Author: Nandu R Kulkarni
Publication: The Statesman
Date: July 30, 2006
URL: http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2006-07-30&usrsess=1&clid=2&id=151947
[Note from the Hindu Vivek Kendra: It is amazing
that the investigators are stunned by the revelations. The intent of the terrorists
have been made known a long time ago, and given the policy of appeasement
followed by the secular parties, the terrorists were encouraged to undertake
their evil design. The terrorists who were earlier apprehended with the vast
cache of arms and bombs had stayed in the apartments provided at tax-payers
money near the state legislative assembly.]
The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and other Central
investigating agencies are alarmed by startling details revealed by the alleged
LeT-Simi suspects like the Unani doctor Tanvir Ansari or the regional commander
of these terrorist groups, Faizal Sheikh, and his brother the tech-savvy Muzammil
Shaikh who gave away information about proliferating modules latent in Maharashtra
with hundreds of educated youths taking oath of allegiance to Lashkar-e-Toiba
and being specially trained and brain-washed in the hilly border areas of
Pakistan to unleash terrorism in Mumbai and elsewhere.
Ever since the first arrest was made over
ten days ago, the ATS chief Mr KP Raghuvanshi has been quite outspoken about
the terrorist design of Pakistan that is being executed in India by LeT with
the help of local Simi recruits. The ATS confirmed the fears of the National
Security Advisers that the national landmark institutions like Barc, oil refineries
and Bombay Stock Exchange are surely targets on the terrorists' map. Tavir,
Muzammil and others who are in ATS custody have confirmed this suspicion during
interrogation. The ATS said they could not confirm that the six terrorists
so far arrested have links with the 11 July serial blasts on suburban trains.
They have uncovered a much wider conspiracy to hit the sensitive points in
Mumbai and other places.
The Maharashtra government too has been shaken
by these revelations. The home ministry wants to create an Intelligence agency
of its own on the lines of IB. The plan being discussed is to select about
500 cops and train them in Intelligence gathering with the help of sophisticated
gadgets. The administration has realised that the ATS is woefully inferior
to the highly advanced terrorists who during interrogation gave away many
details regarding their activities but did not confess their complicity in
the acts of terror. A select group of Mumbai police had been trained only
once in 1998 by the IB in surveillance, phone-tapping and other intelligence
gathering skills when the then police commissioner Mr Ronald Mendonca made
such a request to the then IB joint director in Mumbai, Mr VN Deshmukh. The
request was granted with the clearance of Delhi since Mumbai was facing serious
threat from the underworld and the terrorist groups.
The ATS and other investigating agencies like
the Crime Branch are trying to trace the complex ways of the terrorist modules
which operate independent of each other and give no clue as to their plans.
It is learnt that the vital member of a module is a bomb-maker who normally
stays away from the scene of proposed attack but visits the town or city to
be attacked (like Mumbai) to assemble the device and vanishes a day or two
before the actual attack. He is indispensable to the module since explosive
makers are very few in number. He may or may not know other members of the
module. The head of a certain module is called "handler", who, according
to investigators, is a Pakistani or a member of LeT or Jaish-e-Mohammad. The
"handler" also stays away from the targeted city or place. The operators
and logistic supporters are locals who work according to a precise plan and
carry out the attack.
The investigators, therefor, are non-committal
about the progress of their man-hunt launched immediately on the evening of
11 July. The investigation will have to be completed within the stipulated
time since it is required to draft charges. The state home ministry has shown
its desperation with some drastic changes in the set up of the ATS when on
Friday night it replaced two existing officers of additional CP rank with
new entrants, Mr Parambir
Singh and Mr Subodh Jaiswal. They repelaced
Mr Jaijit Singh and Mr Laxminarayan. The important addition to the ATS is
Mumbai police's famous hitman Mr Vijay Salaskar, the crime branch inspector
who so far has killed over 60 gangsters and terrorists in violent encounters.
