One of those who went to Delhi to convince the BJP high command to replace the then-chief minister Keshubhai Patel, Haren’s refusal to vacate his Ellisbridge assembly seat for Modi to fight the bypoll—a legal requirement to continue as chief minister—was the cause of the first major rift between the two. However, my interactions with Haren—mostly one-on-one—suggested that despite supporting Modi’s candidacy, he wasn’t comfortable with Modi’s leadership. On returning from Delhi following consultations with the BJP high command, when I asked Haren how he would rate Modi, he informally told me, “While there are positives, there are important negatives; hence, one shouldn’t rush to any conclusions. We will have to wait and see what he does.”
Apparently to avenge the refusal of Haren to vacate his seat for the February 2002 bypoll, Modi is said to have adopted a strange tactic to ensure that Haren did not get the ticket for the December 2002 assembly elections. After finalising the list of candidates which did not include Haren's name, he got himself admitted to the Gandhinagar Civil Hospital for a few says for "treatment". It is said, he did this to avoid pressure from the High Command and the RSS for Haren's candidature.
The move ensured avoiding any interaction, especially with top BJP leaders, including Atal Behari Vajpayee and LK Advani. Some of the Gandhinagar-based reporters, including myself, would take rounds of the Civil Hospital just to find out what had happened to Modi. At one point, he wouke be heard murmuring, “I don’t feel good,” even as he was taking a round in the hospital’s corridor. However, he became “normal” only after he was found that the High Command willy nilly agreed to drop Haren.
Friendly with journalists, who would love to visit his ministerial chamber before Modi took over as Gujarat’s chief minister on October 17, 2001, and perhaps the most likable among the BJP leaders who didn’t have any aura of arrogance, Haren had to shed his home portfolio after Modi became chief minister. He was instead given revenue. He used his position as minister of state for revenue to go ahead with a demolition drive across Gujarat on revenue land illegally encroached upon by builders.
Haren propagated his demolition drive to the hilt, briefing every move to mediapersons. In this drive, he said, he wasn’t sparing powerful builders, including those who were in the BJP. It became so much of an embarrassment for Modi that Modi’s top Saurashtra supporter, Dilip Sanghani, did not just complain to Modi but told me, while coming out of the chief minister’s office, that the demolition drive was “illegal,” it was harming the BJP, he had lodged a complaint with Modi against Haren, and had been promised action. “You can quote me,” Sanghani insisted.
Denied a ticket on Modi’s insistence to fight in the Gujarat assembly’s December 2002 polls, Haren would often organize journalists’ meetings with Keshubhai Patel, whom Modi had replaced, in order to garner support against Modi in every possible manner. Seeking to be in touch with journalists, he visited my residence—as also others who covered Gandhinagar—and invited me along with my wife and children for lunch at his residence in Ahmedabad, which I found to be a humble apartment in a very ordinary locality.
At one point, Haren took three journalists—Indian Express’s Bashir Pathan and Darshan Desai, and myself from The Times of India—in his Maruti 800 car, a “fronty,” outside Ahmedabad to show us how one of the top ministers close to Modi was leading a luxurious life: driving himself, he stopped the car in front of a huge farmhouse under development, stating, “See how they are prospering.”
Haren’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots was a sharply debated topic among anti-Modi circles those days. It was pointed out how he led a frenzied crowd to demolish a mosque and was the first person to perform the task. “I saw him from the window of my apartment how he was leading the rioters,” a Muslim activist living in Ahmedabad’s Paldi area, where the mosque was situated, told me.
I asked Haren once what he had to say about it, and his reply was: “If I had not led the mad crowd towards the mosque, it would have attacked Muslim houses in the Paldi area. There would have been bloodshed. That was the only option I could think of in order to divert the frenzied rioters.”
The last time I met Haren was at the Ellisbridge Gymkhana in Ahmedabad, where he had called three of us journalists for dinner. It seemed he wanted to pass on some crucial information. When we asked him about what exactly he was planning, he told us, “I am going to Delhi tomorrow to meet the high command, especially LK Advani. Thereafter I will tell you… It’s explosive stuff.” As we came out, I was standing next to Haren when two scooter drivers with pillion riders suddenly came near us after taking a U-turn. Coming very close to Haren, they asked him, “How are you, Harenbhai?” and went away after Haren said he was fine.
I immediately asked Haren who they were, and the reply was, “I don’t know.” Then I asked him why he wasn’t keeping security guards with him, and he replied, somewhat upset, “I don’t need it. I have told the authorities I don’t need any security. I am not afraid…”
It turned out that though he had promised me he would drop me first at the place where I was going to spend that night—less than a kilometer away—he said his driver would first drop him at his residence, about five kilometers off, and then I would be dropped. As we rode, I saw Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kamp lying on the seat. I showed interest, and he replied, “It’s necessary to understand how fascists behave; hence, I chose to read Hitler.”
A few days later, Haren was murdered. We were left wondering as to what was the crucial information he wanted to pass on to us. There is no dearth of stories as to who organized the murder, but to date, the gruesome act remains a mystery. While those close to Modi blame it on terrorist groups, others call it a political murder that wasn’t investigated properly.
A former BJP MLA from Saurashtra told me that there was talk within the party that it was the handiwork of the Porbandar mafia having links with Dawood Ibrahim. So was Haren, who was murdered on March 26, 2003, an easy target of terrorists seeking revenge for the 2002 Gujarat riots, as he had refused to accept any security? After all, he was seen leading frenzied rioters to demolish the mosque. I don’t know.
While nobody knows how he was murdered in the same Maruti 800 in which he took us three journalists to show a BJP leader’s huge farmhouse, it took us by surprise when Modi kept an MLAs’ meeting soon after the Gujarat State assembly session in March-end 2003 exactly at the time when a prayer meeting was being held in Haren’s memory in Ahmedabad. No MLA could attend the prayer meeting.
Come 2004, Haren’s father, Vitthalbhai Pandya, already 76, decided to fight Lok Sabha elections from the Gandhinagar constituency, from where BJP leader LK Advani was fighting polls. The Congress put up Gabhaji Thakor, a former BJP minister who quit his party. I decided to cast my vote for Vitthalbhai, more as a tribute to the slain leader whom I knew well, despite the fact that I knew he wouldn’t be able to save even his deposit. The ageing Vitthalbhai’s only plank was justice for his son Haren—he held on his plank till he passed away in 2011 at the age of 82.
On September 23, 2007, I spotted him at a Raj Bhavan dinner organized in Gandhinagar to honor Sunita Williams, who had come to India three months after completing her NASA space mission on June 22, 2007. I think I was the only journalist present on the occasion, and I filed a story for my paper, The Times of India, on the same day late at night on the ruckus created by Vitthalbhai—I don’t recall if it was published, but I have retrieved the draft of the story.
I am tempted to quote from the story. It said how the Raj Bhavan dinner was a “major cause of embarrassment for chief minister Narendra Modi,” as Vitthalbhai and Haren’s sister Chhayaben Pandya “went close to the table especially set up for Sunita and other VVIPs and asked her father, Deepak Pandya, sitting next to Modi, not to give any heed to what Modi says.”
I quoted Vitthalbhai alleging, “Modi is a sinner,” adding, Modi listened to all he was saying and seemed nervous. Amidst the dinner, I met Vitthalbhai, who said, “I told Deepakbhai that he should refrain from having any contact with Modi. I also told him Modi was wicked and it wasn’t good that our family had anything to do with this man.” Added Chhayaben, “We could find Modi nervously patting his fingers on the table. We wanted to convey our view, and we did it.”
The story said, “Soon after the dinner, Sunita, accompanied by father Deepak Pandya, went towards the Raj Bhawan’s outer gates, with Gujarat governor Naval Kishore Sharma accompanying them to say goodbye. Modi, who had accompanied Sunita with the governor into the Raj Bhawan, however, refrained from seeing off the top astronaut. He became busier signing autographs for the children of bureaucrats who were called with their families for dinner.”
It added: “The dinner saw Union textile minister Shankarsinh Vaghela enter the Raj Bhawan but go out after presenting a small Hanuman icon to Sunita. State vigilance commissioner Ashok Narayan presented to Sunita a treatise he had written on the Bhagavad Gita… Only one minister in the Modi Cabinet, Ramanlal Vora, could be spotted…”
During her Gujarat visit in 2007, Sunita reportedly visited Jhulasan, her ancestral village, and was felicitated at a Gujarat University function in Ahmedabad, where Modi was present. She returned to Gujarat in 2013 and visited her ancestral village again, but, reports say, she ignored the chief minister’s office to tie up a meeting with Modi. As a result, the Modi government did not extend her protocol as a state guest, though police did provide her with a pilot vehicle.
In 2016, Sunita and her father are known to have met Modi, already Prime Minister for two years, during his US visit. On her recent return to Earth, she has declared her decision to visit India, especially her ancestral village. However, she is yet to respond to Modi’s letter congratulating her for her successful space mission. Is it because of the lingering Haren shadow? I don’t know.
Comments
But for the synchronised coordination with the City police , such a clean killing and registering an offence was not possible . So who had the power to move the police ? That’s the hint.
Beg pardon , it wasn’t a clean killing . No miracle would allow a bullet entry from the scrotum to the abdomen by a shooter in Law Garden