It may be a bit strange and rather curious coincidence. Jailed Gujarat police officer DG Vanzara discovered his ‘god’ Narendra Modi had feet of clay around the same time as godman Asaram Bapu fell from grace and was booked for a rather ungodly act of sexual molestation. These two incidents, though unrelated, unravel the social tapestry of India where people tend to look for saviours and bestow a godly status on them.

Vanzara's 10-page resignation letter (see pdf attachment at the end) is an interesting and valuable document not so much for criminal evidence (for there is none in it) but for an evaluation of the functioning of the state and its increasing criminalisation. His letter is an expression of convenient truth, jealousy, and a heightened sense of criminality which disguises its real intentions by using modern idioms in a language of persecution. That he chose English instead of Gujarati or Hindi to express himself is hardly surprising as his intended audience is quite wide, particularly the elite class.

There is little doubt that Vanzara was nothing other than a ruthless killer in uniform in the Modi administration. His ubiquitous presence in each of the series of dubious encounters – from that of Sohrabuddin or Tulsi Prajapati to that of 19-year-old Ishrat Jehan and others – points to his innate and irrepressible trigger-happy instincts. Till the time his crimes caught up with him and he was finally nailed, Vanzara had been known as "supercop" in the power circles of Gandhinagar.

As his letter suggests, Vanzara reposed "blind faith" in the political persona of his chief minister, Narendra Modi, and made his constitutional obligations as a civil servant subservient to this faith. This was the precise reason for his involvement in cold-blooded killings of those whom he perceived as inimical to the interest of his “god”, Narendra Modi. In his own eyes, he was the slayer of evils and protector of his god. His letter betrays no sense of remorse about the killings in fake encounters but exalts his criminal acts as a legitimate activity of governance. This explains his formulation that if he and his colleagues are guilty of crime then the real place for running the Gujarat government is not Gandhinagar but jails in Ahmedabad and Mumbai.

Obviously Vanzara's display of righteous indignation emanates from his own rather convoluted understanding of statecraft, jurisprudence and his faith in infallibility of his “god”. But shortly after being jailed, he found himself like all other officers left to fend for themselves. What is believed to have irked him and several other officers implicated in the fake encounters most is the manner in which Amit Shah, who presided over all those killings as Gujarat's minister of state for home, is out on bail thanks to best legal assistance and his political career is also prospering. As per the letter, Vanzara's grouse is that he was not given the privileged position which he truly deserved in the eyes of the chief minister due to a scheming Amit Shah.

Those well versed with the fake encounter cases and the internal dynamics of Gujarat politics are quite aware of the fact that the Congress through the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been desperately trying to implicate Modi in these encounters. This became evident when the CBI got Amit Shah arrested and tried to persuade him to turn approver against Modi. Shah is learnt to have revealed this fact to his political bosses who cried foul over the central government's real intention in the case.

Also read: When CBI failed to awaken the Bania in Amit Shah

Having failed to get Amit Shah on their side, the CBI has been working overtime on the jailed officials to extract a form of confession which can be used against Modi. Vanzara's neatly typed letter could be a sequel to this effort. There is little doubt that after the revelation the CBI would decide to subject Modi for interrogation.

But this plan seems to have gone awry with a new revelation that a superintendent of police of CBI has found it necessary to interrogate prime minister Manmohan Singh on the issue of the coal scam and the missing files related to it. Though CBI director Ranjit Sinha is believed to have overruled the officer ostensibly to protect the PM, insiders say that there is merit in the argument that the PM be also subjected to interrogation since he headed the coal ministry when the scam happened. Given the CBI's proclivity to kowtow to political masters, such a scenario is unthinkable. Given the fact that the BJP is harping on this aggressively, the logic that applies to Manmohan Singh would also be applicable to Modi.