Akshardham: A search for truth

Published : Oct 24, 2003 00:00 IST

BATTERED by allegations that it fabricated evidence to nail suspects allegedly involved in the terrorist assault on the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, the Gujarat Police has begun a spirited fight-back. Gujarat Police officials claim to have new evidence that establishes that their account of what happened at Akshardham in 2002 is not actually contradicted by revelations made by the Jammu and Kashmir Police in September. The fate of half a dozen suspects, and the hopes of the victims' families for justice, hinges on just how credible this new evidence finally proves.

Early in September, the Jammu and Kashmir Police arrested Chand Usman Khan, a motor-mechanic-turned Lashkar-e-Toiba activist who is alleged to have played a key role in the Akshardham attack. Khan, who lived in Anantnag but hailed from the Uttar Pradesh town of Bareilly, told his interrogators that he had travelled from Srinagar to Ahmedabad with two fidayeen (suicide-squad members). His account seemed to blow apart Gujarat Police claims that five local Muslims, led by Ahmedabad cleric Mufti Abdul Qayoom, played a key role in planning the attack and providing shelter to its executors.

For the past fortnight, however, Khan has been in the custody of the Gujarat Police and his story has changed on significant points of emphasis. The Gujarat Police now says it has documents which show that Khan did not actually travel from Jammu and Kashmir to Ahmedabad with the two fidayeen. Rather, his companions, known so far only by their aliases, Ali Ahmad and Gulsher Ali, were tasked only with ensuring that the weapons Khan was carrying reached their intended destination. The actual task of transporting the fidayeen was left to Yasin Butt, the Lashkar-e-Toiba operative who first recruited Khan and remains at large.

According to Gujarat Police investigators, Khan reached Bareilly with Ahmad and Ali on September 18, 2002, two days earlier than he had claimed in the custody of the Jammu and Kashmir Police. There he found Butt waiting for him at a pre-arranged rendezvous point, the Prakash Hospital, along with the two terrorists who actually carried out the attack. Butt left immediately afterwards with the fidayeen, though the precise mode of his travel to Gujarat is yet to become clear. Once in Ahmedabad, the fidayeen were harboured by a local cleric, Mufti Abdul Qayoom. Qayoom and four associates, acting in groups carefully kept secret from each other, helped the fidayeen plan the attack and carry out preliminary reconnaissance.

By the time Khan actually arrived in Ahmedabad, the Gujarat Police say, the Akshardham plan was already in place. Khan, who had travelled to Ahmedabad by train with Ali Ahmad, was told to book a room for three at the Gulshan Guest House. Although Khan said he waited outside the Akshardham temple on September 23 while the two fidayeen went inside to study its layout, temple records show the gates were sealed on that day. The interior reconnaissance had been carried out days earlier, and Akshardham was chosen from among a long list of targets in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. What the fidayeen actually did with Khan, the Gujarat Police say, was to locate a pile of construction rubble stacked between Gates 3 and 4 of the temple, which allowed them to bypass its front gate. The next morning Khan was sent home, his mission complete.

Later that afternoon, Gujarat Police officials say, Qayoom accompanied the two fidayeen - whom Khan knew as Shakeel and Abdullah and the cleric knew as Murtaza and Ashraf - to the Haji Shakki-ni-Masjid, near the Char Wat area of Ahmedabad's old-city. After attending afternoon prayers, the duo asked for special blessings, invoking the divine for success, protection and entry to paradise if they attained martyrdom. Qayoom, the Gujarat Police say, told the two that they needed to disclose their real names and addresses to ensure that they would be correctly received at the gates of Paradise. The fidayeen then identified themselves as Hafiz Yasir of Lahore and Mohammad Farooq of Rawalpindi.

Before launching the attack, Qayoom gave the fidayeen two letters, stating that the purpose of their attack was to avenge the February-March 2002 communal pogrom in Gujarat. According to tests carried out by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Hyderabad, the handwriting on the letters indeed tallies with that of Qayoom, while the ink used matches that of a pen found on the body of one of the fidayeen. Two members of Qayoom's cell, Adam Ajmeri and Ayub Khan, entered Akshardham through the main gate, and waited along the road to the temple to ensure the attack began as planned. The Gujarat Police believes the presence of the duo saved pilgrims along the road from being fired at in the first flush of the assault.

Many questions, however, remain. For one, it is far from clear just why Butt went to Bareilly in the first place when he could have easily travelled from Jammu to Ahmedabad by train and instructed Khan to follow with the weapons at a later date. Then, the welter of code-names and multiple cells used suggests the Lashkar-e-Toiba wished to ensure what intelligence officials describe as "cut-outs" existed between each component of its attack team. This tactic is used to ensure that if one unit is compromised or penetrated by enemy intelligence, other elements of the cell remain secure. Yet, Khan was allowed to meet the fidayeen for no particular reason. Indeed, his presence during the final reconnaissance is incomprehensible, since the task had allegedly been executed ably by Ajmeri days earlier.

"I don't have ready-made answers to all these questions," acknowledges Gujarat Police Detection of Crime Branch chief D.G. Vanjara. "In the real world, unlike in a crime novel or film, plans are often not made in a completely rational way and many things go wrong that necessitate plans of action that are hard to understand. The whole truth will have to await the arrest of all the suspects concerned." Sadly, a string of recent events have made it possible that the full truth may never be known. Abu Zubair, the Lashkar-e-Toiba commander believed to have ordered the operation, died in an encounter near Shopian in late September. Mohammad Zahid Chaudhuri, the Lashkar-e-Toiba commander who first led investigators to Khan, died in an earlier encounter with the Border Security Force (BSF). Butt and other minor suspects, of course, remain - offering hope that the Akshardham controversy may yet be settled.

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