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.
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