in. Prosperity was never part of
their life but contentment was. Faith in
Allah helped the family face financial and
other crises they periodically encountered.
But this faith was rudely shaken when on
October 27, 1989, a mob that included
many recognizable faces attacked
Chanderi and butchered whoever it could
lay its hands own. The bodies were
dumped in a ditch.
Mohammed Nihal, whom I met at
Chanderi, told me that he lost his mother,
two uncles and two aunties. Some of them
ran away to safety. Malka and her family
were among those who fled. They took
shelter in the local mosque. Next day, they
were persuaded by some of their Hindu
neighbours to come out of the hiding with
the promise that they would be given
protection at least till the Army arrived and
the jawans moved them to a safer place. It
was an offer they could not turn down. But
they had no clue then that they were being
taken for a ride. And many of them would
pay for their folly of accepting the offer
with death.
Malka's story is similar to what Harsh
Mander, a serving IAS officer, narrates in
his article, Hindustan Hamara: I Can Never
Sing That Song Again (The Times of India,
March 20, 2002): "A family escaping from
Naroda-Patiya, one of the worst-hit
settlements in Ahmedabad, spoke of losing
a young woman and her three-month-old
son, because a police constable directed
her to safety and she found herself instead
surrounded by a mob which doused her
with kerosene and set her and her baby on
fire."
As Malka and others moved out of the
mosque to what they thought was a safer
place, a mob set upon them. They were
armed with swords, daggers and sickles.
She saw the mob hacking her parents.
Most of them had the same fate. Malka too
was not lucky. In panic, she ran towards
the pond, the same pond into which the
mob had thrown the bodies of her own
parents. She was about to jump when a
sword-wielding man who stood on the
edge of the pond hit her with his sharp
weapon. He had neatly hacked her right
foot off her ankle. His companion had a
bamboo stick with a sickle attached to the
end. They tried to kill her with that
extended weapon but she evaded it by
moving further and further into the pond
till she reached its centre. She was so
panic-stricken that she did not even realize
that she had lost her foot forever.
The men could have finished her had they
stepped into the pond. But they did not
want to dirty themselves. Malka has no
memories of how she spent the whole
night in that pond till a strapping soldier
saved her. Perhaps, the weeds were strong
enough to support her. "Providence has its
mysterious ways" she philosophized. Every
newspaper worth the name carried Malka's
story. In fact, she symbolized the enormity
of the tragedy that struck Chanderi where
a total of 67 people were killed. It helped
the Press to put a face to the tragedy. It
was Ashok who first discovered her.
As I was on the move, I had no way of
keeping myself abreast of the kidnapping
saga. It was, therefore, a great relief when
I heard on All India Radio that he had been
released. The next day's newspaper had a
picture of Ashok narrating the incident to
Laloo Prasad Yadav. What struck me most
was his comment, "How could I raise a sum
of Rs 10 lakh when my take-home salary is
just Rs 8,000?" It is, perhaps, a measure of
the desperation of the kidnappers that
they chose Ashok, instead of some wealthy
person.
I have no clue as to what forced the
kidnappers to release him. Was it the
intervention of LalooYadav or the efficiency
of the police or the belated realisation of
the kidnappers that Ashok was hardly in a
position to cough up Rs 10 lakh? In
retrospect, I wonder whether the media
would have given so much coverage if the
victim was an ordinary person with no
connections, political or journalistic, to
boot.
There are people who blame Laloo Yadav
for the kidnapping phenomenon. One of
them, Sankarshan Thakur writes in The
Making of Laloo Yadav: The Unmaking of
Bihar (HarperCollins): "Kidnapping for
ransom became an institutional affair
during the Laloo Yadav years. Someone
was kidnapped, phonecalls were made to
relatives, the money was handed over, the
victim was freed. The police, or the state,
played no role. Most of the time, because
they were themselves involved. In several
cases, when affected families happened to
have influence among the powerful, they
were able to secure the release of their
relatives using political influence. A senior
police official in Patna said, "Most of these
gangs answer to people sitting in the
ministerial bungalows of Patna, the ransom
money is shared. If you have the right
connections, you can breathe easier
because the state or the people running it
are behind most of the kidnappings. "In
eight years since Laloo Yadav took over -
later statistics are unavailable - seventeen
thousand people were kidnapped, most of
them for ransom. "It was very easy to
kidnap and very profitable."
Sankarshan may indeed be right in his
assertion but kidnapping as an industry
began in the state a long time before the
advent of LalooYadav. The first time it
struck me as a journalist was when a Jesuit
priest, Father Thomas Chakkalakal, was
kidnapped from his residence, Seva Sadan,
at Rathanpurva in West Champaran district
on May 31, 1984. It was in this district that
Mahatma Gandhi began his non-violent
struggle against the British. Fr
Chakkalakal's kidnappers demanded a
huge ransom for his release. They thought
the Catholic Church would meet their
demand. But they had no idea what kind of
a man Fr Chakkalakal was. He told them in
plain language that they were at liberty to
kill him but they would never get even a
single rupee by way of ransom. Fr
Chakkalakal had built a reputation for
sincerity, hard work and dedication. The
word 'fear' was certainly not in his lexicon
as he worked among the people, making
them conscious about their rights. Small
wonder that his biographer, Fr K.C. Philip,
titled his book, Champaran Ka Naya
Gandhi: Father Thomas Chakkalakal (Patna
Jesuit Society, Patna)
As I write this, worse things have
happened in Bihar. In one of the most
horrifying incidents, the police killed three
young men in Patna. Sub-inspector
Samsher Alam who shot them believed
they were criminals when the only
evidence he had against them was the
dubious statement of a shopkeeper. The
Opposition parties have given a call for a
Patna bandh on January 3. Demands for
the dismissal of the Laloo ministry are
once again heard. There is no way in which
LalooYadav and his wife can absolve
themselves of the responsibility. Few will
shed tears for them if they are taken to have helped uncover the conspiracy.
task for their innumerable acts of omission Instead, the police are feted for gunning
and commission. But are they the only down the terrorists. There is a police officer
ones to blame? in New Delhi who is known as the "master
of encounters" as he has killed the
I have before me newspapers carrying
maximum number of "criminals" in
pictures of Defence Minister George
encounters. Is it any surprise that the
Fernandes consoling the parents of one of
police officer in Patna first took the gun
the young men who was shot at close
when a shopkeeper tipped him that "three
range. This minister did not rush to
criminals" were on the prowl in the city?
Haryana when five Dalits were killed for
Sometime ago, the police killed an
allegedly killing a cow. Or to Gujarat when
innocent businessman in a fake encounter
the policemen in Ahmedabad recently
on Barkhamba Road in the heart of New
organised a fake encounter to bump off an
Delhi. At that time, Mr Fernandes did not
undertrial. While the trigger-happy sub-
visit the businessman's family. Nor did his
inspector who killed the young men
party call for a bandh. Nor did the Railway
deserves the severest punishment, let us
Minister facilitate the bandh by unilaterally
also hear what he had to say about the
withdrawing trains from the state on that
killing. He thought they were criminals and
day.
he was doing a great service to the nation
when he eliminated them. Those who bay for Laloo Yadav's blood will
do well to read Vijay Nambisan's lines in
The point is the police have come to
Bihar Is In The Eye Of The Beholder
believe that the best way to deal with
(Viking): "Laloo is not an aberration. Nor is
criminals is to kill them. Instead of nipping
Bihar. What is happening in Bihar is
this tendency in the bud, the state has
happening all over India. But Bihar is a
been encouraging it. We have seen how
microcosm of the whole; a laboratory
the police were given freedom to do what
specimen, as it were, most easily brought
they pleased in Punjab. Human rights
under the microscope of analysis. For there
violations by the police take place routinely
is something going on in Bihar which is of
in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast.
great relevance to India's polity, and
One may dismiss what happened in
perhaps not to India's alone. A study of
Gujarat in the wake of Godhra as an
Bihar as an organism, and not merely of
aberration but what about the Union Home
Patna as a stage, might provide a really
Minister who proudly gives statistics of the
radical, yet thoroughly practical critique of
number of "criminals" and "terrorists"
our thusness - of premises we understand
eliminated by the police? I wish he had
as fundamental to our existence as a
given statistics of the criminals and
nation, particularly as a democratic
terrorists brought to justice.
nation."
Why is it that not even one terrorist
The writer can be reached at
involved in the recent attacks on
ajphilip@yahoo.com
Parliament, the Akshardham temple in
Ahmedabad and a shopping mall in New
Delhi was arrested? Their arrests could