Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: August 7, 2008
Tribunal erred in lifting ban
The Supreme Court has done the right thing
by ruling on Wednesday that the ban on the Students' Islamic Movement of India
will continue, thus staying Tuesday's astonishing order of a special tribunal
which lifted restrictions on this jihadi organisation's activities while rejecting
the Government's case. Thankfully, the Union Home Ministry did not waste any
time and sought the apex court's intervention before the tribunal's order
could cause any damage -- the Additional Solicitor-General was not exaggerating
when he drew the Supreme Court's attention to the "serious consequences"
of allowing the ban to be lifted. While there is reason to believe that the
Union Home Ministry was not sufficiently alert to the possibility of the tribunal,
headed by a Delhi High Court judge, passing an adverse order, valid questions
have been raised about the manner in which the ban on SIMI was set aside and
the reasons that were cited to justify the decision. For instance, as mentioned
by the Additional Solicitor-General, the tribunal's 263-page order skirts
the merits of the case against SIMI, ignoring the Intelligence Bureau reports
on members of the organisation indulging in terrorist activities, provided
by the Government, even while iterating that there is "no new evidence"
to justify the February 7 notification extending the ban till 2010. Strangely,
the tribunal has chosen to ignore overwhelming evidence -- as is claimed to
have been submitted by the Government -- about SIMI's links with terrorist
organisations like Hizb-ul Mujahideen and Lashker-e-Tayyeba. It is equally
inexplicable as to why the tribunal has chosen not to take note of the contents
of a Cabinet note, which was placed before it in a sealed envelope, and ignore
the "deposition of 77 witnesses". These witnesses were not low-level
operatives but senior officials of Intelligence Bureau and State intelligence
agencies; if their deposition is brushed aside, then there is something seriously
wrong with the criminal justice system. If the tribunal was looking for the
proverbial smoking gun, then it should have known better: Terrorism is not
fought with material evidence.
Ironically, the tribunal's order, clearly
flawed and illogical, comes within days of the terrorist bombings in Ahmedabad,
Surat, Bangalore and, before that, Jaipur. From Delhi to Hyderabad, Mumbai
to Malegaon, Jaipur to Lucknow and Ahmedabad to Surat, the black hand of SIMI
is suspected to have played a role in the killing of innocent people. The
busting of the terror module in Indore earlier this year, which led to the
arrest of key SIMI office-bearers on the run from the law for years, has also
been overlooked by the tribunal. India's criminal justice system, including
investigation and prosecution, has often come up for scathing criticism in
Western capitals in the context of our abject failure to combat jihadi terror.
The tribunal's order would appear to justify much of this criticism, as would
the inordinate delay in despatching terrorists to their destination -- either
behind bars or the gallows. Meanwhile, it is shocking that even as the Government
is pressing hard for extending the ban on SIMI, key allies of the Congress
and senior Cabinet colleagues of the Prime Minister are pushing for the ban
to be lifted. Muslim politics, it would seem, has now degenerated into pandering
to jihadis.
