Malegaon bomb blasts of 2006 and 2008, a reflection (4)

Chapter: International implications of Malegaon blasts
Unfortunately Indian foreign policy and much that goes in matters of internal security vis-à-vis terrorism in MHA is captive to the partition of the country. If this were not so the sleuths of Haryana would have cracked the Samjhauta express attack of 2007 and carried it to its logical end. The national security advisor MK Narayanan would not have to advise the government to reverse the investigation in order to not stand in the rank of ISI over Samjahuta. However unpalatable this may be but we have got stuck in the rut of retaliation.
One fact of this is that we are closer to Israel today than we ever were. In the early seventies Pune had a poster pasted at public places asking Indians to know who is causing hardship to them due to the oil embargo and petrol crunch. This kind of insinuation has not stopped.
Israel has a bearing on the bomb blasts in Malegaon in 2006 and 2008. Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit worked in his capacity as liaison officer of the military intelligence of the Indian army dealing with counter terrorism. He was also a member of Abhinav Bharat and had established contact with the Jewish state officials. It is difficult to say without official confirmation if he acted as a military officer when he interacted with the Israelis. Indian police and army have very close contact with the Jewish state ever since 1993 and particularly after the visit of Moshe Dayan and the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries. DGP of Maharashtra Shivanand and former SP of Nashik (rural) Rajwardhan have visited Israel. Like them Purohit must have also visited Israel and met Mossad agents and other officials. They had told him to prove two incidents on the ground for which they vouchsafed support for the proposed Hindu Rashtra which Abhinav Bharat wanted to establish.
Purohit averred in his confession and in the narco test that he had given RDX for Samjhauta express attack and had used non Wahabi or Salafi Muslims earlier (the 2006 blasts). When this writer wrote “Malegaon: the Israeli connection” emails poured in Hebrew, a sure sign how sensitive and tangent is the matter. Protests or support show the extent of involvement. Until Nehru and Indira Gandhi our foreign policy was clear cut type of the non-alignment movement of which India was a leading founder member. But since the induction of the BJP into government at centre a kind of relativity has come in our diplomatic relationship. The perception that Israel besieged by hostile Islamic countries is worthy of emulation has led to our security agencies dispatching officials to the new Mecca of security in the Middle East for training.
A particular tactic in our so called war on terror is to use informers of the target community in a place in acts of espionage and acts of violence deemed as efficacious in counter-terrorism. The Israelis have used it during the Intifada movement of the Palestinians to counter the protests as well as in their war on ‘terror.’ They have brainwashed Indian security agencies into adopting this. As most of the Indian officials visiting Israel are RSS tainted the strategy works on the assumption that your enemy’s enemy is your friend. It is not for nothing that Moshe Dayan( Israeli Defence and Foreign minister) entered India in the garb of a dhoti clad Hindu!
The other acquired tactic in our strategy of fighting ‘terror’ is what national security advisor MK Narayanan spoke in the aftermath of the bombing of our embassy in Kabul, paying Pakistan in the same coin. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Sharm al Sheikh accepted our involvement in the troubled regions of Pakistan many were shocked and disturbed. India is now viewed as making a concerted effort in league with the US and Israel in fight on ‘terror.’ This new, but not so ‘shining’ India, stands in contrast with the non-alignment movement India of yore.
Thus much of what happened in Malegaon since the dawn of the twenty first century is on account of what we have inherited: a complex world. Street protests with banners showing pictures of Osama bin Laden and slogans in support of Iraq and in condemnation of the US and Israel, handbills calling on the people to “be Indian and buy Indian” and boycott Jewish owned companies’ products led to riots of October 2001 and cast shadow on the blasts of 2006 and 2008. Those who were sighted in the protest march were hounded and arrested as members of SIMI and framed in the bomb attacks. This meets the overall strategic requirement of the war on ‘terror’. That is, involve the members of the target community in crimes, blame them for what happens and shrug off your shoulder saying: your people conspired, you bombed, your people died, your people were injured and your people were caught and your people are convicted.
It was inevitable that this would not work in India. We are a different democracy than either the US in the stranglehold of the Zionists, or Israelis pampered and sustained by the US.
This resurfaced in the first week of June 2010 as the deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Israel Avigdor Lieberman told the UN General Secretary that the international community ignored 500 people killed in the last one month of May in Thailand, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Iraq. Nobody bothered about that. But Israel is condemned for “unmistakably defensive action” in which nine died(Gaza aid flotilla raid). Israeli ambassador Mark Sofer tried to salvage the situation saying Israeil doe not see India in the same light as it does its enemies. (AA June 3, 2010). This shows how far we have strayed from the earlier era.
Nonetheless there are individuals sans constraints of diplomacy. There was a boy Adam David Foley from Washington in Malegaon who saw the bomb blasts on September 8, 2008 and found it similar to 9/11 in devastation and casualties. Similarly there are individuals in India even in uniform who viewed the matters differently. Maeker PI, Vijay Salaskar and other officers of ATS at the Kurla ATS office were glued to the TV as it switched on to blasts scenes from Malegaon cemetery shortly after the prayer. Instantaneously they clapped hands, expressed great happiness, congratulated each other, and shook hands with each other. There was a prisoner Mohammad Ali Sheikh whom the PI addressed: “Look! Our activists of Bajrang Dal have avenged the 1993 serial bomb blasts of Bombay!”(Inquilab August 17, 2008). Worthy of note here is the participation of Vijay Salaskar who fell as a victim of terrorism on 26/11 at Cama hospital. His widow reacted to the conviction of Ajmal Kasab saying that she was happy he would be hanged but before that Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin should he hanged in public because they were Indians! It raises question whether we can fight terrorism in the same stereotyped fashion as we have been fighting communal riots?
Advani would like to. He even asked the prime minister to change the investigation team of Karkare who was doing the right job. Bal Thackeray would do so for he was ready to publish the names of the investigation officers who were allegedly handling roughly Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur.
Malegaon blasts crystallize implications which people were watching live television coverage as were we.

Dimensions of Malegaon blasts: Samjhauta Express
Malegaon blast cases of 2006 and 2008 have many more dimensions than we have been able to see. Soon after the arrest of Lt Col Shrikant Purohit on the night of November 5, 2008 disturbing news started coming out through his interrogation. It is doubtful that such an army official like him or Colonel (retired) SS Raikar commandant of Bhonsla military school would be subjected to third degree torture but reports of Purohit’s arrest suggest that he was tortured. His relative Vilas Anand Dalvi submitted an affidavit describing specific instances of torture: so badly beaten that his left hand was paralyzed, fingers of right hand fractured, knees injured. (Purohit tortured, family tells court Indian Express Fri Nov 14 2008). Raiker like Purohit was in the capacity of liaison officer with the military intelligence before retirement. On November 14, 2008 ADG VN Rai of Haryana police was in Mumbai investigating Samjhauta link. Raikar said that the trail went to Indore and then became cold. DGP Ranjiv Dalal also remarked that Indore was an important link in the plot of Malegaon and Samjhauta train explosions, a town where the Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and Purohit had met to hatch the conspiracy and from where things were procured.

Because of the intervention of National Security Advisor MK Narayanan in the process of investigation the Indore connection even when very strong was not thoroughly vetted and searched. He felt that it would dramatically change the world opinion that India had created by blaming every terrorist attack within India on Pakistan. India was in a fix. Then followed: the tergiversation. The Haryana police officers were stalled from proceeding further. The whole world was watching and perhaps that would not have been that material had not the Pakistanis been keeping a tab on this matter. For, they raised Samjhauta train blasts issue at every conference to brow beat us. Though 68 Pakistani passengers lost lives and many more were seriously injured in the devastating inferno caused by the two explosions it was also a symbolic terrorism aiming at dismantling the rapprochement between the two South Asian neighbours. The jihadists would not countenance it but there are desi jihadists who not only view Pakistan as enemy but a part of ancient India sawed off through ballot based on religious strength of different communities. They never hide their aspiration to regain the whole of ancient India into one integral land. Purohit’s constitution matches the articles of faith of the RSS.

To cover up one lie man tells many others. This simple human folly was lost on the NSA as well as the Intelligence Bureau and RAW. As a result of this the cooked up lame excuse that in 2006 a Pakistani had a fracas on the train and jumped off it when it was about to start. India gave details of this agent provocateur to Pakistan calling him as one of the two responsible for the twin blasts on the friendship train. As the Pakistanis tried to ascertain who this national of theirs jumping out was when the train would be going into Pakistan soon in the middle of the night they could not find anyone of that name among the passengers on record as well as in their country. There was also no plausible reason why should he be jumping out of the train and why should he be quarreling with fellow Muslims and fellow Pakistanis on a foreign soil that, too, was hostile despite the fact that the special train was maintained as a friendly gesture to improve bilateral relations between India and Pakistan.
Three years ago the Haryana sleuth were doing a commendable work that matched what their counterpart in Hemant Karkare was doing for the Malegaon blast. They found the leads that led to Indore and went cold as in Malegaon 2006 case, too. But then they did the wisest thing people thoroughly professional do: disseminate knowledge (like Kunta Kinte to his daughter in Alex Haley’s epoch making “Roots”). They gave information of what they had found that the bags used for explosion on Samjhauta express were bought from the Abhinandan Bag Centre in Indore’s Kothari Market and they also identified the tailor who sewed the suitcases for that purpose. They even had found out that the other ingredients of the explosives like pipe, Super Saurabh plastic boxes, etc. were procured from there within a radius of a mile and half. The cat was out of the bag but Narayanan and the Madhya Pardesh BJP government put it back into the bag.
How come India could allow this to happen? It must now be history that the US and Israel have become so brazen to defy world opinion that come what may even the most publicized event cannot dent their strategic interest in the middle east or elsewhere. This is particularly true of the Palestinian problem. India has chosen to side with them in the so called ‘war on terrorism’. By closely associating with the Israelis we have also veered to disregarding public misgivings at home and international concern abroad. In the case of Gujarat genocide and Samjhauta express attack we have come a cropper! Even so our newly strategic allies had responded in measure. The US state department had refused to call the attack on the American consulate library in Kokata at the beginning of the 21st century as terrorist attack. It called it revenge mounted by private individuals to settle score with the police for having killed their relatives somewhere in Gujarat. But in the case of Samjhauta express the response and concern is not so candid!