Wily nature of fighting terrorism post-Malegaon denouement

There is a need to be cautious in taking words of politicians who speak on terror. Very few have statesmanship and insight. The majority play politics even with terrorism. Statesmanship demands rising above the self profit motive of party and jingoism.

On August 20, 2011 India’s agricultural minister Sharad Pawar remarked “all the accused in Malegaon 2006 case are innocent. This is what I had said a year and half ago.” He went further “after I had said that, the investigation started and the real (culprits) were caught in the second bomb blasts (of 2008). And what I had said after that one of the accused (Swami Aseemanand) accepted that they had done it. Therefore all the accused in (2006 case) are innocent and should be set free.” (Urdu Times August 21, 2011).


One year and half ago would imply February 2010. If that is what Pawar has in mind then ground reality does not justify this assertion of his. On April 2, 2009 he had said:

"Like United States in the world, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is responsible for Terrorism in India. The communal agenda of the BJP and its anti-National policies are providing fodder to the separatist activities and are responsible for the growing terrorism in the country."

"Terrorism finds its root in the communal agenda and injustice meted to others. If we really wish to eliminate terrorism from India, it is high time we refrain the parties like BJP from playing the divisive politics." ( Inquilab, Mumbai April, 3)
This unspoken truth that was always there is cogent and known to most in India who have a modicum of sanity in them and are not affected by the hideous ideology of cultural nationalism of the Hindu right. Still Pawar deserves credit for articulating it.


Going further back, on October 8, 2008 Sharad Pawar remarked that “BJP rath yatra was the root cause of (Islamic) terrorism in India.” He also accused the party of making “attempt to create friction on the basis of religion and language.” Furthermore he said that the attack on Afghanistan and Iraq was the cause of terrorism outside India.

Some of these observations contain grains of truth but it would be wrong to conclude that Pawar really said that the 9 accused in 2006 blasts case in Malegaon are innocent.

Even if he had three letters from the Central Bureau of Investigation to that effect it was not translated into any shift in the state policy and its execution. Three of his party men did nothing in this regard. Soon after the 2008 blast on September 29, ministers Chaggan Bhujbal and RR Patil were holding a meeting at the government guest house in Malegaon and blamed the new attack on Students Islamic Movement of India. Another bigwig Baba Siddiquy reached there and he also toed the same official line. This made the people angry and they raised an up roar.

However, the people of Malegaon are still good hearted as the brother of one of the accused Shabbir Masiullah. In the third week of August 2011 Jamil rushed and opened his brother’s workshop where the Anti Terrorists Squad had alleged that Shabbir had assembled the bombs. The National Investigation Agency sleuths entered it and took photos and sent Jamil out to fetch envelops in which they wanted to collect the soil for forensic analysis. They wrote out one page report and asked him to sign as witness. He refused because they had written that he had invited them to do investigation and collect the samples of earth. Till they called him he had no idea of them. There was no one called from the neighborhood to witness it. He was alone and they were a dozen and he was overwhelmed. So he signed. This condescending attitude on the part of the agency is similar to Pawar’s. The Muslims of India are not only equal to the rest of fellow countrymen but also respectable. Sending on errand like that smacks of patronizing, what else than deigning and looking down from above and prevailing upon him!

Pawar had given inaccurate number of explosions of bombs on March 13, 1993 in Bombay. He was camping in the metropolis as the Defence Minister of India. He did that to restrain further exacerbation of the situation against the Muslims. However, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra Madhukar Naik publicly accused Pawar as the one behind the anti Muslim riots in the city. The deputy Municipal Commissioner GR Khairnar also maintained that Pawar, Bal Thackeray and Dawood Ibrahim were old cronies.

To say all these is not to lessen the importance of what Pawar had said that the root cause of terror in India was the rath yatra of LK Advani. It had begun in September 1990 from Somnath, Gujarat, when there was terrible anti Muslim riots on the occasion of Ganesh immersion in Vadodra, and, it left a trail of violence, murder, rape, riots and arson in its wake. Advani’s progeny Narendra Modi was the chief architect of the yatra. Incidentally it has become a hobby horse for investigation agency to hunt Juhapura (a refugee camp for the displaced and disposed Muslims during 2002 pogroms) in Gujarat for all kinds of terrorist acts. For July 13, 2011 attack also the police reached there. Why would the agencies do it with the Muslim victims of pogroms of 2002 in Gujarat when there are other communities who have also been targeted for mob violence?
If not Juhapura in Ahemdabad or Azamgarh in UP, then there are the wandering Jews of the Muslim community, like Subhan Quereshi alias Tauqeer. Only last month Intelligence Bureau identified him as the one behind 13/7. However the agency has now acquired new sights, as if after a cataract operation, perhaps. Now it says that the two planters are absconding in Nepal. (Asian Age, August 22)As if the duo Ramchander Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange were not enough that we have two more there. So why only two?

In this juggling of words and statements the agency and the doughty politicians are engaged in evasion, instead of taking on terrorism head-on.

Hemant Karkare had seized the truth of terrorism in a trice. The slain head of the Anti Terrorist Squad was no-nonsense man of probity and excellent professional abilities. He took office on August 1, 2008 and declared that there was no trace of SIMI in terrorist attacks of 2006 (Malegaon). (Urdu Times August 16, 2008) If anyone it is Karkare who deserves the highest tribute for fighting terrorism.

He did not play politics but playing politics is the oxygen of the politicians. The local MLA of Malegaon Mufti Ismail did not join the other Muslim MLAs who visited Home Minister Chidambrum on August 17 in a delegation headed by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra Prithaviraj Chavan. He has a running feud with the family of one of the accused whom he thinks is in the pay of the police. The former veteran leader and long time MLA Nihal Ahmed regularly addresses Ismail as the khubri or police informer.
The first step that the mufti put forward raised the eye brows of the serious minded people. In the May 2006 arms haul case the local police reportedly broke open a shop and took away CPUs full of RDX, Ak 47s, etc. Instead of doing panchnama or registration of the crime by calling the well established neighbours there and then as witness the police called the mufti several miles away from the site, at a place near the police colony around the church in Malegaon camp much afterward that too late at night. It was here that the mufti remarked that his head was cast down with shame that youths of his community had smuggled arms into the town and were caught. He put his signature on the report the police had prepared. The police as usual blamed the accused as members of SIMI. This matter also is a part of the imbroglio that Malegaon 2006 has become and has created fame worldwide as the explosions were made out to be fall out of the arms haul.

The arms haul has serious bearings on the first terrorist attack three months later on September 8. What Hamid had told Abrar and the police had recorded has transformed itself into Zahid saying the same sentence to Abrar. What they could not bring into the town could be the RDX! Or, what more important is the material they are talking about?

The mufti’s close association with former additional SP Mr Rajwardhan is the Gordon’s knot of the Malegaon 2006 blast case. At the instance of Rajwardhan Abrar Ahmed (the accused police informer) got his reliable friend Hamid Hussein Javid Iqbal phone to him (Abrar) and utter the sentence “mader chod , jitna bolna tha tu bol chuka ab sun. Hum logon ko jitna samaan gayab karna tha hum kar chuke magar hum isko gaon me nahin lasake.” (Mother fucker, what you had to say you have said. Now listen. Whatever material we had to take we have taken but we could not bring it into the town.) Hamid rang Abrar from a coin box at Pahelwan restaurant on Kidwai road in Malegaon and told him the above. The phone which Abrar had had the number 9823436809. It was the same phone that Rajwardhan had given Abrar. The phone call was made in the first week of October 2006, hardly a month after the first blasts in Malegaon.

Abrar claims that Rajwardhan kept him in Jagtap farm house near Nasik where Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit of the 2008 blasts case accused also stayed. He was treated to a feast with Purohit. Just before Id on October 25, 2006 the ATS were recording a statement of Noorulhodha, another accused in 2006 case. Noorulhodha was uttering threat to Abrar that Abrar was implicating others like Noorulhodha in the blasts case of 2006 in which Abrar was himself involved. The ATS made Abrar listen on a hand-free mobile the tape recording going on in another room. This double crossing of Abrar made him fall into the trap of the ATS, either he had to do as the ATS wanted or face conviction and imprisonment.
The above incident Abrar has narrated in his affidavit and submitted it to the MOCOCA court of Justice YD Shinde on April 18, 2009. The trial has yet to begin. But if there is some truth in it, it would open a Pandroa’s box for all.

It would reveal the wiliest way of fighting terror. That the army appointed Purohit as in charge of anti terror intelligence wing and the serving lieutenant colonel was framing up the nine accused. The ATS has charged Zahid of having spoken the sentence (“Mother fucker…”) to Abrar. This accused (Zahid) was imam of a mosque in Phoolsangvi village in Yawatmal, 500 km away from Malegaon. He was leading Friday prayer there on September 8, 2006 when the bombs went off in Malegaon and 37 Muslims were killed and hundreds injured. The police say he planted the bombs at the graveyard mosques!

Is this how the ministers, investigation officials, politicians, muftis and Lt Cols of the army fight terrorism?

What the people have failed to realize in all these is that high ranking officers in the police and investigation agencies are involved in the mess. Hence granting bail to the nine accused is no simple matter. It would be political expediency if the government sends its attorney general and the government prosecution withdraws the case against the nine.


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http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bjp-rath-yatra-root-cause-of-terrorism-in-in/371186/
Sharad Pawar “If ‘green terror’ is fine with them, why should ‘saffron terror’ upset them so much? Isn’t green too a colour in our national flag?” he said. (Hindustan times 29 Aug2010)
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Pawar-promises-to-address-minorities-woes-in-iftar-speech/Article1-735637.aspx
(Hindustan Times , August 21, 2011)
He began by decrying the ‘unjust’ atmosphere prevailing in the country and said right wing terrorism was putting Muslim minorities to great trouble.

“It is unjust and unfair that crimes are committed by one group and another hauled up for them and punished,”