Making Of A Bloody Decade

The continuation of the terror strikes in India shows its inability to tackle the menace effectively. Is it because the real perpetrators of the blasts are never caught and get encouragement to carry forward their anti-human agendas?
After making the first decade of the 21ST century a decade of bomb blasts, the terrorists seem to have started the process of making the second decade a copy of that.

The triple serial blasts that rocked the financial capital of India, Mumbai, on July 13 constitute the first major terror strike of the second decade. The blasts that took place during rush hours of the city at Zaveri Bazar, Opera House and Kabutarkhana in Dadar (West) claimed as many as 18 lives and injured 131 innocent citizens.
Prior to the blasts taking place, there have been intelligence inputs appearing in the media that the Al-Qaida-linked terror group HuJI might target the foreign office of Pakistan, its high commission in India and top diplomats if Islamabad does not stop sharing information about it with New Delhi. There were no intelligence inputs that anti-India elements would target any of its cities though.
Whenever there is a terror strike security lapses and intelligence failures are blamed. And the governments both in the Centre and the state promise that no such incidents will take place in future. The Mumbai serial blasts tell a tale of what the ground realities are.
Our security agencies have miserably failed to stop terror strikes. Writes the famous columnist M J Akbar, “One retired police officer who has spent most of his career in intelligence, and retired at the head of his service, told me a simple truth: that the only reason we are not attacked more often is either luck, or that there was no threat.” Commenting on Rahul Gandhi’s take on the Mumbai blast he adds, “Rahul Gandhi repeated — in fact, read out from a piece of paper — the rather facile argument that this attack represented the “1 per cent” that had succeeded rather than the “99 pe cent” who had failed. This is the sort of excuse that cannot survive marginal scrutiny. Where is the evidence of attacks being thwarted? If the police had succeeded in preventing an attack, then they should have a suspect and a story of what had been planned by the suspect. There has been none from the Mumbai police.”
After the Mumbai attack the Union Home Minister Mr. Chidambaram claimed, “There has been no intelligence failure. There was no intelligence warning about 13/7. Intelligence is collected every day, every hour. The blasts are not a failure of intelligence agencies.”
That the terrorists managed to strike at three places at a time and that too in Mumbai without the intelligence sensing this sinister act in itself is a big failure. The citizens who were told post 26/11 that additional security measures have been taken to ensure their safety are questioning what those measures are.
Also the senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley who termed the Mumbai explosions as “an attack on India's security” wondered why the government has failed to stop recurrence of such strikes despite the financial capital being a regular target of terrorists.
“It has become a custom for the terrorists to attack the financial capital of India. The terrorists know that attacking Mumbai would send a strong message across the world,” he said.
Demanding strengthening of the security set up, Mr. Jaitely referred to the announcements made after the 26/11 and wanted to know from the government concrete steps taken so far.
Besides it being a reality that the terrorists take advantage of the security lapses one more reason that the terror strikes could not be contained is that the culprits behind the blasts are left to roam freely. And those who are supposed to be the executors have nothing to do with the blasts. This allows the mischief mongers to create mayhem in the society.
After the Mumbai July 13 blasts the media gave news from the “sources” that it was a handiwork of Muslim named outfits like IM or HuJI. The Chief Minister of Maharashtra Mr. Prithviraj Chavan and the union home minister P. Chidambaram adopted a cautious approach when they stated that it was too early to link any outfit to the blasts.
The media in the past have the record of victimizing Muslim youth in several blasts that in the light of the evidences surfaced later proved to be the handiwork of the Hindutva terrorists. The media feed not only that have its impact on the probing agencies but also on the political leaders as was seen in the German Bakery blast in Pune.
The Maharashtra ATS that investigated the case in the beginning linked it to some outfits with Muslim name. Seeing the IM angle in the blasts the ATS led by Rakesh Maria even arrested one Sammad Bhatkal who was told as having relations with the alleged founders of the IM Iqbal and Riyaz Bhatkal. Then it was turn of Maulana Shabir to face the music. The probing agency termed him as the financer of the blast. But to the embarrassment of the ATS the people of his hometown said that if he had no home of his own, how he could finance the blasts. Then there was the mastermind of the blasts Himayat Baig with the arrest of whose the ATS claimed to have cracked the blast case and it even received tap from the government. The case at last is that Samad has been released on bail as the agency could not link him to the blasts and the whole case has been handed over to the NIA as it remains unsolved.
Ever since the politics of riots was replaced by the politics of bomb blasts the accused behind any blast was a youth who happened to be born in a Muslim family. This instead of becoming an assumption is a fact that could be read in the pages of the history of investigation of the blasts that took place during the last few years.
In the Mumbai blasts too, according to the reports, the ATS along with many others questioned two Muslim youth under detention Mohammed Mobin Khan (32) and his cousin Ayub Raja Shaikh (28). They are alleged IM operatives whom the ATS arrested from suburban Mankhurd as they had allegedly provided vehicles that were used in 2008 serial blasts in Gujarat in which 56 people were killed and over 200 were injured.
Nevertheless, the union home minister Mr. P Chidambaram stated that, “We are not ruling out any angle. We will probe (the involvement of) every terror group...The investigations into the attack will not start on pre-determined assumptions,” he said.
“The man designated to keep Indians safe from terrorists, Home Minister P Chidambaram, who is usually good with words, lost track and traction when he asserted after the Mumbai blasts that as far as suspects go, he was ruling no one out, and ruling no one in either. That probably explains why the Maharashtra police immediately picked up two members of the Indian Mujahideen and seven Naxalites from Mumbai, and 10 Maoists from Pune. They have clearly expanded their circle of the usual suspects,” writes Akbar.
He goes on adding, “The chief minister of Maharashtra Prithviraj Chavan can think of nothing more original than passing the buck. It was his Home Minister R R Patil’s fault, he said, before he did the next thing that politicians are brilliant at: the somersault. Acrobatics cannot explain why the entire police wireless network that evening was jammed, among other things.”
The agencies probing the Mumbai blasts cannot forget that there exists a vast network of the fanatics who have been misusing the name of religion for their nefarious purposes.
They never want that India shares a pleasant relation with the neighbouring Pakistan as the latter is a Muslim-dominated country. Whenever there is a go ahead in peace talks between the two traditionally rival nations, India and Pakistan, a bomb blast comes to halt the process. In this backdrop, the timing of the blasts, days before India starts the foreign minister-level talks with Pakistan, assumes significance. Being asked whether the blasts were an attempt to derail the talks with Pakistan later in July, Mr. Chidambaram said, “I do agree that the Indo-Pak talks will be held this month, in ten days from now. We are not ruling out any angle. We will probe every angle,” he said.
It would have come as an embarrassment to the terrorist that the foreign minister-level talks with Pakistan will take place as scheduled. “They are (on schedule). There is no change in the scheduled visits of (US) secretary (Hillary) Clinton or the foreign minister of Pakistan,” external affairs minister SM Krishna said.
The possibility of saffron terrorism involvement in the blasts cannot be ruled out the senior Congress leader has stated. This is especially when blasts are used for gaining political advantage. In Uttar Pradesh where assembly elections are nearing the right wing Hindutva outfit Vishwa Hindu Parishad has already picked the issue and given it a anti-Muslim colour in a demonstration it recently held in Allahabad. The BJP needed this anti-Muslim oxygen badly to revive its sulking cadre in UP before the UP elections. It can be taken as an indicative that the blasts might have involvement of saffron terror groups who want to revive their hate ideology before the UP elections for better prospects in the elections.
Notable is that in the pre-Swami Aseemanand confession time, the probing agencies would try to solve the blast cases with a pre-determined assumption that it could be done only by Muslim terrorist. When Aseemanand’s conscious urged him to let the truth prevail before the world, it was known that the blasts in Malegaon, Samjhauta Express, Ajmer Dargah and Makkah Masjid were executed by the Hindu fanatics and that the Muslim youth locked behind bars in this connection were actually innocents.
Aseemanand’s confession did not reveal anything new. It only supported the reality the late Maharashtra ATS Chief Hemant Karkare had unraveled after an unbiased probe in the Malegaon blasts that were initially blamed on Muslim youth. Unfortunately for India Hemant Karkare who had hunted big fish of the filthy Hindutva network could not find enough time to destroy it as he was murdered just after big bosses of RSS were found involved in many blasts rocking India. Therefore to not take the confession of Aseemanand as an important clue to crack the network of terrorism on the pretence that his confession was due to duress is not wise. Regrettably after the news surfacing that the Swami’s confession was under duress no headway in the investigation of the blasts is known to public.
On March 11, 2010 the union Home Minister P Chidambaram indicated that seven terror related cases will be investigated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). These cases include Malegaon bomb blast that took place in the year 2006, Samjhauta Express blast in 2007, Makkah Masjid blast in 2007, Ajmer Sharif blast in 2007, Malegaon blast in 2008, Modasa blast in 2008 and Sunil Joshi murder in 2007. He also had hinted that there was one single network behind all these blasts.
Writes Majid Jahangir in his article titled “A Case Of Not Only Aseemanand, But Of A Larger Network” that Mr. Chidambaram had clearly indicated that it were the Hindutva terrorism behind all these seven incidents. But unfortunate is that so far none of the cases could be probed to its conclusion.
“With the arrest of Swami Aseemanand new names from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and other states had appeared in connection with the Hindutva terrorism. It got media coverage too. But until now, many a suspects are beyond the reach of the probing agencies. It raises question over their clean image. This is a case of a Hindutva terror network larger than Aseemanand. Without this network being destroyed Hindutva terrorism cannot be ended.”
By Staff Writer