‘She Is a Woman, How Intelligent Can She Be?’ Kathua Defence Lawyer on Woman Investigator

By Kajal Basu.

Edited by Adam Rizvi

This comes after several reports talked of the hurdles faced by Shwetambri Sharma, the lone woman officer in the Special Investigative Team (SIT) of the Crime Branch.

WHO IS #ANKUR_SHARMA?
Aside from being the defense lawyer for five of the eight accused in the #Kathua_rape, he is also the man who dissed the sole woman investigating officer in the Special Investigative Team of the Jammu & Kashmir Crime Branch that investigated the case. This Jammu & Kashmir High Court lawyer is also a rising star among Jammu’s Hinduttvavādī community.
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“Shwetambri kya hai, Ladki hai. Uska Kitna hi Dimaag hoga?”
[‘What is Shwetambri, she is a girl, how intelligent can she be?’]
[#AnkurSharma on #ShwetambriSharma]
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Ankur Sharma has had a chequered career, if not so much as a lawyer, as a stoker of anti-Muslim sentiments who regularly demands the bifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir and compares PDP Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti with the infamous British Islamic State beheader named ‘Jihadi John’.
Sharma’s many detractors view his activities as overtly both Islamophobic and xenophobic. He was apparently behind the #HinduEktaManch’s first rally in defense of the rape-accused on 14 February 2018, during the course of which the national flag was unfurled.
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In 2016, he had filed a plea with Supreme Court that the provisions of the National Commission for Minorities Act were not applicable to Jammu & Kashmir due to a caveat in Article 370 of the Constitution. He had sought the constitution of a minority commission in the state and an extension of the National Minorities Commission Act to the state to benefit its minority Hindus. According to the Census 2011, Muslims comprise 96.4% of the population of Kashmir Valley and 68.3% of Jammu & Kashmir’s population.
(Sharma sees Article 35A as “a blot on democracy” and refers to Article 370 as a “temporary” provision in the Indian Constitution. Article 35A is a veritable carte blanche to Jammu & Kashmir that allows it to decide “permanent residents” of the state, conferring on them special rights and privileges in public sector jobs, acquisition of property within the state, scholarships and other public aid and welfare measures. It was a Presidential Order issued under Article 370 (1) (d) of the Constitution, which allows the president of India to make certain “exceptions and modifications” to the Constitution for the benefit of the “state subjects” of Jammu and Kashmir. It does not differentiate between Muslim and Hindu permanent residents.)
Despite that in December 2017, the apex court kicked the matter back to the Centre and the J&K government – on the grounds that it could not “direct the legislature to legislate on a particular issue” – Ankur Sharma took out a victory celebration of thousands of Hindus through Kalibari Chowk in his native Kathua.
There is both prevarication and design behind Sharma’s machinations. He wants minority status for Hindus in the state – but the fact is that the Hindus are doing relatively well. The districts that are faring the worst on economic and social indices – far worse than the Hindu-majority districts of Jammu and Buddhist-dominated Leh – are the Muslim-majority districts of Jammu (even Kargil).
In no other state where a national minority constitutes a majority is there a demand for setting up a minority commission for state-level minorities.
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On the Crime Branch investigation, Sharma says:
“They are implicating people using force. This is being done on the instruction of their Kashmir-based political masters who are separatists. The chief minister has chosen to spearhead a bigoted, communal and Islamo-fascist campaign of demographic change in Jammu province and is instrumental in inflicting open injuries to the Hindu-Sikh/Dogra sentiments in the state.”
He has no problems conflating Sikhs with Hindus.
The Sikh community in Jammu has come out in support of #Asifa, clearly distancing itself from the Hindu community’s deathly silence on the matter.
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Ankur Sharma was also behind the hatchet campaign against one of the Crime Branch investigating officers, #IrfanWani aka Urfan Wani. As in-charge of the Karara police post under the Thathri Police Station in Doda district, Wani was arrested in October 2009 for the alleged murder of a boy and alleged rape of a girl in illegal custody.
He was given bail in March 2011 and cleared of all charges in May 2017.
Nonetheless, Sharma, a television talk show regular, sparked and fed a media bushfire alleging that the Crime Branch had appointed a “tainted” officer. The hysteria among Hinduttvavādīs in the social media and spread through WhatsApp finally forced the Crime Branch SIT team leader, Senior Superintendent of Police #RameshJalla, to issue a sturdy denial that Sharma has not come back to refute.
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On 21 May 2017, Ankur Sharma was the keynote speaker at a Panun Kashmir seminar titled ‘Betrayal of Jammu’, organized by Jammu For India (JFI).
The other panelists were MM Khajooria (the second Director-General of Police, J&K), Jammu Bar Association president BS Slathia, Independent MLA from Udhampur Pawan Kumar Gupta (whom the BJP expelled from the primary membership of the party in November 2014 and who is known as a regular berserker in the Central Hall of the Legislature Building in the New Secretariat in Jammu), and Panun Kashmir chairman Ajay Chrungoo (also author of overheated writings with titles such as ‘Viciousness of a Wishfulness’ and ‘Democratic Process: Conversion into a Subversive Space’).
Sharma’s thrust: that a demographic change in Jammu is being impelled by “a multipronged strategy” embracing “a well-funded campaign of land acquisition”, “fraudulent allotments of forest and state lands” through the Roshni Act, the settlement of “illegal Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslims”, “induced Muslim migration” from Kashmir and “fraudulent Census operations”.
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Lately, because of her refusal to back down from her stand that the Roshni Act – or the Jammu & Kashmir State Lands (Vesting of Ownership to the Occupants) Act, 2001 – empowers the Bakarwal, Gadariya and Gujjar nomadic tribal communities to roam where their feet take them, Mehbooba Mufti has earned the wrath of Ankur Sharma – the infamous ‘Jihadi John’ jibe.
His argument is that the Bakarwal and the Gujjar – who are Muslim, Sikh, Christian and Buddhist in addition to Hindu – are interlopers on Hindu lands.
On 14 February 2018, his opposition to the Bakarwal became blatant, even as he charged them with “bovine smuggling and slaughter”.
“…tribals, who are infamous for carrying out bovine smuggling and cow slaughter will be able to do it with impunity, without fear given the active backing of Mehbooba Mufti.
“The decisions pertaining to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs are not only aimed at providing administrative immunity to the land grabbers and bovine smugglers of particular religion in the Jammu Province but also appear to be an open invitation and encouragement to occupy and grab more lands in Jammu without fear of law and indulging with impunity in bovine smuggling and slaughter.
“…the provisions of CrPC, RPC, Land Revenue Act, and other penal laws of the criminal justice system shall not be invoked against the tribals (Gujjar and Bakarwals) even if they commit a crime under the express provisions of these penal laws.
“It is a well-known fact that the fraudulent grabbing of government lands, as well as private lands in Jammu, has been done primarily by members of one community.”
He meant Muslims.
And this is why advocate Ankur Sharma is a dangerous man defending dangerous men.