Legislator Challenges Police Case against Jigna Vora

The journalist deserves relief from rumours, insinuations and police prevarication

MUMBAI ~ When Vinod Tawade, leader of the opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Council, raised the issue of the arrest and incarceration of journalist Jigna Vora, an accused in the murder of fellow journalist Jyotirmoy Dey, none present seemed interested in listening to him. But it was the first time an elected representative had openly challenged the police role in Vora’s arrest.

Tawade stated that Vora’s arrest was a well laid out plan by the Mumbai Police. He called it a ‘conspiracy’. But as he spoke, Council attendance began to thin, with elected representatives making a beeline for the exit. This was no surprise, really. For them, after all, it was just another case.

For Vora, Tawade’s support was unexpected. It was also a breather. Persecuted by the media even before her case went to trial, the 37-year-old single mother had lost all hope of support. Much before she was arrested at her residence on 25 November last year, she had found herself deserted by friends, colleagues and contacts. So strong was the whisper campaign—which sources say was started by the police—about her involvement in Dey’s murder, that no one was willing to believe her side of the story.

J Dey, senior crime reporter and investigations editor of Mid-Day, was shot dead by motorcycle-borne assailants on 11 June last year near his Powai residence in Mumbai. This had only just happened when a whisper campaign was set in motion against Vora. Though her name was not mentioned in the reports that appeared after the murder, hints were dropped that a journalist would be arrested for the murder.

Vora was the one who was picked up. She has been charged under the draconian Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), slapped with various provisions of the Indian Penal Code (including murder, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence), and also booked under the Arms Act.

Though the police have clearly stated that they cannot pinpoint a motive for Dey’s murder, they have built a case around the so-called ‘professional rivalry’ between Vora and Dey. They have listed various issues—ranging from proximity to Chhota Rajan to taking away prime sources of information—that allegedly led to these two reporters falling out with each other. The 3,055 page supplementary chargesheet against Vora accuses her of being in constant touch with the fugitive don and keeping him informed of all anti-Rajan stories written by the slain journalist.

All these reports are in the public domain and can be accessed via the internet. Vora was arrested on charges of providing the motorcycle licence plate number and residential address of Dey to Rajan. The police theory is that Chhota Rajan acted against Dey only after receiving this information. Crime reporters, however, have been raising the question of why someone of Rajan’s resources would need such help from Vora.

On the day Dey was killed, Vora was on vacation in Sikkim with a group of friends, a trip that had been planned months in advance. According to the police, she had left the city as she was aware that Rajan would kill Dey during that period. However, according to her then editor S Hussain Zaidi at Asian Age, it was he who’d informed her of Dey’s murder. Zaidi asked her to file a report. She did so as quickly as she could. She called up Mumbai Crime Branch Chief Himanshu Roy and filed her news report.

Also being held against Vora is the statement of an executive of Asian Age’s human resources department, who said that he was unaware of her being on leave. The police disregarded the fact that Zaidi said he had cleared her leave application.

This leaves the police claim that Vora made 36 calls to Rajan prior to Dey’s murder. The fact of the matter is that she made three calls, all for an interview which was duly published in the newspaper.

No less troubling is the negligence of crime reporters, few of whom bothered to hold the police allegations to scrutiny. It was as if they were in a hurry to validate the police version of Vora’s role. All newspaper reports on her involvement followed a pattern. They simply regurgitated what the police said, no questions asked. Some said Vora had egged Chhota Rajan on to kill Dey, while some hinted at a relationship gone wrong between Vora and Dey. A report in a Marathi paper, by an ‘ace’ crime reporter suggested that Vora was the main culprit behind the split between underworld dons Chhota Rajan and Chhota Shakeel. Some even hinted at a relationship between Vora and Chhota.

“Crime reporters are an unscrupulous lot. They have been paid off,” alleges Tawade. “Don’t they ever question what the police feed them?” he asks. According to him, an IPS lobby within the Mumbai Police is upset with how the Dey murder case has been handled: “They believe that Jigna has been framed, as some senior police officers had an axe to grind with her. I believe that the government wanted to keep reporters quiet as they were asking uncomfortable questions. Jigna was the scapegoat.”

He claims the forensic report pertaining to Vora’s case was ready in January this year, but was taken to court only in the summer. “Only after we started asking questions and pressure built up did they present it before the court,” says Tawade, “All this points to a strong police conspiracy in the arrest of Jigna Vora.”

Interestingly, Rajan made two calls to a news channel outlining his reasons for killing Dey. This is probably the first time that a fugitive gangster took the trouble to corroborate a police theory—that Dey was killed for writing against him and harming his interests. In neither of those calls did the gangster mention Vora.

It was only on 4 August last year, after the police started planting stories on the involvement of a ‘female journalist’, did Rajan bring Vora into the picture. On that day, as phone taps reveal, he called up gang member Manoj and claimed that Vora had instigated him by saying that Dey was a traitor who was in touch with Dawood Ibrahim. According to documents that are part of the supplementary chargesheet, the police had put Manoj’s phone under surveillance on 2 August, just two days before Rajan mentioned Vora. In this particular conversation, Rajan said that many editors and reporters were against Dey, but singled out Vora by name and said she’d pushed him to do the deed.

As reports on the case kept filling column after column in Mumbai newspapers, Vora, lodged at the Women’s Jail in Byculla, found herself helpless. She had no way to counter the allegations. But then, who would listen to her side of the story? Neither her aged grandfather nor ailing mother was in any position to take on the reporters who were filing these reports.

She was not entirely without support, though. A series of statements was issued by the Press Club and Network of Women in Media, questioning Vora’s incarceration and demanding a CBI probe into Dey’s murder case. While Vora was recently released on bail, her ordeal is not quite over. Her release had a court rider that she would not speak to the media. But after her experience with the so-called fourth estate, she would probably not want to anyway.

About The Author

Haima Deshpande