Till a fortnight ago the print and electronic media was sensationalizing the discovery of Salman chhotu as the key figure in Pune bomb blast and now it is Abdul Samad. Raising the adrenaline by hook or crook is the order of the day. If Shakespeare were alive today he would have very excellent night watch Dogberry as a cop. Keeping watch in the town would be such a fun no one would like to turn in.
Even a mainstream paper like The Times of India said that Rajasthan police’s getting Salman chhotu for investigation in the Ajmer blast was a ‘distant dream’. The investigators of several states were falling over each other to reach him and ask him to help them resolve terror cases. The media was on the cusp of becoming the cop as the cop was self conscious of appearing before the public. Another paper speculated that it would be a year before another state would have opportunity to interrogate chhotu. Is our chhotu such a mine of information?
This time around The Times of India is again somersaulting. Its crime report from Mumbai(Pune blast: 5 more likely to be arrested, May 26, 2010) speaks of two RAW sleuths travelling from United Arab emirate to Mangalore and then ATS from Maharashtra husking away Abdul Samad to Mumbai. Five more would be arrested for inquiry, presumably on the leads Abdul must have provided. Did he? As the reporter calls him ‘prime accused’, what has the newspaper on Abdul to attach this epithet to the stripling youth from Bhatkal? He is called the planter of the bomb at the German bakery. If the cops knew this twenty days after February 13, why this dilly dallying in arresting him then?
A day after the same paper from its Bangalore edition('Bhatkal's brother being framed'Deepak Kumar Shenvi & N D Shiva Kumar, May 27, 2010) has a different story. It says that Abdul Samad has a brother Mohammad Ahmed whom the police mistakenly called Yasin Bhatkal. Yasin Bhatkal is a step brother of Abdul. After this hilarious drama that began at midnight the cops interrogated Abdul and let him go! Then what happened to the ‘planter of bomb’ that the police had identified Abdul 20 days after the explosion? Thus the comedy of errors verges on the dark comedy. It is this dark comedy that makes our cops excellent watchmen of our towns when we sleep for they never keep watch but go to sleep themselves.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
“’Silence!’ ‘The court is in session.’” 7/11
Neither Vijay Tendulkar nor Shahid Azmi is around to see the drama taking place in their Mumbai soon. But the scene is set and the curtain is about to rise.
The last week of May is portentous in terms of how we fight terrorism or rather what we make of it. On May 24th the court will begin hearing in the serial blasts of 7/11 in Mumbai. On 28th and 29th the special tribunal will hear the argument on the ban of SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India). So far the government has found no credible evidence to present in the court. That was precisely why on August 5, 2008 the special judge of the tribunal removed the ban. She remarked that the government had failed to produce any concrete evidence in any one case. However, the Supreme Court intervened and restored the ban within 24 hours.
May is also the cruel month when the Rajasthan police came out with the truth of RSS-Sanathan Sanstha-Hindu Janjagran Samiti involvement in Ajmer, Mecca mosque and Samjhauta express attacks. It also saw the first ever chargesheet submitted by the maiden National Investigation Agency in the Margo blast of December 2009. That some of the Hindus like their counterpart in Muslim community can also become terrorists need not shock the likes of LK Advani and Thackeray any more.
However there is a glaring difference, some take Hindus to be so gullible to believe that they would never wage war against the country or the government. This is what they believe true despite the disclosure of Lt Col Srikant Purohit @Mithun Chakarborty. This last epithet makes the Hindu terrorist stand in the same rank as the multi aliases Muslim terrorists.
Fahmida and her husband have been convicted of the bomb blasts at Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar 2003. Strangely enough their life does not bear any mark of purity of purpose and zeal that you often see in the activists of SIMI. Fahmida’s eldest son had left his father and mother and established himself separately because they had a TV which he believed so much against Islam that he left them for good. No family dedicated to SIMI would have such a thing happening in it. As far as establishing a Muslim rule in India nothing can be far from truth. It would be music to their ears that this is what some are supposedly dreaming.
If not her husband and the other accused, Fahmida could have been acquitted is what late Shahid Azmi believed. This great son of India is not alive to see what he did and what he said has not only proved true but his words would haunt us as the prosecution in the 7/11 gets underway.
Shahid said that 7/11 case is based on confession under duress. What is the hard undeniable evidence then? He was one of the earliest to note that there was a pattern of arrest and implication of Muslim youth who were not criminal. Police would first arrest and then implicate them to crimes that in all likelihood others had committed and they were made to wear the cross. They were accused of crimes committed before and those committed after their arrest. So the Aurangabad arms haul seized in May 2006 hinges on the confession of one man. Then the numerous accused in it are automatically implicated in the 7/11. Because that came not only handy, but, as if the planners found out a grimmer crime to involve them. It is queer that the Aurangabad arms haul case is built up on confession and those accused in it are now slammed with MOCOCA as they are alleged to have committed the terrorist act of 7/11. In contrast those who were involved in Nanded, Parbhani, Purna bomb blasts and would be Auragabad case of April 4 2006 as well as those who were involved in Vasi and Gadkari theatre blasts and Margo blasts were from one single extremist Hindu organization known as Sanathan Sanstha or Hindu Janjagran Samiti and yet they enjoy a good level of liberality. Their organizations have not been banned and they are considered individuals committing crimes according to their whims and not a set ideology. When a judge demands government to give some solid evidence in any one real case to ban SIMI and her judgment is overturned what about the activists of the SS and HJS! The Sanstha accused have the cheeks to cock a snook at the authorities that their crimes are personal and individual and not of their organizations!
There seems to be no investigation in one set of crimes because confession were enough while in the case of the other people have died in carrying out bomb assembling and transporting bombs to designated places and other hard evidence are there and yet there is no talk of either a ban or maligning the whole community from which they come!
If there is no evidence of the actual act of planting bombs then it is much easier to implicate the Muslim youths in crime of conspiracy where only hearsay would do. This is how the police in Mumbai set out to do it so that they do not have to investigate and yet prove the crimes. The battery seller Ajmere in Mumbai saw people talking about a conspiracy at three different places in three different terrorist events. Again there is evidence. This is the gullible on platform number one at Churchgate who could see and hear what some were doing on platform number four amidst the mammoth crowd of the morning rush hour! Will any national security advisor caution the government over the implications of this as the hearing in the cases is to begin soon?
The police and investigation agencies must have been at the end of their wits to have called up this gullible because they have not been able to name any one in their chargesheet who planted the bombs in the local trains. This is fraught with misgivings about much of the so called ‘investigation’ that the police have purportedly done.
What could be the motivation of the crimes of 7/11 leads us to the muddle. That the rich merchants of Gujarat were targeted to avenge the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat 2002 is a viable proposition that the police need to prove as it runs counter to the Muslim faith. Shahid Azmi gives two reasons which foreshadow what later MS Mushrif would write. One, that those who planted bombs in the locals wanted to put blames on the Muslim community as a whole. That Muslims have a different identity is an anathema to the planters. The second linked to the first is that there were people mostly right wing Hindus who wanted even harsher draconian laws which would net in more Muslims. The accused Muslims would languish in prisons and the courts would not be able to do much as mere confessions under duress would be enough for them to be punished. History is witness to how hell-bent Advanis were on this! The stringent laws would be the whip to beat the minority Muslims. Look how Narendra Modi’s Gujarat has used Tada and Pota so discriminately against the accused in Godhra train burning while Babu Bajrangis are scot free! In this topsy-turvy world the BJP-RSS-VHP are not far behind the designated set of laws in the proposed constitution that Purohit had drafted to replace our Constitution.
And what about the confessions themselves? Faisal Sheikh the main accused in 7/11 is said to have confessed in the court. The truth is that he confessed in the house of the metropolitan judge. Even so what he has confessed must not only bear scrutiny in the court of law but also be corroborated by other evidence.
You might have heard of the blind leading the blind. Feroz Deshmukh the first caught in the arms haul case told the police “Why are you after Raheel? Faisal is a bigger catch”. We have to wait for the honourable judge to find out if Deshmukh really led the cops. If so, then who was sleeping? We the nation or the cops. If Deshmukh only used the toilet of the research centre of Dr Zakir Naik we must hold breath until the prosecution performs legerdemain and brings out real evidence. Going to neighbour’s toilet in a populous city is a common practice and suspected terrorist hiding in a ghostly deserted locality of Antop Hill is a nightmare. It is an area notorious for staged encounters for Mumbai police.
Forced confessions and facile investigation would reveal if we are serious in our fight against terrorism or is it communalism wearing the garb of terrorism.
The last week of May is portentous in terms of how we fight terrorism or rather what we make of it. On May 24th the court will begin hearing in the serial blasts of 7/11 in Mumbai. On 28th and 29th the special tribunal will hear the argument on the ban of SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India). So far the government has found no credible evidence to present in the court. That was precisely why on August 5, 2008 the special judge of the tribunal removed the ban. She remarked that the government had failed to produce any concrete evidence in any one case. However, the Supreme Court intervened and restored the ban within 24 hours.
May is also the cruel month when the Rajasthan police came out with the truth of RSS-Sanathan Sanstha-Hindu Janjagran Samiti involvement in Ajmer, Mecca mosque and Samjhauta express attacks. It also saw the first ever chargesheet submitted by the maiden National Investigation Agency in the Margo blast of December 2009. That some of the Hindus like their counterpart in Muslim community can also become terrorists need not shock the likes of LK Advani and Thackeray any more.
However there is a glaring difference, some take Hindus to be so gullible to believe that they would never wage war against the country or the government. This is what they believe true despite the disclosure of Lt Col Srikant Purohit @Mithun Chakarborty. This last epithet makes the Hindu terrorist stand in the same rank as the multi aliases Muslim terrorists.
Fahmida and her husband have been convicted of the bomb blasts at Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar 2003. Strangely enough their life does not bear any mark of purity of purpose and zeal that you often see in the activists of SIMI. Fahmida’s eldest son had left his father and mother and established himself separately because they had a TV which he believed so much against Islam that he left them for good. No family dedicated to SIMI would have such a thing happening in it. As far as establishing a Muslim rule in India nothing can be far from truth. It would be music to their ears that this is what some are supposedly dreaming.
If not her husband and the other accused, Fahmida could have been acquitted is what late Shahid Azmi believed. This great son of India is not alive to see what he did and what he said has not only proved true but his words would haunt us as the prosecution in the 7/11 gets underway.
Shahid said that 7/11 case is based on confession under duress. What is the hard undeniable evidence then? He was one of the earliest to note that there was a pattern of arrest and implication of Muslim youth who were not criminal. Police would first arrest and then implicate them to crimes that in all likelihood others had committed and they were made to wear the cross. They were accused of crimes committed before and those committed after their arrest. So the Aurangabad arms haul seized in May 2006 hinges on the confession of one man. Then the numerous accused in it are automatically implicated in the 7/11. Because that came not only handy, but, as if the planners found out a grimmer crime to involve them. It is queer that the Aurangabad arms haul case is built up on confession and those accused in it are now slammed with MOCOCA as they are alleged to have committed the terrorist act of 7/11. In contrast those who were involved in Nanded, Parbhani, Purna bomb blasts and would be Auragabad case of April 4 2006 as well as those who were involved in Vasi and Gadkari theatre blasts and Margo blasts were from one single extremist Hindu organization known as Sanathan Sanstha or Hindu Janjagran Samiti and yet they enjoy a good level of liberality. Their organizations have not been banned and they are considered individuals committing crimes according to their whims and not a set ideology. When a judge demands government to give some solid evidence in any one real case to ban SIMI and her judgment is overturned what about the activists of the SS and HJS! The Sanstha accused have the cheeks to cock a snook at the authorities that their crimes are personal and individual and not of their organizations!
There seems to be no investigation in one set of crimes because confession were enough while in the case of the other people have died in carrying out bomb assembling and transporting bombs to designated places and other hard evidence are there and yet there is no talk of either a ban or maligning the whole community from which they come!
If there is no evidence of the actual act of planting bombs then it is much easier to implicate the Muslim youths in crime of conspiracy where only hearsay would do. This is how the police in Mumbai set out to do it so that they do not have to investigate and yet prove the crimes. The battery seller Ajmere in Mumbai saw people talking about a conspiracy at three different places in three different terrorist events. Again there is evidence. This is the gullible on platform number one at Churchgate who could see and hear what some were doing on platform number four amidst the mammoth crowd of the morning rush hour! Will any national security advisor caution the government over the implications of this as the hearing in the cases is to begin soon?
The police and investigation agencies must have been at the end of their wits to have called up this gullible because they have not been able to name any one in their chargesheet who planted the bombs in the local trains. This is fraught with misgivings about much of the so called ‘investigation’ that the police have purportedly done.
What could be the motivation of the crimes of 7/11 leads us to the muddle. That the rich merchants of Gujarat were targeted to avenge the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat 2002 is a viable proposition that the police need to prove as it runs counter to the Muslim faith. Shahid Azmi gives two reasons which foreshadow what later MS Mushrif would write. One, that those who planted bombs in the locals wanted to put blames on the Muslim community as a whole. That Muslims have a different identity is an anathema to the planters. The second linked to the first is that there were people mostly right wing Hindus who wanted even harsher draconian laws which would net in more Muslims. The accused Muslims would languish in prisons and the courts would not be able to do much as mere confessions under duress would be enough for them to be punished. History is witness to how hell-bent Advanis were on this! The stringent laws would be the whip to beat the minority Muslims. Look how Narendra Modi’s Gujarat has used Tada and Pota so discriminately against the accused in Godhra train burning while Babu Bajrangis are scot free! In this topsy-turvy world the BJP-RSS-VHP are not far behind the designated set of laws in the proposed constitution that Purohit had drafted to replace our Constitution.
And what about the confessions themselves? Faisal Sheikh the main accused in 7/11 is said to have confessed in the court. The truth is that he confessed in the house of the metropolitan judge. Even so what he has confessed must not only bear scrutiny in the court of law but also be corroborated by other evidence.
You might have heard of the blind leading the blind. Feroz Deshmukh the first caught in the arms haul case told the police “Why are you after Raheel? Faisal is a bigger catch”. We have to wait for the honourable judge to find out if Deshmukh really led the cops. If so, then who was sleeping? We the nation or the cops. If Deshmukh only used the toilet of the research centre of Dr Zakir Naik we must hold breath until the prosecution performs legerdemain and brings out real evidence. Going to neighbour’s toilet in a populous city is a common practice and suspected terrorist hiding in a ghostly deserted locality of Antop Hill is a nightmare. It is an area notorious for staged encounters for Mumbai police.
Forced confessions and facile investigation would reveal if we are serious in our fight against terrorism or is it communalism wearing the garb of terrorism.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Of manufacturing riots and terrorism for a price
The need for a thorough and impartial investigation in some of the terrorist attacks is grounded in the context of the events. In some of these there are so many deliberately planted snags, biases and discrepancies that people like jurists with international reputation are needed to unearth the truth. The need for optional protocol in the case of Gujarat 2002 and UN investigation into some other events is also felt. The last is of course more relevant as Malegaon bomb blast of 2008 is ascribed to even Israel. In the case of FBI taking away fisherwoman Anita Udaiyya to the US and her assertion that only six people and not ten had landed at Cuff Parade beach and that she had seen each one of them is simply amazing. She did not find anyone like Kasab there. The cook of the Chabbad House buying a hundred kilos of chicken and a huge quantity of wine! Whom did he buy all this for? What about the news that the attackers had stayed at the Chabbad House prior to the attacks? Why was the Israeli consulate security officer assaulted at the Chabbad when he was heavily armed? Why did the police take a very long time to come there? When the investigation agencies value so much our Israeli connection and security, how come we take the Israeli connection so summarily when it comes to attacks within India? Israelis are past masters of offshore operations and some of the people at CST saw attackers who looked like Semitic Israelis of European origin.
Our investigation officers leave much to be desired. For example, the ATS in Maharashtra has created a national sensation over Pune blast of February 2010 by declaring that the IM was behind it by parading the supposed telephone congratulation of Riyaz Bhatkal to Salmaan Chhotu. All the mainstream papers had headlined and carried lead stories on this on Sunday 9, 2010. But then in the evening of the same day DNA updated the story and strangely quoted an ATS officer saying: "Salman is also under our scanner for the Pune blast, but it appears that he was not involved in the blast directly or indirectly," (Phone intercepts suggest involvement of Indian Mujahideen in Pune blast). Another report says that four IM activists involved in Pune blast have fled to Pakistan and very queerly goes on to add: ‘The connection between the Bhatkal brothers and the four suspects is yet to be established.
Once the suspects are sent to prison it is next to impossible for them to come out as they are framed in so many cases that their career and youth are wasted. In this way more and more Muslim youths are arrested and are put behind bars. As the courts do not take up the cases and dispose off soon the agony and suffering of the incarcerated and their families increase manifold. Many right minded people then organize People’s Tribunals consisting of eminent jurists with infallible record of meritorious service. One such group held public hearing in such cases in August 2008 in Hyderabad and they observed: “This fight against terrorism, victims emphasized, has veered more around witch hunting of Muslims rather than curbing terrorism, thus robbing people of their liberty and freedom and making them more insecure than ever before. The real culprits, they said, often roam freely whereas the poor and gullible Muslims are picked up and thrown into jails at whims and fancies of the powers that be. Victims after victims, who have undergone harassment and torture without any evidence permissible in the court of law against them, deposed before the tribunal — comprising country’s eminent personalities including former judges, lawyers and renowned social activists – and narrated their tales of woes to the shock and anguish of hundreds of audience.”
But the deliberations of such tribunals do not have any impact on the biased investigation of terrorist crimes and inordinate delay in the judicial process. This has made many concerned people look outside India. For example in Beirut where a former Prime Minister Mr Rafik Harere was killed and Syria was suspected to be behind it. A UN investigation revealed the truth. Recently an investigation in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by the UN has brought to light how President of Pakistan Gen Musharruf knew of the conspiracy and failed to protect her. What is wrong, such concerned people say, if terrorism cases are taken to UN though optional protocol or the UNO institute an inquiry commission. India still has a stature in the world and would not like to baulk from such a move although its internal organs and agencies have been made dysfunctional by the RSS and its affiliates.
The display of disbelief by the right wing Hindutva groups at the disclosure of RSS involvement in riots and acts of terrorism is simply hypocrisy. You can wake up a man who is sleeping but not one who is pretending to be asleep. The enormous funds that Sonal Shah and Praveen Togadia are pumping into India are having very disturbing effect. It is common knowledge that RSS and its offshoots had distributed money to kar sevaks to reach Ayodhya in 1992 and also distributed money to the chhara community members and Bajrang Dal activists as well as tribals to attack Muslims in Gujarat 2002. If Jitesh Kumar of Shri Ram Sene bludgeoned a maulvi in a manufactured riot in Kerala it is not for nothing he did it. He pocketed money for it. The RSS is involved because it is turf war for them there. Every felon caught in such a situation is either a current member or a past worker of RSS. In fact the bond with RSS is unbreakable and it is a façade to shield RSS from accusation of present membership and past membership. Nathuram Godse never left RSS yet LK Advani pretended that he had left the organization when he assassinated Gandhiji.
Any investigation into terrorism must focus on the huge amount of money transferred to the perpetrators. In Malegaon 2006 blasts also crores or rupees changed hands, yarn merchants and most possibly Israeli agents must have funded the terrorists. The government seems to have no motivation to investigate this as if it was also paid to keep quiet. Hence an international inquiry commission is the crying need of the hour.
Slowly but steadily all the organs of the government and the state are being sucked into the malaise. Retired police officers of distinguished record and even wives of many are writing books exposing how the right wing groups and people within service have waylaid the agencies of the government. One such is S Mushiff whose book on Hemant Karkare the authorities have simply ignored. No court has taken a suo motto note of it, either. Much like what has just come out that Shri Ram Sene of Pramod Muthalik had almost contracted to produce a communal riot for 70 lakh rupees! A communal riot is no less an act of terrorism in India.
What Mushriff perhaps did not include in his references is that meeting of Hemant Karkare and his two assistant commissioners of police in ATS Sukhwinder Singh and Parambir Singh with the National Security Advisor MK Narayanan and the chief of Army intelligence on Tuesday November 25, 2008. That is, just a day before he fell to the bullets of his assassins in Mumbai on November 26, 2008. The sequence of time is of utmost crucial importance. On Monday November 24, 2008 the ATS was denied custody of Purohit and Pragya. Was it a high handed attempt to gag Purohit from exposing more sensitive information that he knew( as a liaison officer in the intelligence wing of the army dealing with counter terrorism)? On Saturday November 22, 2008 Karkare had exposed the link between Purohit and Samjhauta train blast in the Nasik court. That must have rattled NSA. Hence Karkare was summoned to Delhi. Army’s denial that Purohit sourced the RDX from the army in JK came in May 2010. The demur of the army in taking so much of time to deny is calculated to isolate the army from the exposure of its involvement in terrorism. That is on account of the infiltration of the right wing Hindutva into the army since the army so far was secular.
Even more disturbing is Purohit’s revelation that non Wahabi Muslims were also used in the conspiracy in terrorist attacks in Malegaon and elsewhere. If that is anything to go by it is not so much the maligned ISI but the indigenous groups of Hindutva and most probably Mossad and the FBI which played some roles. David Headley didn’t travel in Samjhauta express, I suppose?
Even if he did there are in all seven countries affected by or connected in 26/11 according to the Interpol report. Why did D Sivanandan fly to Israel of all the countries? As a man is known by the company he keeps so is a country. Our close association with the US and Israel is bound to make us share the deja vu of terrorism they countenance and how they fight it.
Our investigation officers leave much to be desired. For example, the ATS in Maharashtra has created a national sensation over Pune blast of February 2010 by declaring that the IM was behind it by parading the supposed telephone congratulation of Riyaz Bhatkal to Salmaan Chhotu. All the mainstream papers had headlined and carried lead stories on this on Sunday 9, 2010. But then in the evening of the same day DNA updated the story and strangely quoted an ATS officer saying: "Salman is also under our scanner for the Pune blast, but it appears that he was not involved in the blast directly or indirectly," (Phone intercepts suggest involvement of Indian Mujahideen in Pune blast). Another report says that four IM activists involved in Pune blast have fled to Pakistan and very queerly goes on to add: ‘The connection between the Bhatkal brothers and the four suspects is yet to be established.
Once the suspects are sent to prison it is next to impossible for them to come out as they are framed in so many cases that their career and youth are wasted. In this way more and more Muslim youths are arrested and are put behind bars. As the courts do not take up the cases and dispose off soon the agony and suffering of the incarcerated and their families increase manifold. Many right minded people then organize People’s Tribunals consisting of eminent jurists with infallible record of meritorious service. One such group held public hearing in such cases in August 2008 in Hyderabad and they observed: “This fight against terrorism, victims emphasized, has veered more around witch hunting of Muslims rather than curbing terrorism, thus robbing people of their liberty and freedom and making them more insecure than ever before. The real culprits, they said, often roam freely whereas the poor and gullible Muslims are picked up and thrown into jails at whims and fancies of the powers that be. Victims after victims, who have undergone harassment and torture without any evidence permissible in the court of law against them, deposed before the tribunal — comprising country’s eminent personalities including former judges, lawyers and renowned social activists – and narrated their tales of woes to the shock and anguish of hundreds of audience.”
But the deliberations of such tribunals do not have any impact on the biased investigation of terrorist crimes and inordinate delay in the judicial process. This has made many concerned people look outside India. For example in Beirut where a former Prime Minister Mr Rafik Harere was killed and Syria was suspected to be behind it. A UN investigation revealed the truth. Recently an investigation in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by the UN has brought to light how President of Pakistan Gen Musharruf knew of the conspiracy and failed to protect her. What is wrong, such concerned people say, if terrorism cases are taken to UN though optional protocol or the UNO institute an inquiry commission. India still has a stature in the world and would not like to baulk from such a move although its internal organs and agencies have been made dysfunctional by the RSS and its affiliates.
The display of disbelief by the right wing Hindutva groups at the disclosure of RSS involvement in riots and acts of terrorism is simply hypocrisy. You can wake up a man who is sleeping but not one who is pretending to be asleep. The enormous funds that Sonal Shah and Praveen Togadia are pumping into India are having very disturbing effect. It is common knowledge that RSS and its offshoots had distributed money to kar sevaks to reach Ayodhya in 1992 and also distributed money to the chhara community members and Bajrang Dal activists as well as tribals to attack Muslims in Gujarat 2002. If Jitesh Kumar of Shri Ram Sene bludgeoned a maulvi in a manufactured riot in Kerala it is not for nothing he did it. He pocketed money for it. The RSS is involved because it is turf war for them there. Every felon caught in such a situation is either a current member or a past worker of RSS. In fact the bond with RSS is unbreakable and it is a façade to shield RSS from accusation of present membership and past membership. Nathuram Godse never left RSS yet LK Advani pretended that he had left the organization when he assassinated Gandhiji.
Any investigation into terrorism must focus on the huge amount of money transferred to the perpetrators. In Malegaon 2006 blasts also crores or rupees changed hands, yarn merchants and most possibly Israeli agents must have funded the terrorists. The government seems to have no motivation to investigate this as if it was also paid to keep quiet. Hence an international inquiry commission is the crying need of the hour.
Slowly but steadily all the organs of the government and the state are being sucked into the malaise. Retired police officers of distinguished record and even wives of many are writing books exposing how the right wing groups and people within service have waylaid the agencies of the government. One such is S Mushiff whose book on Hemant Karkare the authorities have simply ignored. No court has taken a suo motto note of it, either. Much like what has just come out that Shri Ram Sene of Pramod Muthalik had almost contracted to produce a communal riot for 70 lakh rupees! A communal riot is no less an act of terrorism in India.
What Mushriff perhaps did not include in his references is that meeting of Hemant Karkare and his two assistant commissioners of police in ATS Sukhwinder Singh and Parambir Singh with the National Security Advisor MK Narayanan and the chief of Army intelligence on Tuesday November 25, 2008. That is, just a day before he fell to the bullets of his assassins in Mumbai on November 26, 2008. The sequence of time is of utmost crucial importance. On Monday November 24, 2008 the ATS was denied custody of Purohit and Pragya. Was it a high handed attempt to gag Purohit from exposing more sensitive information that he knew( as a liaison officer in the intelligence wing of the army dealing with counter terrorism)? On Saturday November 22, 2008 Karkare had exposed the link between Purohit and Samjhauta train blast in the Nasik court. That must have rattled NSA. Hence Karkare was summoned to Delhi. Army’s denial that Purohit sourced the RDX from the army in JK came in May 2010. The demur of the army in taking so much of time to deny is calculated to isolate the army from the exposure of its involvement in terrorism. That is on account of the infiltration of the right wing Hindutva into the army since the army so far was secular.
Even more disturbing is Purohit’s revelation that non Wahabi Muslims were also used in the conspiracy in terrorist attacks in Malegaon and elsewhere. If that is anything to go by it is not so much the maligned ISI but the indigenous groups of Hindutva and most probably Mossad and the FBI which played some roles. David Headley didn’t travel in Samjhauta express, I suppose?
Even if he did there are in all seven countries affected by or connected in 26/11 according to the Interpol report. Why did D Sivanandan fly to Israel of all the countries? As a man is known by the company he keeps so is a country. Our close association with the US and Israel is bound to make us share the deja vu of terrorism they countenance and how they fight it.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Salman Chhotu and the Solidarity of Jamia Millia teachers and students for civil society
Jamiia Millia teachers and students have shown how solidarity among them is a beacon of hope that one day the doppelganger of terrorism evoked by the Intelligence Bureau in collusion with ATS and local police would be buried.
Hemant Karkare was left to bleed to death along with two officers as well as some police men. This is amply confirmed by the new startling discoveries that in the Batla house encounter Mohan Chand Shrma was also allowed to bleed to death. After being shot he had remarkably climbed down four flights of stairs and when he was helped to walk to the waiting police van there was no blood mark on the ground anywhere. All his vital organs had not received any gunshot wound. Therefore it confirms the earlier version (not of the police) of the event that he was shot by one of the cops there from behind or from the side. Why was even first aid in plugging the wound not given? This is amazing because the police had gone to Butla house with full preparation of encountering the supposed terrorists in their hideout!
Batla house fake encounter was taking place in full view of the local people. They did not hear any gun shot in the action that was unfolding there. On the other hand they saw the cops tumbling down flower pots and other objects there. This would mean that those who were killed were shot in closed space and from close range. These startling disclosures are coincided with the truth about Pune blast of how there is attempt to throw blame on the Indian Mujahideen to deflect attention from Abhinav Bharat and Sanathan Sanstha. What the police, ATS and IB are doing surreptitiously is betrayed by the Hindu communalists in Bhatkal who marched through the streets there shouting their support to the Sanathan Sanstha!
Within two days of taking action against ATS chief Raghuvanshi home minister RR Patil replaced him with Rakesh Maria who started chasing the chimera of Indian Mujahideen and in tandem the “embedded media” of the likes of Praveen Swami went to Bhatkal because the game would begin there. That the people of Bhatkal had informed the police that the Margao (Goa) bomb blast was arranged through shipment of the explosives through sea rout was thrown to the wind.
As with individuals so with the towns and cities they live in. As Muslims of Yemenis descent (called Navayat Muslims) have lived in Bhatkal for generations and prospered it does not go down well with the authorities and the right wing parties and their affiliates. Essentially the latter target such places for the sizable population of Muslims. Bhatkal is the Kanada counterpart of Malegaon in Maharashtra and Azamgarh in UP. Outsiders come and stoke communal feeling and this is the surest recipe of garnering votes for right wing parties like BJP and the Shiv Sena. Uma Bharti was the first to tour the town in 1991 and as is her wont raised the communal tension on account of her people and her religion innate and the others being foreigners and their faith of foreign origin. That was opening the Pandora’s box. The death of Dr Chitranjan, BJP MLA, in 1996 set the stage for violence. Turning communities to loggerhead you can bake your chapatti as the houses burn.
As with towns so with religion. Those like Praween Swami who believe that religion propels terrorism are wrong. The first terrorist attack by Muslims was by those who were not fanatics. Dawood Ibrahim and his lieutenants had hobnobbed well with the local Hindus and shared with them many customs and traditions. They were hardly the type made out: hard drinking and womanizing gangsters. Nor were they glued to cinema serials. What went wrong was the audacity of the Shiv Sainks who in collusion with the police perpetrated cruelty on the Muslims, one such was the sister of the don and hence the response was swift in coming. After or before the first major terrorist attack the Muslims made no justification using the text of their holy book. As in Mumbai 1993 so in Coimbator 1998. Wipe out communalism and terrorism would die like fish out of water. The corruption infested system of customs across the seas was pliant enough to import RDX as was the fishing trawlers in the Indian sea came handy for bringing in the ten from Karachi for 26/11.
Atif and Sajid were also from Azamgarh as is Salman Ahmad(chhotu). Swami’s “investigaters say” has been proved to be the grapevine of lies foisted upon the public by the IB and the ATS as has convincingly been proved by the post mortem reports. They show that those who were calling Butla encounter as fake were after all not the Alices in the wonderland. They were alert with their senses when the Butla fake encounter took place. They also had a historical sense because they knew that Mohan Chand Sharma and his guru Rajbir Singh were made of the same stuff of corruption and communalism.. The realtor Bharadwaj silenced Rajbir forever. Rajbir Singh of the Special Cell of Delhi police had given the realtor 50 lakh rupees to invest in business along with a gun. Months passed when Rajbir Singh went to Bhradwaj who feared that the police officer would kill him in fake encounter, shot him with the gun that the cop had given him! MC Sharma was also involved in such unlawful and criminal activities. He had a flat where he would torture Muslim youths to extract confession and then frame them in encounters to get promotion. Anzar plaza shoot out was one such. Such is the stuff the encounter cop is made of.
Jamia teachers and students are aware of the laws of the land and would like to abide by them unlike the cops who have earned notoriety for India, too, of the extraordinary renditions. And the ultra nationalists within the country who are baying for blood of the minority Muslims even for perceived wrong. They have made the minority more sinned against than sinning. There have been press conferences right in Mumbai where mothers of accused Muslim youths languishing in jails for years have asseverated that there should be speedy trial and if their sons are found really guilty they would hang them with their own hands. This does not cut any ice so far as the ultra nationalists are concerned. For example Lt Col Srikant Purohit and Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thackur are also in jail accused of terrorism. No Smita Salaskar has expressed strong words against them, as strong words as she did in the case of Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin. She rightfully feels happy that Kasab is found guilty “But I am disappointed as Faheem Ansai and Sabauddin have been acquitted. They should be hanged before Qasab as they are insiders waging war against their own nation.” (Asian Age 4-5-10)Purohit and Ramesh Upadhya, Sudhakar Dwevdi and others did more, wrote even their constitution to replace the Constitution of the Republic of India after exploding bombs not just in Malegaon but several other places. They would take over the county by 2025. The Maoists have set similar target for 2050 but feel emboldened to achieve the same much earlier! Why not go after the whole lot of them the way we go after the Azamgarh brigade!
Digvijay Singh’s going to Azamgah is diametrically opposed to Praveen Swami going to Bhatkal. Going to each other’s neighbouhood or towns and villages to know the truth and also sympathize with victim off injustice would go a long way to bring back civil life that is sorely missing today. If at all people have gone astray in our neighbourhood it is necessary to know the reason of it and if needed to redress the wrong done to them. Slamming 50 criminal cases in farfetched states of UP, Rajasthan, Mahrashtr and Gujarat against a teenager is mind boggling, to say the least. Salmaan Ahmed or Chhotu’s case is just that.
The disclosure of the involvement raises many serious questions. If Home Minister Chidambrum had said a week ago that the Pune case was cracked then why did the investigative agencies wait for a whole week to crack the fact on Friday April 7 2009 about an alleged phone call chhotu had received from Riyaz Bhatkal giving him badhai or greetings on the Pune blast of February 13. If chhotu was really involved he should have known it rather than being told by Riyaz to watch TV to know it.
The entire disclosure seems to be carefully orchestrated to splash headlines on chhot in Sunday editions so the people could comfortably read and have maximum impact of it. The mainstream English media coverage smacks complacency and drivel. Of course what chhotu said is confession under duress. The age of chhotu is far from clear, DNA mention his year of birth 1992, Indian Express mentions 1998, the Hindu also mentions it 1998 but says it is 1985 on the passport. What is in his juvenility that is so fluid?
But the crux of the matter is that Salman chhotu is now, ipso facto, made out to be directly connected to the Butla encounter. When so many people are seized with the question of authenticity of the Butla encounter why are the authorities dragging in chhotu into it? Will chhotu play David Headley role in Butla? This skimpy sapling youth!
If Salman really stayed in the Qaiserbaug of Lucknow how come the landlord did not know him? This is what Indian Express reports: “The owner of the house, Mushtaq Ahmed, who runs a wholesale medicine business, denied knowledge of Salman. He said five youths from Azamgarh had been his tenants, but he stopped renting out rooms after the ATS raided his house in 2008. The ATS team too had asked him about Salman, Ahmed said.” This surely means that the landlord and the ATS were sailing in the same boat, had no hard proof of his stay.
If Salman chhotu was doing Bachelor of Computer Application from the Sapru Marg Hajratganj centre of Sikkim Manipal University then why did the head of the university Harpal Dhillon deny it? Dhillon stated that Salman’s application for admission was rejected and part of the fees returned to him. How far is it true that when the name of IM came out in Butla encounter he fled to Nepal?
When various human rights organizations in Jaipur have started clamouring for fresh inquiry into Jaipur blasts in the aftermath of Ajmer exposure of RSS involvement why do the police still say that he is involved in the Jaipur blasts? Are not the police upfronting chhotu in both Butla House encounter as well as Jaipur ones? To what end?
What is more serious: why is the Delhi police denying Rajasthan police now access to chhotu? Is this a repeat of FBI denying access to Headley? In fact The Times of India calls it a distant dream of Rajasthan ATS: the access to chhotu!
If Chidambrum and the police really cracked the Pune case then why this trash reporting “According to the police, Salmaan is involved with the IM, and it was he who told them about the IM’s involvement with the Pune blasts.” This is hearsay and would remain so until the police prove it otherwise.
Jamia teachers and students have done commendable service by proving what is false with un-deniable evidence. Can we now expect the investigation agencies to follow suit?
Hemant Karkare was left to bleed to death along with two officers as well as some police men. This is amply confirmed by the new startling discoveries that in the Batla house encounter Mohan Chand Shrma was also allowed to bleed to death. After being shot he had remarkably climbed down four flights of stairs and when he was helped to walk to the waiting police van there was no blood mark on the ground anywhere. All his vital organs had not received any gunshot wound. Therefore it confirms the earlier version (not of the police) of the event that he was shot by one of the cops there from behind or from the side. Why was even first aid in plugging the wound not given? This is amazing because the police had gone to Butla house with full preparation of encountering the supposed terrorists in their hideout!
Batla house fake encounter was taking place in full view of the local people. They did not hear any gun shot in the action that was unfolding there. On the other hand they saw the cops tumbling down flower pots and other objects there. This would mean that those who were killed were shot in closed space and from close range. These startling disclosures are coincided with the truth about Pune blast of how there is attempt to throw blame on the Indian Mujahideen to deflect attention from Abhinav Bharat and Sanathan Sanstha. What the police, ATS and IB are doing surreptitiously is betrayed by the Hindu communalists in Bhatkal who marched through the streets there shouting their support to the Sanathan Sanstha!
Within two days of taking action against ATS chief Raghuvanshi home minister RR Patil replaced him with Rakesh Maria who started chasing the chimera of Indian Mujahideen and in tandem the “embedded media” of the likes of Praveen Swami went to Bhatkal because the game would begin there. That the people of Bhatkal had informed the police that the Margao (Goa) bomb blast was arranged through shipment of the explosives through sea rout was thrown to the wind.
As with individuals so with the towns and cities they live in. As Muslims of Yemenis descent (called Navayat Muslims) have lived in Bhatkal for generations and prospered it does not go down well with the authorities and the right wing parties and their affiliates. Essentially the latter target such places for the sizable population of Muslims. Bhatkal is the Kanada counterpart of Malegaon in Maharashtra and Azamgarh in UP. Outsiders come and stoke communal feeling and this is the surest recipe of garnering votes for right wing parties like BJP and the Shiv Sena. Uma Bharti was the first to tour the town in 1991 and as is her wont raised the communal tension on account of her people and her religion innate and the others being foreigners and their faith of foreign origin. That was opening the Pandora’s box. The death of Dr Chitranjan, BJP MLA, in 1996 set the stage for violence. Turning communities to loggerhead you can bake your chapatti as the houses burn.
As with towns so with religion. Those like Praween Swami who believe that religion propels terrorism are wrong. The first terrorist attack by Muslims was by those who were not fanatics. Dawood Ibrahim and his lieutenants had hobnobbed well with the local Hindus and shared with them many customs and traditions. They were hardly the type made out: hard drinking and womanizing gangsters. Nor were they glued to cinema serials. What went wrong was the audacity of the Shiv Sainks who in collusion with the police perpetrated cruelty on the Muslims, one such was the sister of the don and hence the response was swift in coming. After or before the first major terrorist attack the Muslims made no justification using the text of their holy book. As in Mumbai 1993 so in Coimbator 1998. Wipe out communalism and terrorism would die like fish out of water. The corruption infested system of customs across the seas was pliant enough to import RDX as was the fishing trawlers in the Indian sea came handy for bringing in the ten from Karachi for 26/11.
Atif and Sajid were also from Azamgarh as is Salman Ahmad(chhotu). Swami’s “investigaters say” has been proved to be the grapevine of lies foisted upon the public by the IB and the ATS as has convincingly been proved by the post mortem reports. They show that those who were calling Butla encounter as fake were after all not the Alices in the wonderland. They were alert with their senses when the Butla fake encounter took place. They also had a historical sense because they knew that Mohan Chand Sharma and his guru Rajbir Singh were made of the same stuff of corruption and communalism.. The realtor Bharadwaj silenced Rajbir forever. Rajbir Singh of the Special Cell of Delhi police had given the realtor 50 lakh rupees to invest in business along with a gun. Months passed when Rajbir Singh went to Bhradwaj who feared that the police officer would kill him in fake encounter, shot him with the gun that the cop had given him! MC Sharma was also involved in such unlawful and criminal activities. He had a flat where he would torture Muslim youths to extract confession and then frame them in encounters to get promotion. Anzar plaza shoot out was one such. Such is the stuff the encounter cop is made of.
Jamia teachers and students are aware of the laws of the land and would like to abide by them unlike the cops who have earned notoriety for India, too, of the extraordinary renditions. And the ultra nationalists within the country who are baying for blood of the minority Muslims even for perceived wrong. They have made the minority more sinned against than sinning. There have been press conferences right in Mumbai where mothers of accused Muslim youths languishing in jails for years have asseverated that there should be speedy trial and if their sons are found really guilty they would hang them with their own hands. This does not cut any ice so far as the ultra nationalists are concerned. For example Lt Col Srikant Purohit and Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thackur are also in jail accused of terrorism. No Smita Salaskar has expressed strong words against them, as strong words as she did in the case of Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin. She rightfully feels happy that Kasab is found guilty “But I am disappointed as Faheem Ansai and Sabauddin have been acquitted. They should be hanged before Qasab as they are insiders waging war against their own nation.” (Asian Age 4-5-10)Purohit and Ramesh Upadhya, Sudhakar Dwevdi and others did more, wrote even their constitution to replace the Constitution of the Republic of India after exploding bombs not just in Malegaon but several other places. They would take over the county by 2025. The Maoists have set similar target for 2050 but feel emboldened to achieve the same much earlier! Why not go after the whole lot of them the way we go after the Azamgarh brigade!
Digvijay Singh’s going to Azamgah is diametrically opposed to Praveen Swami going to Bhatkal. Going to each other’s neighbouhood or towns and villages to know the truth and also sympathize with victim off injustice would go a long way to bring back civil life that is sorely missing today. If at all people have gone astray in our neighbourhood it is necessary to know the reason of it and if needed to redress the wrong done to them. Slamming 50 criminal cases in farfetched states of UP, Rajasthan, Mahrashtr and Gujarat against a teenager is mind boggling, to say the least. Salmaan Ahmed or Chhotu’s case is just that.
The disclosure of the involvement raises many serious questions. If Home Minister Chidambrum had said a week ago that the Pune case was cracked then why did the investigative agencies wait for a whole week to crack the fact on Friday April 7 2009 about an alleged phone call chhotu had received from Riyaz Bhatkal giving him badhai or greetings on the Pune blast of February 13. If chhotu was really involved he should have known it rather than being told by Riyaz to watch TV to know it.
The entire disclosure seems to be carefully orchestrated to splash headlines on chhot in Sunday editions so the people could comfortably read and have maximum impact of it. The mainstream English media coverage smacks complacency and drivel. Of course what chhotu said is confession under duress. The age of chhotu is far from clear, DNA mention his year of birth 1992, Indian Express mentions 1998, the Hindu also mentions it 1998 but says it is 1985 on the passport. What is in his juvenility that is so fluid?
But the crux of the matter is that Salman chhotu is now, ipso facto, made out to be directly connected to the Butla encounter. When so many people are seized with the question of authenticity of the Butla encounter why are the authorities dragging in chhotu into it? Will chhotu play David Headley role in Butla? This skimpy sapling youth!
If Salman really stayed in the Qaiserbaug of Lucknow how come the landlord did not know him? This is what Indian Express reports: “The owner of the house, Mushtaq Ahmed, who runs a wholesale medicine business, denied knowledge of Salman. He said five youths from Azamgarh had been his tenants, but he stopped renting out rooms after the ATS raided his house in 2008. The ATS team too had asked him about Salman, Ahmed said.” This surely means that the landlord and the ATS were sailing in the same boat, had no hard proof of his stay.
If Salman chhotu was doing Bachelor of Computer Application from the Sapru Marg Hajratganj centre of Sikkim Manipal University then why did the head of the university Harpal Dhillon deny it? Dhillon stated that Salman’s application for admission was rejected and part of the fees returned to him. How far is it true that when the name of IM came out in Butla encounter he fled to Nepal?
When various human rights organizations in Jaipur have started clamouring for fresh inquiry into Jaipur blasts in the aftermath of Ajmer exposure of RSS involvement why do the police still say that he is involved in the Jaipur blasts? Are not the police upfronting chhotu in both Butla House encounter as well as Jaipur ones? To what end?
What is more serious: why is the Delhi police denying Rajasthan police now access to chhotu? Is this a repeat of FBI denying access to Headley? In fact The Times of India calls it a distant dream of Rajasthan ATS: the access to chhotu!
If Chidambrum and the police really cracked the Pune case then why this trash reporting “According to the police, Salmaan is involved with the IM, and it was he who told them about the IM’s involvement with the Pune blasts.” This is hearsay and would remain so until the police prove it otherwise.
Jamia teachers and students have done commendable service by proving what is false with un-deniable evidence. Can we now expect the investigation agencies to follow suit?
Friday, May 7, 2010
The quagmire of terrorism: BJP ruled states
Long lingering suspicion about BJP’s tampering with investigation into terrorism is now out in the open. This ultranationalist Hindu party is never shy of defending the ultranationalist accused in terrorism. The change of government in Rajasthan has started a process that is snowballing into a huge humiliation for the party if it can bring itself to feel it. There is every reason that it would not feel, nay go out attacking the Congress and other parties since communalism is its life force.
In the Ajmer bomb blast it is only now that BJP is not in power that the truth is coming out. There is fear that the arrest of Devendra Gupta would reveal the ‘fountainhead’ of RSS’s link to Ajmer blast. It is equally relevant to note how subsequent to the arrest of the RSS volunteer Gupta the Supreme Court has declared narco test illegal. The general secretary of RSS Suresh Soni has since then and may be only because of it said that the RSS has relieved Gupta of all responsibilities.
People in Jaipur now want a fresh probe in May 2008 attack and they believe that the investigation was waylaid because of the police under the leash of their political bosses of BJP. Association For Protection Of Civil Rights (APCR) is convinced after the disclosure in the Ajmer case of involvement of RSS and BJP. Among the members is Mr. Sawai Singh, convener Sadbhav Manch Rajasthan, who said “we advised the investigating agencies in the very beginning to keep all possibilities at hand and not to spare any one from the investigation.” He believes that the erstwhile BJP government rode its hobby horse of communalism even when terrorists’ acts pointed finger at the extremists among the Hindutva groups
There is a clear pattern emerging from all over the country. The police keep Muslims under their scanner and frame them whenever any terrorist act takes place. They don’t bother to even casually look at the involvement of Hindu organizations. Unless the Indian society is divided on communal lines who would bother about BJP and hence to keep the pot boiling they connect terrorist acts with Muslim youths. That creates the desired impression against the Muslims and gives rich dividends at polls because the accusation raises the paranoia of the people. BJP plays upon their susceptibility.
It is easy to mouth a platitude like terrorism knows no religion and a terrorist has no religion. Religious texts have been appropriated to the end of terrorist attack according to all kinds of terrorists irrespective of which faith they follow. Mohammad Atta overtly used lines of Koran to justify what he did. Arun Shouri has also made clear that the Hindu scriptures lend a very violent interpretation in which terrifying attacks can be justified as self preservation. Indeed, one such self preservation was the matter of job reservation for backward Muslims under Sachhar commission recommendations. Shourie threatened the minority that if they persist in demanding it then nobody would stop Narendra Modi from going to Delhi (read, from becoming the Prime Ministe of India) and put them to mortal risk as he did in 2002! Bal Thackeray wrote to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that job reservation for Muslims would make Shiv sena start a civil war in the country. He often spoke of the third of eye of Shiva opening when his sainiks were slaughtering Muslims in the resurgence of violence beginning in the second week of January 1993.
But there is a major difference between perpetrators of terrorism from Hindu and Muslim folds. We had always known the involvement of the ISI in terrorist attacks in India. We had also known for quite a long time that the Indian army was most secular in outlook while dealing with internal disturbance. Malegaon attacks as well as Samjhauta express attacks have changed that. A couple of days before Hemant Karkare was shot dead he had visited New Delhi along with senior ATS officers to apprise the higher echelon of the government that there was disturbing enlargement of involvement of the army in terrorism and that has serious repercussion for the country. It was like what Ashish Nandi said of the vanner sena or the monkey brigade taking up terrorist reprisal.
That it is not just the army but what has been obviously felt by many but never uttered that BJP rule is also skewed by terrorism. Even a senior journalist like Kuldip Nayyer is troubled: “Authoritative sources in Delhi suspect that Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP government is in power, has become a safe sanctuary for the Hindu outfits. Hindu Jagran Manch from Indore in the state is considered by the Maharashtra police responsible for the Malegaon blasts which killed 37 Muslims ( in September 8 2006 blasts).” Should Indore be added as another hub of terrorism?
It also does not come as a surprise since it fits in jigsaw of terrorism that Jatin Chatterjee aka Swami Asimanand is hiding in Gujarat. Chief Minister Narendra Modi gifting money to Asimanand is a documented fact. His wreaking havoc on the converted tribals is also well known. He was sighted at an ashram on Saturday April 1.If Alice were to be born again it would be in the wonderland of Gujarat! Narco test though abrogated by the SC cannot be simply like throwing the baby with the wash water. It did leave vital clues like Srikant Puohit revealing the names of Swami Asimanand and Ramji Kalsganra. Both are absconding and supposed to be ‘hibernating’ in Gujarat. Will they too be given signal to come out when all is quiet on the western front as Babu Bajrangi was given?
Gujarat is the laboratory of Hindutva and RSS is doing the experimentation. Dr SB Munje had visited Italy to find out how larger number of people could be killed. RSS never believed in the Constitution albeit it hides its own constitution like it hides so many other things. Denial is its standard tactic to ward off suspicion and the more it does the greater is the suspicion. LK Advani often denies that Nathuram Godse was a member of RSS. The world knows better than Advani and Soni. If a proper and impartial investigation is done in Sunil Joshi’s death it would also lift veil of secrecy that RSS was connected to the secret plan to blow up the huge Bhopal mosque where a Muslim congregation of tabligi jamat was taking place. May be truth would come out once BJP is removed from power in MP.
---
RSS denies having any links with Ajmer blasts. Outlook. 3-5-10.
Reinvestigate Jaipur blasts, punish erring probe officers: Civil groups. Two circles, 5-5-10.
Kuldip Nayyer. Let’s begin afresh, Deccan Herald, May 7, 2010.
In the Ajmer bomb blast it is only now that BJP is not in power that the truth is coming out. There is fear that the arrest of Devendra Gupta would reveal the ‘fountainhead’ of RSS’s link to Ajmer blast. It is equally relevant to note how subsequent to the arrest of the RSS volunteer Gupta the Supreme Court has declared narco test illegal. The general secretary of RSS Suresh Soni has since then and may be only because of it said that the RSS has relieved Gupta of all responsibilities.
People in Jaipur now want a fresh probe in May 2008 attack and they believe that the investigation was waylaid because of the police under the leash of their political bosses of BJP. Association For Protection Of Civil Rights (APCR) is convinced after the disclosure in the Ajmer case of involvement of RSS and BJP. Among the members is Mr. Sawai Singh, convener Sadbhav Manch Rajasthan, who said “we advised the investigating agencies in the very beginning to keep all possibilities at hand and not to spare any one from the investigation.” He believes that the erstwhile BJP government rode its hobby horse of communalism even when terrorists’ acts pointed finger at the extremists among the Hindutva groups
There is a clear pattern emerging from all over the country. The police keep Muslims under their scanner and frame them whenever any terrorist act takes place. They don’t bother to even casually look at the involvement of Hindu organizations. Unless the Indian society is divided on communal lines who would bother about BJP and hence to keep the pot boiling they connect terrorist acts with Muslim youths. That creates the desired impression against the Muslims and gives rich dividends at polls because the accusation raises the paranoia of the people. BJP plays upon their susceptibility.
It is easy to mouth a platitude like terrorism knows no religion and a terrorist has no religion. Religious texts have been appropriated to the end of terrorist attack according to all kinds of terrorists irrespective of which faith they follow. Mohammad Atta overtly used lines of Koran to justify what he did. Arun Shouri has also made clear that the Hindu scriptures lend a very violent interpretation in which terrifying attacks can be justified as self preservation. Indeed, one such self preservation was the matter of job reservation for backward Muslims under Sachhar commission recommendations. Shourie threatened the minority that if they persist in demanding it then nobody would stop Narendra Modi from going to Delhi (read, from becoming the Prime Ministe of India) and put them to mortal risk as he did in 2002! Bal Thackeray wrote to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that job reservation for Muslims would make Shiv sena start a civil war in the country. He often spoke of the third of eye of Shiva opening when his sainiks were slaughtering Muslims in the resurgence of violence beginning in the second week of January 1993.
But there is a major difference between perpetrators of terrorism from Hindu and Muslim folds. We had always known the involvement of the ISI in terrorist attacks in India. We had also known for quite a long time that the Indian army was most secular in outlook while dealing with internal disturbance. Malegaon attacks as well as Samjhauta express attacks have changed that. A couple of days before Hemant Karkare was shot dead he had visited New Delhi along with senior ATS officers to apprise the higher echelon of the government that there was disturbing enlargement of involvement of the army in terrorism and that has serious repercussion for the country. It was like what Ashish Nandi said of the vanner sena or the monkey brigade taking up terrorist reprisal.
That it is not just the army but what has been obviously felt by many but never uttered that BJP rule is also skewed by terrorism. Even a senior journalist like Kuldip Nayyer is troubled: “Authoritative sources in Delhi suspect that Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP government is in power, has become a safe sanctuary for the Hindu outfits. Hindu Jagran Manch from Indore in the state is considered by the Maharashtra police responsible for the Malegaon blasts which killed 37 Muslims ( in September 8 2006 blasts).” Should Indore be added as another hub of terrorism?
It also does not come as a surprise since it fits in jigsaw of terrorism that Jatin Chatterjee aka Swami Asimanand is hiding in Gujarat. Chief Minister Narendra Modi gifting money to Asimanand is a documented fact. His wreaking havoc on the converted tribals is also well known. He was sighted at an ashram on Saturday April 1.If Alice were to be born again it would be in the wonderland of Gujarat! Narco test though abrogated by the SC cannot be simply like throwing the baby with the wash water. It did leave vital clues like Srikant Puohit revealing the names of Swami Asimanand and Ramji Kalsganra. Both are absconding and supposed to be ‘hibernating’ in Gujarat. Will they too be given signal to come out when all is quiet on the western front as Babu Bajrangi was given?
Gujarat is the laboratory of Hindutva and RSS is doing the experimentation. Dr SB Munje had visited Italy to find out how larger number of people could be killed. RSS never believed in the Constitution albeit it hides its own constitution like it hides so many other things. Denial is its standard tactic to ward off suspicion and the more it does the greater is the suspicion. LK Advani often denies that Nathuram Godse was a member of RSS. The world knows better than Advani and Soni. If a proper and impartial investigation is done in Sunil Joshi’s death it would also lift veil of secrecy that RSS was connected to the secret plan to blow up the huge Bhopal mosque where a Muslim congregation of tabligi jamat was taking place. May be truth would come out once BJP is removed from power in MP.
---
RSS denies having any links with Ajmer blasts. Outlook. 3-5-10.
Reinvestigate Jaipur blasts, punish erring probe officers: Civil groups. Two circles, 5-5-10.
Kuldip Nayyer. Let’s begin afresh, Deccan Herald, May 7, 2010.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram: the twain shall not part
There is no doubt about the good relationship between Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his friend Tulsiram Prajapati. The police in Gujarat are so wily that they still feel that they could cover up the matter of fake encounter to save Narendra Modi. The chief minister was not only morally responsible for the events in Gujarat ever since he was sworn in office but given his penchant for Hindutva he was the spring sources of all actions.
When Modi was chosen as CM he contested election just before February 2002. Ehsan Jafri spoke against Modi during the election because of the die hard communalist nature of the person. This irked Modi because his background of RSS made him believe India as the heirloom of Hindus and the mians (Muslims) as second class citizens and what is worst “the outsiders”. He personally took it out against Jafri on the fateful day of February 28, the last phone call of the former MP to CM bears it out.
Rising on the crest of the anti Muslim weltanschauung in the aftermath of 9/11, Modi and PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee both made hay when the sun of the weltanschauung was shining. It is in this context that the events in Gujarat need to be analyzed. The fake encounters were a carefully crafted design to put the Muslims into a tight corner. The calculated effect was what the RSS wanted, downgrading the Muslims, boycotting them, dispossessing them of their acquired position.
This was the larger strategy of which the fake encounters came as easy manipulate able tactic. The encounters were made out to be deshbhukti, patriotism, the love of the country the perpetrators showed in killing the enemies of the country. That the chief minister was the target of assassination was facile probability. Even the most unlikely person like Ishrat Jehan and her friends were killed to copycat the strategy. She might have been just going Ahemdabad on a pleasure tour as was Sohrabuddin, his wife Kauserbi and friend Tulsiram Prajapati visiting Hyderabad.
Sohrab and Tulsiram were chums and may have had indulged in smuggling and making a fast buck. Since the third person in the bus with a reserve ticket from the bus agency in Hyderabad traveling with Sohrab and wife was Tulsiram it was but logical that the police would not like him to live another day and tell the truth. Either he disappeared to escape arrest or the police caught him as well and he was let off after he coughed up money. Fake encounters were also a business enterprise involving astronomical amount of cash. The state was involved as the opposition leader Bharatsinh Solanki said that the state earned crores by way of fake encounters! The marble merchant of Rajasthan gave 60 lakh to ATS to finish off Sohrab. The money was routed through one of the senior BJP general secretaries. No chief minister in India can be so naïve not to know this thanks to the ace encounter specialists in Mumbai who own palatial houses and hotels in Dubai. It is not just Dawood Ibraahim, son of a cop, who chose Dubai. The regular cops were not far behind.
Tulsiram was killed soon after DG Vanzara assumed office of DIG Border range that includes Banskantha, on December 28, 2006.
There was a well coordinated strategy that involved the cops in Hyderabad, Rajasthan and Gujarat. After the fake encounter of Sohrab on November 26, 2005, Vanzara told in a press conference that Sohrab was an agent of Lashkar-e-Toiba and had gone to Hyderabad to establish ties with others in the L-e-T. Incidentally the Hyderabad police also followed similar strategy in the aftermath of the Mecca mosque blast.
Why the twain shall not part is that Tulsiram was killed when the state was frustrated in covering up the murder of Sohrab. In the night of November 24, 2005 ATS of Gujarat had ordered Tulsiram to Danilimda flat to identify the duo, Sohrab and Kauserbi, this hours before Sohrab was killed. Geetha Johari had discovered this in her investigation of the case. The home minister Amit Shah had allegedly been instrumental in the Commandant of Home Guards GC Raiger taking the investigation away from Geetha Johari on December 18, 2006 and ten days later Tulsiram was bumped off. Geetha Johari would have found more. But then she found out that Sohrab and wife were kept at Girish Patel’s flat. Vanzara and Rajkumar Pandiyan urgently contacted Amit Shah and told about the discovery of the tell-tale secret.
What is true of CM and HM complicity in genocide of 2002 is equally true of the fake encounters since then.
Tulsiram did what Haren Pandiya did, reveal the secret of the conspiracy. Tulsiram told brother of Sohrab, Rubabuddin, that he had been told to identify Sohrab and Kauser held at Danilimda flat. The state could brooke neither. Therefore the chain of command theory makes the CM accountable for these murders.
The state of Gujarat was truly administered by BJP according to its ideology. Maintaining a Muslim face like Sikandar Bakht or Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been its hall mark of politicking with the minority. The police did the same, Rajasthan inspector Abdul Rehman fired two shots at Sohrab who was thrown on the road by inspector Chaube, ASI Ramsingh fired one shot, ASI Himanshusingh fired two shots and PI Ramsingh fired one shot.
A stolen two wheeler was ordered by the ATS to be placed at the place where Sohrabuddin was killed to make out that he was riding. Tulsiram had seen both Sohrab and wife and also the police officer who went to bring the stolen vehicle from ATS compound. But in the press briefing Vanzara had professed ignorance about Kauserbi. Rubabbuddin thus appealed to the court with a habeas corpus on his sister in law. The Gujarat police and administration first tried to brush it off that they did not know about her. Then inquiry into the matter revealed that she was with her husband and the police must have killed her as well. Thus it was again Tulsiram and his friendship with the family that helped truth to see the light of day. BJP did nothing to help out the Sheikh family which was active in support of it till then. Is it not a proof that BJP is a Hindu communalist party? Is it not the same party whose prime minister did not allow a motion for the mourning the death of Ehsan Jafri in parliament? Communalism is multifaceted as can be seen the promptness with which BJP opposes the so called ‘appeasement.’
Tulsiram was accused by the police in another crime and put in central jail of Udaipur. When the home minister Amit Shah was informed how the investigation has exposed VHP leader Grish Patel’s involvement they acted fast. The Rajasthan police under MN Dinesh took Tulsiram to Gujarat and on the way killed him. But they too had woven a web of lies. That Tulsiram tried to run away by throwing chilli powder at the cops with the help of two accomplices. As he was fleeing he waved at a car which turned out to be a police car and in the subsequent encounter he was shot dead.
In the last analysis what emerges from this parable of the twain shall not part even in death is a lasting moral for the time. The much larger twain of India, Hindus and Muslims, also must not part in the fight over terrorism if we have to really win it. Even in taking on the governments which sponsor the fake encounters (state terrorism).
When Modi was chosen as CM he contested election just before February 2002. Ehsan Jafri spoke against Modi during the election because of the die hard communalist nature of the person. This irked Modi because his background of RSS made him believe India as the heirloom of Hindus and the mians (Muslims) as second class citizens and what is worst “the outsiders”. He personally took it out against Jafri on the fateful day of February 28, the last phone call of the former MP to CM bears it out.
Rising on the crest of the anti Muslim weltanschauung in the aftermath of 9/11, Modi and PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee both made hay when the sun of the weltanschauung was shining. It is in this context that the events in Gujarat need to be analyzed. The fake encounters were a carefully crafted design to put the Muslims into a tight corner. The calculated effect was what the RSS wanted, downgrading the Muslims, boycotting them, dispossessing them of their acquired position.
This was the larger strategy of which the fake encounters came as easy manipulate able tactic. The encounters were made out to be deshbhukti, patriotism, the love of the country the perpetrators showed in killing the enemies of the country. That the chief minister was the target of assassination was facile probability. Even the most unlikely person like Ishrat Jehan and her friends were killed to copycat the strategy. She might have been just going Ahemdabad on a pleasure tour as was Sohrabuddin, his wife Kauserbi and friend Tulsiram Prajapati visiting Hyderabad.
Sohrab and Tulsiram were chums and may have had indulged in smuggling and making a fast buck. Since the third person in the bus with a reserve ticket from the bus agency in Hyderabad traveling with Sohrab and wife was Tulsiram it was but logical that the police would not like him to live another day and tell the truth. Either he disappeared to escape arrest or the police caught him as well and he was let off after he coughed up money. Fake encounters were also a business enterprise involving astronomical amount of cash. The state was involved as the opposition leader Bharatsinh Solanki said that the state earned crores by way of fake encounters! The marble merchant of Rajasthan gave 60 lakh to ATS to finish off Sohrab. The money was routed through one of the senior BJP general secretaries. No chief minister in India can be so naïve not to know this thanks to the ace encounter specialists in Mumbai who own palatial houses and hotels in Dubai. It is not just Dawood Ibraahim, son of a cop, who chose Dubai. The regular cops were not far behind.
Tulsiram was killed soon after DG Vanzara assumed office of DIG Border range that includes Banskantha, on December 28, 2006.
There was a well coordinated strategy that involved the cops in Hyderabad, Rajasthan and Gujarat. After the fake encounter of Sohrab on November 26, 2005, Vanzara told in a press conference that Sohrab was an agent of Lashkar-e-Toiba and had gone to Hyderabad to establish ties with others in the L-e-T. Incidentally the Hyderabad police also followed similar strategy in the aftermath of the Mecca mosque blast.
Why the twain shall not part is that Tulsiram was killed when the state was frustrated in covering up the murder of Sohrab. In the night of November 24, 2005 ATS of Gujarat had ordered Tulsiram to Danilimda flat to identify the duo, Sohrab and Kauserbi, this hours before Sohrab was killed. Geetha Johari had discovered this in her investigation of the case. The home minister Amit Shah had allegedly been instrumental in the Commandant of Home Guards GC Raiger taking the investigation away from Geetha Johari on December 18, 2006 and ten days later Tulsiram was bumped off. Geetha Johari would have found more. But then she found out that Sohrab and wife were kept at Girish Patel’s flat. Vanzara and Rajkumar Pandiyan urgently contacted Amit Shah and told about the discovery of the tell-tale secret.
What is true of CM and HM complicity in genocide of 2002 is equally true of the fake encounters since then.
Tulsiram did what Haren Pandiya did, reveal the secret of the conspiracy. Tulsiram told brother of Sohrab, Rubabuddin, that he had been told to identify Sohrab and Kauser held at Danilimda flat. The state could brooke neither. Therefore the chain of command theory makes the CM accountable for these murders.
The state of Gujarat was truly administered by BJP according to its ideology. Maintaining a Muslim face like Sikandar Bakht or Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been its hall mark of politicking with the minority. The police did the same, Rajasthan inspector Abdul Rehman fired two shots at Sohrab who was thrown on the road by inspector Chaube, ASI Ramsingh fired one shot, ASI Himanshusingh fired two shots and PI Ramsingh fired one shot.
A stolen two wheeler was ordered by the ATS to be placed at the place where Sohrabuddin was killed to make out that he was riding. Tulsiram had seen both Sohrab and wife and also the police officer who went to bring the stolen vehicle from ATS compound. But in the press briefing Vanzara had professed ignorance about Kauserbi. Rubabbuddin thus appealed to the court with a habeas corpus on his sister in law. The Gujarat police and administration first tried to brush it off that they did not know about her. Then inquiry into the matter revealed that she was with her husband and the police must have killed her as well. Thus it was again Tulsiram and his friendship with the family that helped truth to see the light of day. BJP did nothing to help out the Sheikh family which was active in support of it till then. Is it not a proof that BJP is a Hindu communalist party? Is it not the same party whose prime minister did not allow a motion for the mourning the death of Ehsan Jafri in parliament? Communalism is multifaceted as can be seen the promptness with which BJP opposes the so called ‘appeasement.’
Tulsiram was accused by the police in another crime and put in central jail of Udaipur. When the home minister Amit Shah was informed how the investigation has exposed VHP leader Grish Patel’s involvement they acted fast. The Rajasthan police under MN Dinesh took Tulsiram to Gujarat and on the way killed him. But they too had woven a web of lies. That Tulsiram tried to run away by throwing chilli powder at the cops with the help of two accomplices. As he was fleeing he waved at a car which turned out to be a police car and in the subsequent encounter he was shot dead.
In the last analysis what emerges from this parable of the twain shall not part even in death is a lasting moral for the time. The much larger twain of India, Hindus and Muslims, also must not part in the fight over terrorism if we have to really win it. Even in taking on the governments which sponsor the fake encounters (state terrorism).
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