Or are they cannon-fodder for Congress’ cynical electoral games?
The deadly terrorist strike in Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad on February 21, left sixteen people dead and 117 injured, of whom 10 are said to be still in a critical condition four days later. Thank God, this time there was no praise for the resilience of the Hyderabadis as it used to be in the case of Mumbaikars.
In his press briefing, the Hon’ble Home Minister declared that states were cautioned about an intelligence input that predicted possible terrorist strikes. Asked whether there was any input specific to AP and whether such a warning was passed on to the AP government, he said ‘he was not certain and would have to check’! This was a full two and a half hours after two of the bombs went off (a third mercifully did not explode)! This was the same Home Minister who emphatically declared only a month ago that the principal opposition party, the BJP and his party’s bête noire, the RSS were running camps for training “Hindu” terrorists.
Where does the “Hindu” terror angle come from? There lies a tale of intrigue, some political chicanery and perhaps an IQ of 180! The Hindu terror angle was first broached by P. Chidambaram sometime in 2009, after the formation of the National Investigation Agency (NIA). It was after this that the Prince Regent, Rahul Gandhi reportedly whispered in the ear of the American ambassador that ‘Hindu terror was far more dangerous than Maoist or Jehadi terrorism’! It has also been since then that lesser mortals like Digvijay Singh picked up the theme and began speaking about “Hindu” terror.
The Malegaon blast of September 8, 2006 was first investigated by the Maharastra anti-terrorism squad (ATS), then by the CBI and was finally handed over to the NIA after its formation in 2009. The Maharastra ATS first suspected that it was a retaliatory strike for the July 11, 2006 Mumbai train blasts in which 209 people were killed and more than 700 injured. Therefore it first detained some Bajrang Dal cadres but as it could not find any evidence against them it switched its probe to investigate the involvement of Laskha-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohamed (JeM).
Home Minister Shivraj Patil had to go following the deadly terror strike on Mumbai on November 26 2008 (in which 182 people were killed), making way for Chidambaram. It was Chidambaram who established the NIA to counter terrorism, and primarily to bring the culprits of 26/11 to book. The NIA however, does not seem to be aware of this. It has also not bothered to investigate the July 2006 Mumbai train blasts, probably because of the resilience of the Mumbaikars.
However other terror cases like Malegaon (2006), Samjhauta Express and Mecca Masjid (2007), were handed over to the NIA. Despite the zeal with which the NIA has been probing and, occasionally leaking snippets to a pliant media, the death toll in all these incidents put together is about half of either the Mumbai (2006) or the Mumbai (2008) terror strikes!
Several columnists including S. Gurumurthy (Samjhauta Blast Case: Counter Investigation To NIA Investiagation) have demolished the NIA’s “Hindu” terror thesis. Vivek Gumaste asks in his Rediff.com piece, ‘is it possible that definite evidence is not forthcoming because none exists?’ (Is Hindu terror is as big as it's made out to be?)
But the most damning indictment of Shinde’s “Hindu” terror theory came from B. Raman, an expert on internal security matters and, no friend of either the BJP or the Sangh Parivar. (Shinde: Prejudiced & Partisan Stewardship of MHA):
“[…] One has a strong suspicion that the NIA is sought to be used not for the investigation and prosecution, but for politically needling the BJP and the RSS by periodically leveling allegations against them. […] Shinde’s statement carefully avoids any condemnation of the on-going activities and conspiracies of the Indian Mujahideen and its links with the LeT. […] His deeply prejudiced and communal stewardship of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs needs to be condemned by all right-thinking persons.”
On June 2009, the UN Security Council Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee added three names to its ‘Consolidated List of individuals and entities subject to the assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo’. (UN Security Council SC9695) According to the UNSC press release, one of them, an Arif Qasmani had close links with Dawood Ibrahim and was the mastermind behind both the July 2006 Mumbai train bombings and the February 2007 Samjhauta Express blast. See box.
A report in today’s newspapers indicates that the state police and the NIA have been vying with each other for investigating the latest Hyderabad blasts. In the past, the state police have been blamed for arresting ‘innocent persons’ in the Mecca Masjid case and keeping them in prison for over a year. The secular media had a field day and has been parading some of the accused in its programmes. In order to prove its secular credentials, the state government paid huge compensations to the accused after the courts acquitted them, a privilege no other accused (under-trials in police lingo) have ever enjoyed. If charged with the investigation how will the state police deal with the case. Will it try to prove its secular credentials?
How will the NIA fare if charged with the investigation? Will it try to score a hit, which so far eluded it? Or will it stick to prove its loyalty to its secular masters?
In either case it is a dicey situation for the victims of the terror attack? Will they get justice or will they become cannon-fodder for Congress’ cynical electoral war games?
Well Sir,
ReplyDeleteThere's no need to to investigate. We already got jails full with under-trails and criminals and most of them can not be punished for obvious reasons.
The NIA can put these blasts as a feather in cap of "Hindu" terror. May be the grainy footage will show a kalava on wrists of people who parked cycles and after probing "all angles" they will give their views on TV. So much for evidence and as for witnesses, well you always have Arundhati Roy whose "magical sources" would be placed in the said point of time on that fateful day at the very locations. We have few other "gems of investigation" to prove how rich Hindus overseas (wonder if they are in Nepal - which used to be the only Hindu country some years back!!) are funding this terror and pinning blame on innocents. The next step could include a remorseful sadhu acknowledging to plant bombs after despite his religious views he was served by "young boys" whose parents he had killed.
Proofs sir, in favour of the majority comunity are cooked-up stories. How does that matter if all international agencies say the alleged Hindu terror strikes were not by Hindus? NIA knows best! And if they say it was by Hindus it must be believed!
I dont know.
ReplyDeleteIn the recent past,it has become more of appesment,vote banks,depending upon which are the charge sheets filed...weak or strong
Sir, while your blogs have always been a pleasure to read, these days, you are stopping short of calling a spade a spade. Hindu or Saffron terrorism is just a façade and a pathetic attempt of the leftist class of our country at creating an equivalency with Islamic terrorism, lest they have to go through the rigors of tackling, at an intellectual and pragmatic level, the scourge of exclusivist, expansionist, and supremacist tenets of Islam, which has been sending shivers down the collective spine of Western democracies and which is posing a very serious existential threat to the very idea of our nationhood, given the large adherents, mostly impoverished and uneducated, it has in its fold.
ReplyDelete‘All religions have black sheep’, ‘Terrorism has no color’, ‘A terrorist has no religion’, et al – these gross attempts at generalization by the political and academic class, ably supported by the media, reeks of a clear attempt to escape from the arduous task of sifting the good from the bad, the bad from the worse, or at least creating gradations of badness so that the problems may be tackled at the logistic, strategic, and ideological levels. Acts of terrorism, especially those kinds that are found to be as sustained to be regarded as dangerous to the society, are ideologically rooted or motivated. Islamic terrorism, whoever perpetuates it in whatever form, has an ideological backing – Islam seeks to recursively divide the society into us versus them and victims versus aggressors, until one of the warring divisions survive the Darwinian struggle, and the vicious dis-unification further continues unto death, thereby perpetuating a perennial victimhood mentality under the garb of justice-seeking. There is no peace even in the vast swathes of lands where the religion of peace holds absolute sway. The so called Hindu terrorism, if ever such a thing exists, may at best be a dénouement of the state and society bending over backwards to accommodate Islamists and their perverse divisive tendencies. While it will be debatable to call the reaction of fringe loonies from the Hindu community as terrorism, there is no doubt every intended violent reaction must be neutralized permanently. It still doesn’t take away from the fact that Hindu terrorism, if ever such a thing exists, can’t be compared to Islamic terrorism, which has an ideological, scriptural, and financial backing like no other forms of terrorism.