Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 15, 2008
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/134442/Spit-and-scoot.html
ATS has no evidence
Is the Anti-Terrorism Squad of Maharashtra
Police a rogue organisation whose personnel see themselves as accountable
to none and above the law of the land? Or is its brazen targeting of Hindu
religious leaders and shocking attempt to tar the Army's image part of a command
performance? We must discount the first possibility because had the ATS been
running amok, the State Government would have reined it in: The ATS is not
free of Government control. Even if it were to be argued that the ATS has
gone berserk and that there is no pattern to its deeds, the State Government
would have to explain why it allowed matters to come to such a pass. What
is more than likely is that the ATS, staffed by police officials who are more
than eager to do the Government's bidding for reasons that need not be elaborated,
has been instructed to try and cause maximum damage to Hindu solidarity by
defaming their religious leaders and holding them up to ridicule. The Congress
obviously hopes this will weaken the BJP politically, cheer jihadis and swing
the Muslim vote in its favour. In a sense, it is back to the days of dirty
tricks when slander and defamation were used by the Congress to weaken its
opponents. The services of agencies of the state, most notably the Intelligence
Bureau, were commissioned for this purpose. What makes the latest spit-and-scoot
venture of the Congress particularly insidious is the fact that it could result
in a severe blowback with communal overtones.
This is not to suggest that individuals involved
in violent acts should go free. On the contrary, the law of the land should
take its course and the guilty should be punished after a fair and transparent
trial without short-circuiting the nation's criminal justice system which
operates on the basis of irrefutable evidence. But what we have seen ever
since the ATS was let loose to malign Hindu society is an elaborate charade
with ATS officials planting stories in gullible sections of media, peddling
fiction as fact. It is by now clear that the ATS has miserably failed to gather
even a scrap of evidence about the involvement of the accused in the September
Malegaon blast that will survive judicial scrutiny in a court of law. What
the ATS has succeeded in achieving is spinning cockamamie yarns that are at
once absurd and ridiculous. If the media has been left looking silly for front-paging
these yarns, the ATS has come across as a sinister organisation. Amazingly,
while the ATS is yet to come up with conclusive evidence in the Malegaon case,
it has darkly hinted the involvement of the accused in other incidents, for
instance the bombing of Samjhauta Express. But it forgot to do its homework
before levelling this outrageous allegation. The IB, as this paper has reported,
already has conclusive evidence of the SIMI's involvement in the bombing of
Samjhauta Express. This only proves the point that the ATS has a political
agenda and must be treated as no more than an extension of the ruling party's
dirty tricks department. Tragically, its follies will dim the image of similar
units in other States and reinforce the popular view that our criminal justice
system is in a shambles.
