[Reader-list] Behind the Batla House shootout - Praveen Swami

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

Just too amusing, Aartiji. When the fact is too hard to digest, people start
deviating towards excuses and encouraging rumours. It for sure tells us how
brilliantly Praveen Swami has exposed the propaganda of those few
"jhollahwaalahs" working at the behest of politicians and their bosses and
enjoying all perks.

It is just too disturbing to see those "few individuals" coming to the
rescue of Terrorists and their dastardly acts. Where are those people now ?
It would have been interesting if similar words would have come against a
Terrorist like Yasin Malik; who has suddenly become a Godly figure for all
those "few" sitting here in the capital. Maybe, remaining in his shadow
benifits their stomach and pockets; so what if he is a terrorist or
anti-national. Wah !

You trust street rumours more than an intellectual piece which has been
written on the basis of assimilated report from intelligence sources,
networking and hard research. Do I need say more on your so proper and
honest "verdict" ? After all, Its Aarti Sethi ji who has spoken those golden
words.

Though I'm no one to defend Praveen Swami; but the fact always remains a
fact. His exceptional - blunt 'on the face' articles on Kashmir, Terrorism,
Intelligence etc. are in no comparison to other writers or journalists and
experts. He exposes them openly. I know it pains you to see how such a
respected commentator argues in favour of the encounter. Its just alright.
Chill :-)

Note of Caution - There is a political game behind this tirade against the
Police on this encounter. Common citizens,  genuine media and even genuine
activists for that matter shouldn't get entangled in this trap which is in
reality to garner votes.

I hereby attach only a few letters published in response to this honest
article -

Opinion <http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/11/05hdline.htm> - Letters to the
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* Batla House shootout *

It was heartening to read Praveen Swami's analysis of the Jamia Nagar
shootout (October 10). Newspapers and commentators, trying to be too
politically correct, have been spewing a lot of nonsense on this issue,
sullying the dead inspector's name. Rather than confronting the real threat
of home-grown jihad these tactics further muddle the issue and foster enmity
in the community. Policemen who are operating under the most trying and
unenviable circumstances will be demoralised if the media castigate them for
not doing enough or accuse them of overzealous action. Some restraint on the
media glare is needed to let the policeman do his job.

*Arvind Narayan, *

*Mauritius *
 * * *

The death of an honest and brave police officer at the hands of terrorists
is unfortunate. What is more unfortunate is that some irresponsible and
narrow-minded individuals like to see this as the death of some "innocent"
kid at the hands of scheming police officers.

A terrorist is a terrorist, irrespective of the religion he follows.
Belonging to the "majority" or "minority" community does not make his sin
any smaller.

*Narendra A. *

*Bangalore *
 * * *

The security forces, even without negative publicity, are fighting with one
hand tied behind their back. The fact that a dedicated officer became a
martyr hardly holds any significance for the so-called human rights
activists and an equally sensation-mongering media. Strong political and
public support alone can wipe out this menace. The other pressing necessity
is inculcating basic human values in our children and society.

*R.Unni Krishnan, *

*Kochi
*

Love*
*Aditya Raj Kaul*
*


On 10/12/08, Aarti Sethi <aarti.sethi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Surely you jest Aditya? I am sure you are fully aware of the word on the
> street about Pravin Swami. The fact that he has anything to say about the
> encounter at all should alert us to the fact that it is absolutely fake. No
> more evidence is needed, than that Pravin the great expert hath spoken.
> Clearly his bosses in dark and mysetrious places are feeling the heat being
> generated by the volume of questions, and so like always, he has been
> instructed to perform his usual ventroloquist act.
>
> regards
> Aarti
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Aditya Raj Kaul <kauladityaraj at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> An interesting piece by one of the most renowned expert on internal
>> security
>> and terrorism, Praveen Swami. It highlights the major areas which have
>> been
>> missed by those campaigning hard to convert this encounter or at least
>> portray it as fake one. Hope they plan a better theory or else revise
>> their
>> 'Wonderland' stories. Have a look at 'The Hindu' column below which came
>> out
>> in today's newspaper.
>>
>> Love
>> Aditya Raj Kaul
>>
>>
>>
>> *Behind the Batla House shootout
>> * Praveen Swami *
>>
>> Charges that the Jamia Nagar encounter was fake belong in the Wonderland.
>>
>> *
>>
>> "Sometimes," said the Queen in Lewis Carroll's *Alice in Wonderland*,
>> "I've
>> believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
>>
>> Ever since last month's encounter in New Delhi's Jamia Nagar, critics have
>> been claiming that the two men killed by the police were innocent
>> students,
>> not Indian Mujahideen terrorists. A number of well-meaning commentators
>> and
>> politicians have expressed concern over the encounter. Few seem to have
>> paused to wonder if there was, in fact, anything mysterious about the
>> shootout. If it was indeed fake, the story would read something like this:
>> Hoping to redeem their anti-terrorism credentials and whip up anti-Muslim
>> paranoia, the Delhi police shot dead two innocent Muslims. For some
>> reason,
>> though, they left a third innocent Muslim, Mohammad Saif, alive to tell
>> the
>> tale. Either because of incompetence or to get rid of an inconvenient
>> honest
>> officer, depending on who is telling the story — the Delhi police also
>> killed one of their own. They also shot another officer, but let him live.
>>
>> A riveting fiction? The truth about Batla House is, in comparison,
>> mundane.
>>
>> When inspector Mohan Chand Sharma walked through the door of the flat
>> where
>> he was to die, all he knew was that he was looking for a man with two
>> missing front teeth. Soon after the Gujarat bombings, a Bharuch resident
>> contacted the police to report that the vehicles used as car bombs in
>> Ahmedabad had been parked by his tenant. Gujarat Crime Branch Deputy
>> Commissioner Abhay Chudasma had little to go on, bar one small clue: the
>> mobile phone used by the tenant to communicate with the landlord. It
>> turned
>> out that the phone went silent after the Ahmedabad bombings.
>>
>> Based on the interrogation of suspects, Gujarat police investigators
>> determined that the cell phone was one of the five used by the
>> perpetrators
>> between July 7 and 26 — the day of the serial bombings. They learned that
>> the perpetrators had observed rigorous communication security procedures,
>> calling these numbers only from public telephones. Between July 16 and
>> July
>> 22, the investigators learned, another of the five Gujarat phones had been
>> used in the Jamia Nagar area. This phone had received just five calls, all
>> from public phones at Jamia Nagar. Then, on July 24, the phone became
>> active
>> again in Ahmedabad.
>>
>> The investigators also found evidence of a second link between the
>> Ahmedabad
>> bombings and the Jamia Nagar area. On July 19, the Bharuch cell phone
>> received a call from Mumbai, made from an eastern Uttar Pradesh number —
>> the
>> sole break in the communication-security procedure. Immediately after
>> this,
>> a call was made from the eastern U.P. phone to a number at Jamia Nagar,
>> registered to local resident Mohammad Atif Amin. The authorities mounted a
>> discreet watch on his phone but decided not to question him in the hope
>> that
>> he would again be contacted by the perpetrators.
>>
>> Mumbai police crime branch chief Rakesh Maria made the next breakthrough
>> last month, when his investigators held Afzal Usmani, a long-standing
>> lieutenant of ganglord-turned-jihadist Riyaz Bhatkal. From Usmani, the
>> investigators learned that top commander 'Bashir' and his assault squad
>> left
>> Ahmedabad on July 26 for a safe house at Jamia Nagar. Armed with this
>> information, the investigators came to believe that Atif Amin either
>> provided Bashir shelter or the two were one and the same person. Inspector
>> Sharma was asked to settle the issue.
>>  'Vodaphone salesman'
>>
>> Sub-inspector Dharmindar Kumar was given the unhappy task of trudging up
>> the
>> stairs in the sweltering heat, searching for Bashir. Dressed in a tie and
>> shirt, just like other members of Sharma's team, Kumar pretended to be a
>> salesman for Vodaphone. At the door of Amin's flat, he heard noises — and
>> called his boss.
>>
>> According to head constable Balwant Rana, who was by Sharma's side, the
>> two
>> men knocked on the front door, identifying themselves as police officers.
>> There was no response. Then, the officers walked down an 'L' shaped
>> corridor
>> which led to a second door. This door was unlocked. Sharma and Rana, as
>> they
>> entered, were fired upon from the front of and to the right of the door.
>> When the rest of the special team, armed only with small arms, went in to
>> support Sharma and Rana, two terrorists ran out through the now-unguarded
>> front door. Saif wisely locked himself up in a toilet.
>>
>> It takes little to see that Sharma's team made several tactical errors.
>> However, as anyone who has actually faced hostile fire will testify,
>> combat
>> tends not to be orderly. In the United States or Europe, a Batla
>> House-style
>> operation would have been carried out by a highly trained assault unit
>> equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. Given their
>> resources
>> and training, Sharma and his men did as well as could be expected.
>>
>> Judging by Sharma's injuries, as recorded by doctors at the Holy Family
>> Hospital in New Friend's Colony and later re-examined at the All-India
>> Institute of Medical Sciences' Trauma Centre, he was fired at from two
>> directions. One bullet hit him in the left shoulder and exited through the
>> left upper arm; the other hit the right side of the abdomen, exiting
>> through
>> the hip. The investigators believe that the abdomen wound was inflicted
>> with
>> Amin's weapon and the shoulder hit, by Mohammad Sajid.
>>
>> Much has been made of a newspaper photograph which shows that Sharma's
>> shirt
>> was not covered in blood, with some charging that it demonstrates he was
>> shot in the back. Forensic experts, however, note that bleeding from
>> firearms injuries takes place through exit wounds — not, as in bad pop
>> films, at the point of entry. In the photograph, signs of a bullet having
>> ripped through Sharma's shirt are evident on his visible shoulder; so,
>> too,
>> is evidence of the profuse bleeding from the back.
>>
>> In some sense, the allegations levelled over the encounter tell us more
>> about the critics than the event itself. In part, the allegations have
>> been
>> driven by poor reporting and confusion — the product, more often than not,
>> by journalists who have not followed the Indian Mujahideen story. More
>> important, though, the controversy was driven by the Muslim religious
>> right-wing whose myth-making, as politician Arif Mohammad Khan recently
>> pointed out, has passed largely unchallenged.
>>
>> In a recent article, the University of Delaware's Director of Islamic
>> Studies, Muqtedar Khan, lashed out at the "intellectually dishonest"
>> representatives of Muslims who "live in denial." "They first deny that
>> there
>> is such a thing as jihadi terrorism," Dr. Khan noted, "resorting to
>> conspiracy theories blaming every act of jihadi violence either on Israel,
>> the U.S. or India. Then they argue that unjust wars by these three nations
>> [in Palestine, Iraq and Kashmir] are the primary cause for jihadi
>> violence;
>> a phenomenon whose very existence they have already denied."
>>
>> It is easy to rip apart the pseudo-facts that drove the claim that the
>> Jamia
>> Nagar encounter was fake — or that the Indian Mujahideen is a fiction.
>> Much
>> political work, though, is needed to drain the swamps of denial and deceit
>> in which the lies have bred.
>>
>> *Link - http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/10/stories/2008101053621100.htm
>> *
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