Tech-heavy war: 4 IIT brains gunning for Modi

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AHMEDABAD: It looks like a tech-heavy fight against chief minister Narendra Modi in Gujarat as four IITians are lined-up against him. Advocate Dr Mukul Sinha, senior IPS officers Satish Varma, Rahul Sharma and Sanjiv Bhatt, who have been behind the bad press that Modi has been getting of late, are all IIT graduates.

Sinha is a plasma physicist from IIT-Kanpur, who later worked at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, before becoming a lawyer. Among clients he represents is Rahul Sharma, also a graduate from IIT-Kanpur, who recently filed an affidavit exposing the nexus between police officials and politicians during the 2002 riots. Incidentally, the phone CDs, giving call records of key politicians and police officials during the riots, was also analyzed by Sinha who runs the Jan Sangharsh Manch.

Be it the riots, fake encounters or the Lokayukta matter, Sinha has been consistent in taking the lead on matters which put the Modi government at unease. He is also fighting to ensure that the Nanavati Commission, which is probing the riots, gets all the evidence necessary to nail the government. Among his other clients is Rajneesh Rai, another police officer who went on the offensive against the government.

That IITians are tech-savvy was evident from the manner in which Rahul Sharma used his abilities to collect phone call data of the riot period and also make a copy of it before he handed over charge. While the original CDs are nowhere to be found today, Sharma's copies are before various investigating agencies. This was a rare case in Indian legal history where valuable evidence was recorded on CD, an act which has invited a charge-sheet against him for violation of Official Secrets Act.

Satish Varma, an IIT-Delhi graduate, is a key member of the SIT in Ishrat Jahan encounter case. He took a courageous stand in the high court by accusing his seniors in the SIT of trying to derail the probe. Even on Friday, he told the court that psycho-analysis tests should be done on all those witnesses who retracted in this case. But for him, the Ishrat Jahan case would have gone astray. Varma too has suffered as a charge-sheet was issued against him earlier this year in a ten-year-old case.

Completing this quartet is Bhatt, an IIT-Bombay graduate, who came out after ten years to say that he was present at the CM's residence on February 27, 2002, where Modi allegedly told the officials to go soft on the Hindu mobs after the Godhra train burning. Bhatt, who claims he has also got leads into Haren Pandya's murder, was arrested by the Ahmedabad police last week and is in jail.