Easy target

The scene of the blast at the dargah in Ajmer.-COURTESY: RAJASTHAN PATRIKA

The Muslim community feels vindicated as fresh arrests in bomb blast cases reveal the involvement of Hindu right-wing groups too.

THE low-intensity blasts on the premises of the Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti dargah in Ajmer, Rajasthan, on October 11, 2007, were considered a dastardly form of terrorist attack, coming as they did after the Mecca Masjid blasts in Hyderabad in May the same year. This was the third attack on a Muslim religious spot since the serial blasts in the vicinity of a mosque in Malegaon, Maharashtra, in September 2006. Three persons were killed and 17 injured. Predictably, Islamist groups became the suspects and local Muslim clerics were taken in for questioning. However, with fresh arrests in the past year and a half, investigators have reason now to believe that Hindu right-wing groups were very much involved not in one but several blasts across more than one State, and the perpetrators belonged to different parts of the country.

With the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the State intelligence bureaus and the State police forces now conducting joint operations, more names are spilling out. Political parties have stepped up their demand for a more systematic and coordinated probe into the blasts, given the spread and reach of the accused. In a statement issued on July 11, the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) urged the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre to fast-track the blast cases. It said that the interrogation of some responsible RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh] functionaries in Uttar Pradesh on their links with Hindu terror groups is a serious development. That RSS pracharaks are suspected to be linked to such elements cannot be put down to individual aberrations but it is precisely the hatred filled irrational propaganda and inculcation of rabid anti-minorityism by the RSS which is responsible....

The specific role of certain RSS leaders emerged after Ashok Varshney, head of its Kanpur unit, and Ashok Beri, a member of its national executive, were taken in for questioning in July for harbouring Devender Gupta, one of the accused in the Ajmer blasts case. They facilitated Gupta's stay in Lucknow and Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh. The SIM cards procured from the mobile handset that was used to trigger the blast provided the clues that led to the arrest of Gupta. The procurer of the mobile phone and the SIM cards, Vishnu Patidar, was arrested from Shahjahanpur in Madhya Pradesh.

The first arrests in the case were made in April when the Rajasthan Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) took Devender Gupta and Chandrasekhar Borad for questioning. A third detention was made in May with the arrest of Lokesh Sharma. The ATS collected statements and conducted narcoanalysis and brain-mapping tests on Lt Colonel S.P. Purohit, who was linked to a Hindu organisation called Abhinav Bharat. He is supposed to have revealed that one of the accused in the Malegaon blast, Dayanand Pandey, had planned the Ajmer blasts as well.

Although the Ajmer blasts were not as severe in intensity as those that were triggered on the Samjhauta Express in February 2007 or at the Malegaon mosque, they left a scar on the city that houses the world-famous Sufi shrine, as it was an attack on the syncretic traditions of the country.

Professor M. Hasan, a retired geographer and an expert member of the Rajiv Gandhi Social Security Mission, told Frontline from Jodhpur that the police, never immune from political interference, always drew hasty conclusions when a blast occurred. For instance, he said, he and a few others were not allowed to organise peace meetings after the Jaipur blasts in May 2008 in which 60 people were killed. He said some senior police officers were hell bent on creating rifts, and that sections of the media also played a damning role by declaring a group of Muslim doctors, who had been arrested, guilty.

Having seen the way the Hindutva groups behave, I am not surprised by these latest revelations. They are strong and resourceful. If Pravin Togadia [international general secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad] can come to Rajasthan, distribute trishuls openly and give training to his cohorts to attack members of minority communities, it indicates that the Sangh Parivar's ways are violent, he said. Hasan said the notion that madrassas were breeding grounds for terrorism was sown in the minds of people. He said there was no comparison between the madrassas in India and those in Afghanistan. There is a perception globally that Muslims are violent. After the latest revelations, I feel somewhat relieved. Patriotism is not the domain of the majority community alone. Muslims as such are very cautious when such arrests are made as there is always some politics, and being an academic, I really don't arrive at conclusions that early, he added.

Salim Engineer, an associate professor at the Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, who is also the president of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, told Frontline that his organisation had maintained that the blasts were intended to defame and demonise the Muslim community. The impression created was that Muslims had not spared even their own shrines. He said despite the Jamaat's appeal that investigators needed to look beyond the obvious, in both the instances only Muslims had been rounded up, and kept in detention for periods ranging from one day to a month. We asked the police why they were so prejudiced even in their suspicions, he said.

The professor pointed out that fake beards and skull caps were found, along with arms and tonnes of explosives, at the site of the 2006 Nanded bomb blast. After the Kanpur blasts in August 2008, which happened while bombs were being assembled, two persons, including a Bajrang Dal activist, was killed, but young Muslim men were rounded up immediately. More than a 1,000 youth in the country are behind bars merely on the grounds of suspicion. What will they make of their lives even if they are released several years later? he asked. Whenever faced with lack of evidence, he said, the police would first link the accused with SIMI [Students Islamic Movement of India] and then book them under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. After the Ajmer blasts, he said, maulvis and madrassa teachers were arrested and kept in illegal detention for around 25 days. It was Ramzan time but no attention was given to that, he said. The same pattern followed after the blasts in Jaipur, and more than 1,000 people were interrogated and around 50 persons taken into custody. Finally, 13 persons were charged with unlawful activities. It has been more than two years now, but the trial has not begun yet. Terrorism means Muslim. They have forced this understanding on the Indian public. It is ironical that following the latest revelations of Hindutva terror, the media, especially the vernacular media, never use this word. Instead they use the word aaropi, or accused. If in the Ajmer blast case the police rounded up clerics, in the Jaipur blasts case, professionals were picked up. It is only the Left that is really committed to the anti-communal agenda and it is the best option for the country, Engineer said. He pointed out that despite clear evidence emerging from Nanded or Kanpur or the latest round of arrests and the emerging links, the investigation process was slow in comparison with the actions taken when minorities were involved. It was unfortunate that the Congress was diffident about taking action against the RSS for fear of being branded anti-Hindu, he said.

Paikar Farooque, a lawyer in the Rajasthan High Court who represents some of the accused in the Jaipur blast case, was more candid in his observations. He said that in almost all terror-related cases, the police succumbed to political pressure. Earlier, they used to arrest mullahs and maulvis; when they found they had no role, they started targeting the educated Muslim youth, he said. Farooque, who is also the convener of the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights, said people arrested for their association with SIMI were booked on the basis of statements by tea vendors or restaurant owners.

Even illiterate labourers were arrested on suspicion of having links with SIMI, he said. He said Muslims were being harassed. The general public equate Muslims with terrorism, he said, citing an instance of how a senior police officer threatened to plant recoveries on a college professor when the latter asked for evidence in the Jaipur blast case.

There is no direct evidence against the accused in the Jaipur blast case but there is much to go by in what has been recovered in Malegaon, Kanpur, Goa and Ajmer, he said. He scoffed at the manner in which the police discovered some 20 unexploded bombs hanging from trees in Surat in July 2008 and attributed them to some Islamist organisation. It is clear ploy to create communal disturbances and defame Muslims, he said.