Malegaon Bomb Blast Trail - In Search of the accused !
by Subhash Gatade
(South Asia Citizens Wire - 18 November 2006)
Does
anyone remember Md. Afroz now, who was arrested after 9/11by the Mumbai
police and was charged for planning a terrorist attack. It was told to
the pliant media then that this 'dreaded terrorist' wanted to crash a
plane piloted by him on the British house of Commons and Australia. A
special team from Mumbai police especially went to these countries but
could not bring back any evidence. Ultimately it took the whole charge
as a grand fabrication. None from the Mumbai police who had claimed
earlier that they have arrested 'India's very own Al Qaeda man' was
fired or even inconvenienced for their role in this fabrication.
The
memory of the poor, hapless Kashmiri fruit seller who was paraded as
the real kingpin of the bomb blasts in Delhi last year, must be still
fresh in people's minds. Presented as the 'prize catch' by senior police
officers before the media, he was later declared innocent by the same
police. One can bet that none of the police fraternity had to lose even
one night's sleep for brutalizing an innocent and putting him and his
near and dear ones to tremendous mental as well as physical torture.
The
most recent case showing the modus operandi of the police in poor
light, is related to the four year old attack on the Raghunath temple
in Jammu.Four innocent persons had to languish in jail for such a long
period for no fault of theirs. The courts have finally absolved all the
accused of any charges and have advised the police to properly use its
minds in handling sensitive cases of such nature.
The list is definitely endless.
It
is no surprise that the images of Md. Afroz or for that matter the
hapless Kashmiri fruit seller or the innocents nabbed in the Raghunath
Temple case readily come before the mind's eye whenever 'guardians of
law and order' reach roof tops to make some grandiose announcements.
The recent claims made by the ATS (Anti Terrorism Squad) of Maharashtra
state in case of the Malegaon bomb blast, ( 8 th September '06) seem to
be no exception.
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Malegaon, a city of around 7 lakh people,
75 per cent of whom are Muslims, saw death descending on innocent
citizens on the very day of Shab-e-Barat. A day when Muslims visit
graveyards of their loved ones, clean and decorate the graves and spend
the night there, reading out special prayers for the occasion. But who
from Malegaon and adjoining areas would have imagined that the day to
remember the departed ones would turn out to be the last day of some of
their own lives and would maim many among them for the rest of their
lives.The two blasts, which occurred at two places in the city killed
around 31 people and wounded more than 250 of them.
Residents of the
city shudder to think the way they could save themselves. The only
feeling of comfort in the otherwise gloomy scenario was that there was
no repeat of 2001- the year when the city witnessed large scale
rioting. This time despite provocation there was no communal flare-up.
The 'Communally sensitive' town remained calm. Instead one could see
new bonds of solidarity getting forged between the two communities who
for various reasons have remained in an adversial relationship with
each other.
Looking at the nature of crime, where fanatics planted
bombs in crowded areas in the city to see to it that people are killed
in large numbers and communal flare-ups ensues, it was clear that
meticulous planning had gone into it. Question naturally arose, who
could have benefited from growing communal divide? A general answer
could be a fanatic group who believes and propagates a religion-based
ideology.
Forget the radical media, even a conservative newspaper
like Times of India, instead of unleashing its usual tirade against the
'omnipresent Jihadi terrorists', carefully captioned its writeup
'Bajrang Dal or Lashkar' (9 th September, Updated at 12.311 jrs. IST)
while discussing the bomb blasts in Malegaon. In the particular
write-up it specifically mentioned the modus operandi adopted by the
Bajrang Dal in blasts at Parbhani's Mohammadi Masjid and mosques at
Purna and Jalna earlier this year. Of course it did not rule out the
possibity of the involvement of Lashkar in this particular case.
The
first official confirmation of sorts that the Sangh Parivar
organizations could have a role in the blast came from the Prime
Minister himself. Emphasising the need to investigate the functioning
of the Hindu Rightwing formations he clearly stated that he could not
confirm or rule out the possibility of the involvement of Bajrang Dal
in the bloody act at Malegaon. He made this calibrated statement en
route to Havana, while going for the NAM summit.
" Bajrang Dal
continues to be under the scanner. "There is no reason to rule them
out. We still haven't found anything to prove that Bajrang Dal is not
involved," a senior officer said. The Hindu fringe group is under
investigation in Malegaon because of the role of its activists in
various bomb blasts. " (PM doesn't rule out Bajrang role, Josy Joseph,
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 00:50 IST, DNA India)
It was at this
juncture that, when even the Prime Minister himself had clearly stated
that he could not confirm or rule out the possibility of the
involvement of Hindutva extremist formations in the bloody act at
Malegaon, a concerted campaign was taken up for spreading
unsubstantiated rumours. Quoting unnamed sources the police engaged in
investigating the blasts were quick to rule out the possibility that
the bombs might have been the handiwork of Bajrang Dal, which has been
active in the Marathwada region.
A sample of the news which was
carried by a leading newspaper showed how slowly and silently a process
was unleashed to exonerate in the Hindutva formations and blaming the
'Jehadi Terrorists' for this inhuman act.
'LeT Chief Raheel Planned
Blasts with Aides: Police' - "According to police, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba
(LeT) commander Raheel Abdul Sheikh (also the alleged mastermind of the
11/7 blasts) could have taken the help of associates Abdul Latif Khan
and Junaid Hussein to plan the Malegaon blasts. The duo are said to be
members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Khan
and Hussein, say officers, are absconding since May and may have 'taken
instructions' from Raheel to execute the blasts. Raheel, said a senior
officer, stayed in Malegaon for a few weeks before fleeing to
Bangladesh in May…".( Hindustan Times)
Stigmatising of Muslim groups
and formations had already started despite the fact that "…[I]slamic
militant groups in India from the days insurgency began in Kashmir in
the 1990s have not attacked mosques or shops where religious books are
sold'' ( Indian Express, 18 th September 2006)
The speech by Mr. S.
M. Mushrif, a retired IPS officer, in the a public meeting organised at
the KC College Mumbai on October 10 to discuss "Malegaon Blasts: Who Is
to be Blame ?" explains how this could have been done. (October 13,
2006, Malegaon Bomb Blasts: Who Is to Blame?, PRESS RELEASE,
www.sabrang.com) He shared that the "..[I]B was one of the most
powerful agencies that fed disinformation to the executive and
according to him was also victim of deep-seated bias in recent years.
The role of the IB, he said, must be to provide specific intelligence
on events and not be a vehicle of general rumour-mongering against
sections of the people. Instead he stated, the IB was often the source
of spreading unsubstantiated rumours that led to these reports then
being quoted in the media. The media too must not be an instrument of
the police or the government disinformation but work to investigate and
provide different perspectives and substantiated theories."
People
seating in the media sympathetic to the Hindutva cause were also
cooking vacuous arguments to rationalise 'clean chit' to the Hindutva
brigade. One of the logic used was the crudeness of bombs used by the
Hindutva groups earlier and the technical expertise supposedly needed
to make/use a RDX. It did not matter to them that "Outlook' did a cover
story on the same theme making it clear how easy it is to get RDX. The
famous lyricist Javed Akhtar in a meeting held in Bombay under the
auspices of CJP rightly asked with indignation 'Does RDX have a special
stamp establishing its link to Muslims?'
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Coming to the formal
communique from the ATS (anti terrorism squad) of Maharashtra police,
it tells us that it has finally 'cracked the case' and it wants the
rest of the people also to believe that the three accused under custody
and their (yet to be arrested) accomplices are the real culprits.
Interestingly DGP of Maharashtra while making the announcement of the
arrests did not blame the usual suspects like ISI, Lashkar to be the
real instigators of the blast.Perhaps the unstated position is that it
is an act of the locals only, supposedly owning allegiance to a radical
Muslim outfit, which wanted to precipitate 'communal riots'. Media is
also agog with news of the 'narco test' which have been conducted on
these accused and the way they have 'revealed' their real game plan
under the influence of medication.
According to the police 'bombs
used in the explosion were assembled at the garage of one Shabbir Ahmad
Batterywalla who was the real kingpin.' It need be noted that this said
person has been languishing in police custody since August 2 itself
under the infamous 'Unlawful Activites Prevention Act' , more than a
month before the actual blasts took place. The other two accused also
had been apprehended earlier for the bomb hoax in Malegaon a few days
later after the tragic incident.
One cannot deny that Maharashtra
police which has received lot of flak for its acts of commission and
ommission while dealing with cases of such nature must have been more
careful this time. But the biggest problem at hand is that is that it
suffers from a terrific credibility gap vis-a-vis the Muslim community
and therefore its claims in this case have completely failed to
generate any confidence among people.
As a recap it may be told
that, everybody is aware of the way in which it targetted the whole
Muslim community in the immediate aftermath of the recent blasts in
local trains in B'bay. (July 2006) People also know the dilly-dallying
tactics adopted by it in the the Nanded bomb blasts case involving
RSS/Bajrang Dal activists which saw deaths of its two activists. (
April 2006) The partisan role played by the same police in the 1992-93
post Babri Mosque demolition riots has even been well documented by the
Srikrishna Commission.
The state administration also did not fail to
show its anti-Muslim bias even in times of tragedy. While shading
crocodile tears over their plight, it saw to it that victims in
Malegaon blast, majority of whom were Muslims, receive less
compensation (1/5 th) as compared to victims of Mumbai blast, majority
of whom were Hindus. (Iqbal A. Ansari , The Milli Gazette online, 14 th
Sept 2006)
The institutional discrimination against the Muslims was
for everyone to see. Whereas the police had maintained high vigilance
in patrolling the town during the Ganpati festival which ended on the 6
th September, but it failed to provide similar security on
Shab-e-baraat, Friday, 8th September. On this tragic day there were no
police patrolling or security measures in place.
Mubasshir Ahmed, a
freelance journalist from Malegaon explains an important aspect of the
lapse in the security of ordinary citizens which has largely gone
unnoticed. ( Malegaon's Date with Terror: 9/8, 06 November, 2006,
www.countercurrents.org) :
''The security at the Muslim cemetery was
specifically discussed in the local Peace Committee meeting just before
Shab-e-Barat. So grave was the concern that the committee members in
fact discussed whether the policemen should be posted in plain clothes
or in khaki inside the premises of the cemetery. A proposal to restrict
the influx of beggars was also discussed—they should be restricted till
the Sulaimani Masjid which is located 250 metres away from the blast
site. There was no implementation on these proposals.''
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A
newsitem appeared in a prominent Bombay daily in the second week of
October. Captioned 'Malegaon Muslim body gets threatening letter' it
informed
"A prominent Muslim organization of Malegaon, which was
rocked by multiple blasts killing 31 persons more than a month ago, has
received a threatening letter, police said here.The letter in Hindi,
sent by 'Sangh Parivar and Bhavadiya Bramhan Sangh', has been addressed
to Jamaitul Ulema and was posted from nearby Vajirkhede village, three
km from Malegaon in Nasik district, they said. Police, however, did not
reveal the content of the letter. A case was registered against
unidentified persons on Tuesday night after the letter was handed over
to police by the organisation which received it, police said. Police is
investigating the origin of the letter.( PTI Wednesday, October 11,
2006 22:07 IST)
It is incomprehensible why till date secrecy has been maintained about the contents of the letter.
We
are also not yet clear about the whereabout of the two people who
purchased the two cycles in Malegaon which were used in the bomb blast.
In the initial stages of the investigation police had released sketches
of the two persons who were from some hindi speaking area. Even a
layperson may tell that they would be able to shed more light on the
conspiracy which went into making it.
A cursory glance at the whole
case makes it clear that contrary to the claims of the police there are
still many unanswered questions.
Ofcourse as far as leaving vital
clues is concerned none matches the allegations that a dead body with
fake beard was unearthed at the blast site. It would be opportune to
quote Radhika Koppikar of the 'Outlook' (13 September 2006, Web Only)
at this juncture:
"That the investigators should so blatantly rule
out involvement of any Hindutva outfit is cause for concern. ….
the
fact remains that the cops are not chasing some clues. Take the case of
"fake beard" as it has come to be known here. A tailor Aqeel Ahmed
Ansari who works near the Bada Kabristan told cops and bystanders that
he had picked up a body from near one of the bicycles and handed it
over to volunteers in the ambulance, that this body did not have the
lower part of the torso and it's beard had come off in the ambulance.
The suggestion being that it was a fake beard and therefore the body of
a perpetrator. Coincidentally, the two hospitals that conducted
post-mortems said that they had together handled 30 bodies and none was
without the lower half."
People who are familiar with the recent
communal situation in Maharahstra very well know the significance of a
'fake beard'. It was in Nanded only, where the police had discovered
fake beards as well as dresses and caps normally worn by Muslims, in a
raid on a deceased Bajrang Dal-RSS activists house in the aftermath of
the bomb blast in April.
Definitely there is need to look afresh at
the conspiracy where blood of innocents was once again shed. Definitely
there is need that the whole investigation is handed over to some
Special Task Force which is away from the local influences so that we
are able to reach the kernel of truth.