Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 10, 2008
In a move fraught with danger, the Congress-dominated
Central and Maharashtra Governments have unleashed a sinister plot to undermine
the institutions of the police and the defence forces. These two grids literally
hold the nation together, particularly in these troubled times when internal
and external threats savage the citizenry so remorselessly.
By using the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad
to target, arrest and malign certain retired and serving Army officers, whose
only crime is alleged or real links with reputed nationalist families like
the Savarkars, the UPA is deliberately demoralising and communalising the
security agencies. If honourable and nationalist Hindus serving in the armed
forces can be subjected to witch-hunts, then all serving police and defence
officers will automatically become conscious of their personal religious affiliations
in a manner that could override the solidarity for which the all-India services
are justly renowned. This will corrode morale and efficiency, to say the least.
At the risk of sounding offensive, this could
be viewed as the UPA's revenge against the services on at least two counts.
One was the firm refusal of both the police and the defence services to furnish
the UPA Government with religion-based data on serving personnel. The second
was the protest by the police and the three service chiefs against the recommendations
of the Sixth Pay Commission. While the police had to pipe down, the service
chiefs have proved difficult to tame.
A third reason is that senior Army officers
have become vocal on strategic issues, and like some foreign office experts,
have reservations about the peculiar twist given by the UPA to India's foreign
policy. Besides an unwarranted proximity to America, which resulted in the
dubious nuclear deal, there is an inexplicable indifference to the plight
of Iraq, coldness towards Iran, and a complete inability to assess the dangerous
implications of increased US-Pakistan tensions on the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border. India's interests in Nepal have been compromised; and political hype
against China upgraded for no obtainable end. It seems likely that senior
defence officers have made their reservations known to the Government.
Certainly there has been a great vengefulness
in the Maharashtra Government's leaks about the so-called confessions of some
accused persons. First, it claimed to have made arrests on the basis of confessions
made by Sadhvi Pragya (who must have been targeted after she made waves during
the Amarnath agitation in Jammu earlier this year). Then it admitted it had
nothing tangible on her and submitted her to narcoanalysis, polygraph, lie
detector, et al, and claimed that her skill in meditation had enabled her
to dodge its trickery in trying to make her incriminate herself! BJP president
Rajnath Singh has rightly accused the Maharashtra Government and police of
harassing the Sadhvi, as no terrorist has been subjected to so many tests.
Currently, Lt Col Srikant Purohit is the focus
of media leaks regarding his 'confessions'. According to these fables, the
37-year-old officer planned the conspiracy and provided the RDX for the September
29 Malegaon attack which killed six persons. More serving officers could be
indicted for their association with Lt Col Purohit.
The armed forces, however, in sharp contrast
to the manner in which they were caught unawares in the cooked-up Samba spy
case, have decided to refute these baseless allegations against serving and
retired officers. They have, anonymously of course, countered that Lt Col
Purohit could not have been involved in planning the blast and supplying RDX
as no Army unit, let alone an officer, has access to this explosive. The RDX
used for manufacturing shells is directly handled by ordnance factories and
an officer working for Army Intelligence cannot access it.
More pertinently, Lt Col Purohit was studying
Arabic at the Army Education Corps, Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, for the last
18 months. He thus completely lacked the mobility required to plot or procure
RDX or any weapon, as alleged. Furthermore, as he was deputed by Army Intelligence
to learn Arabic, it was doubtless so he could do cyber-intelligence on Arabic
Websites reputedly used to transmit messages to jihadi cells in India and
other places. An officer working fulltime to legitimately combat terror had
no logical reason to plot to kill innocent Muslim civilians. Not unless the
ATS can prove that he is a psychopath.
It seems fairly certain that he has been selected
for indictment because of his association with Abhinav Bharat, an organisation
linked with Veer Savarkar's family. This is an asinine, yet vicious, attempt
to taint all nationalist Hindus as communalists, and to tell Muslims in the
States going to the polls that the ruling Congress will delink Islam from
the jihad tormenting India by guzzling hundreds of innocent lives every year.
That is why, while exulting in the treatment
meted out to Sadhvi Pragya and our defence officers, the Congress has rushed
to condemn ABVP activists for spitting upon SAR Geelani, an accused in the
terrorist attack on Parliament House at a recent seminar. Sadly for the Congress,
this was terribly ill-timed.
Last Friday, Kerala Police informed the Kerala
High Court that it had recovered DVDs featuring SAR Geelani from the homes
of youth who had participated in the August 15, 2006 SIMI camp at Panayikkulam
near Aluva (The Pioneer, 8 November 2008). This establishes a link between
the notorious SIMI and Geelani, much-feted by lib-left jholawallahs and invited
to speak at Delhi University on 'Communalism, Fascism and Democracy: Rhetoric
and Reality.'
The SIMI meet reportedly prepared the schedule
for the training camp held at Vagamon, Idukki, which Gujarat Police claims
made preparations for the Ahmedabad bombings. The Kerala Police took five
of the 15 participants into custody, but had to release them after high-level
political intervention. They are now belatedly searching for possible links
between the Panayikkulam camp case accused and those behind the attack on
Parliament House.
The prevalence of terror modules in Kerala
was accidentally exposed when two jihadis from the State were killed in an
encounter with security forces in Jammu & Kashmir in October. Some accused
in the Panayikkulam camp case have links with persons arrested for ties with
the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. Lt Col Purohit was developing the skills
to detect and unearth these terror modules; he did not need to indulge in
pointless violence to save or avenge the nation.
