Different styles of investigating terror

Imtiyaz Dharkar’s “the terrorist at my dining table” must be amused by the storm in the cup of tea before him. The chacha who served the tea chose to leave his trail there this time. Who could be this chacha that has turned the morning tea into a cause a bellie between the central government and the Maharashtra ATS chief Krish Pal Raghuvanshi?
For quite sometimes now the people were much agitated over the loose talk of KPR. In the case of Nanded blast he referred in his persiflage flavor that the bombs that blew up killing Himanshu Panse and Naresh Rajkondwar could not be meant for pooja. What his tongue in cheek interaction with media did was to lift the veil of secrecy a little. That the bombs the Hindu extremists of RSS and Bajang Dal were handling were destined to blow up in mosques. (In the subsequent narco test analysis of Sanjay Chaudhai and Rahul Pande it came out that the bombs were destined to explode in the Aurangabad railway station mosque.)They were not to be taken to temple to perform pooja there.
That was April 5, 2006. On September 8, 2006 four bombs exploded in Malegaon killing 31 people and injuring more than two hundred. In the initial stage of investigation the police questioned some twenty Hindus and then suddenly this was abandoned in favour of hunting the SIMI involvement. (In the current terminology of the duo and the ‘chacha, the trail in the Malegaon case went cold.) KPR and his sleuths made arrests. In the meantime Hemant Karkare took over the reign of ATS and till the middle of August 2008 he could not find the trace of SIMI anywhere. The very next month Malegaon was visited by another terrorist attack at Bhiku chowk that changed the history of investigation. Or was it a detour, a brief interruption, a tragic peripeteia?
In his letter from prison Fahim Ansari also claims that Karkare had given him clean chit regarding 11/7. (Urdu Times, March 8, 2010). But ATS has also accused him for his involvement in 26/11. He says that the police tortured him excessively, took him out in the middle of the night and threatened him to shoot in a fake encounter. Therefore he did what they told him to do, draw map of important strategic places in Mumbai. Truth can be established by the court of law and the circumstantial proofs. The FBI also interrogated Fahim for three days but could not find any incriminating role for him. He does not figure in their charge sheet for 26/11 while David Headley and Tawwaru Rana do. Another circumstantial evidence is that Ajmal Kasab does not know him. That really astonished Judge Tahilyani. Then judge personally questioned him and he maintained that he did not know either Fahim or Saba. The judge did not take it on record! Fahim has also revealed that his lawyer Shahid Azmi stopped meeting him because the crime branch police threatened him with dire consequence if he pleaded Fahim’s case. Judge Tahilyani, of course, rejected his bail application. He wanted to come out on bail to search a lawyer to defend him.
In this insistence on local connection in the investigation of ATS at times we smell a rat.
Among the most seminal changes during this recent upheaval was the exit of Shivraj Patil and the induction of P Chidambum as the Home Minister. With more equanimity of mind than many others, Chidambrum showed objective involvement. When the terrorists bought 50 hand gliders from Europe to attack us from the air, Chidambrum ordered urgent inquiry. The truth came out that only three hand gliders were bought from China. This prompt finding indicates the direction in which the home minister wishes to go, rather than toeing the line that concocted reports intelligence agencies prepare for reason best known to them.
Karkare too was objective. He like Chidambrum was not captive to ideology. In his last interview to Indian Express he exclaimed, “I don’t know why this case has become so political.” He was talking about Malegaon blast of 2008 and was constrained to admit the difficulty created by the Hindutva groups including BJP, RSS, Shiv Sena, etc. “The pressure is tremendous and I am wondering how to extricate it from all the politics.” The situation in Pune also veered towards that kind of imbroglio. First, the police thought it was gas cylinder burst and asked the firefighter to wash the German bakery for about ninety minutes. What clues could remain there? Then came the bungle over the arrest of Arif Pathan whom the police grilled him three days without proper arrest. There were indications that the accusing finger had started pointing towards Sanathan Sanstha and Abhinau Bharat. The spokespersons of these went all out to browbeat the investigation agencies. The intimidatory tactics worked.
The Home Minister was already in a huff when KPR and his men went for the duo in Mumbai to stave off the situation or divert attention? Then, the usual practice of connecting the arrest of “Uncle” Bashir Khan in Gujarat with the duo in their alleged incendiary intent. Rehan and Latif would rot in jail for years when it would be at long last found that it was not this Pepsi bomber but after all the other “Uncel”, Dawood Ibrahim. Their youth would have lapsed into old age by then.
Now that David Headley’s involvement in 26/11 is on record in courts of America, the suffering and incarceration caused to Fahim Ansari by the IB and ATS and others including courts have come home to roost. In contrast, no one from Abhinav Bharat or Sanatan Sansthan has been arrested although their roles are evolving and are not just restricted to Goa, Vashi, Thane and Malegaon 2008 cases. Has the state home ministry’s inability to sack KPR anything to do with this? Some aspects of terror are too overwhelming to find one’s way through while investigating. Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit had organized training of Abhinav Bharat activists at Nasik Bhonsla Military School with the help of the commandant of the school, retired Colonel SS Raikar( a former intelligence officer, Purohit was serving intelligence officer) and retired General Ramesh Upadhya. Karkare was a man of sterling qualities and saw his way even in the hour of moral threat to his life! Karkare, thou shouldst be living now, India hast need of thee!