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

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

Javed bhai,

Aadab. The discussion was on the authenticity of the encounter; which as
clearly visible is being deviated to post-encounter period now. So, I
suppose we can only go ahead when all agree that Encounter was no doubt
genuine and bravely fought by our martyr Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma.
Thanks for your silent support :-)

Now, coming to your queries there after. I consider Praveen Swami an
excellent writer and intelligence expert of Terrorism and to some extent
also on Kashmir. However, this does not mean, I'm there to defend him every
time. So, maybe you can direct these questions to him on his e-mail or else
to "The Hindu" newspaper; which was the lone newspaper to have the guts to
publish the truth so blunt apart from a few hindi dailies.

Since, The terrorists who have been arrested from Jamia or elsewhere are
lodged in a sensitive prison inside Asia's largest prison; you do have some
security concerns to address. At the same time, they are not VIP's on some
tour to the Jail, that your ANYONE can meet them ANYTIME. There are a few
visits allowed per week to certain amount of people including lawyers and
they need to take prior permission. If there were problems faced in meeting
them, its very unfortunate; and I think this is more so an administrative
problem.

Even I was arrested sometime back and lodged inside a Jail; even I wasn't
permitted to a lawyer or to directly interact with relatives personally for
hours. This surely is a serious concern and needs to be addressed. Its a
shame that Govt. doesn't take steps in this regard.

Agreeing to the above, at the same time we can't take this out of bounds to
compare this with Human Rights, Biased Government and anti-state rhetoric.
Enough of that crap. Get above all this Drama now.

Prashant Bhushan isn't the loan lawyer; just to fill you up with
information. There a few more, though young and even they faced tough time;
but did manage to meet the terrorists lodged inside the Jail and take
necessary signatures and details from them.

If L-18 hasn't been open to media, then again its a sad story. But, I think
now there is less of Police force around the area and the people are back to
normal routine. Its unfortunate some elements tried to instigate communal
tension in the area. Fortunately, nothing happened.

The questions about India Today, can be best addressed to them. They were
the one's to invite Terrorist Yasin Malik to the India Today Conclave a few
months back,Do I need say more ?

Pravin Swami's information was based on whatever intelligence information
Police shared with media from time to time. To add to this, obviously senior
Journalists and experts no doubt have sources in the Government, Police etc.
This isn't an old news.

Faces of accused is covered for their benefit alone. Don't see a reason why
it bothers you ?

These are simple excuses to just corner the state and the Police for just no
reason. Just to fan imaginary anti-Muslim wave, all this is being done. I
made rest of the things amply clear in my last e-mail; please do go through
it.

Journalism these days is all about biased editorials, bought news articles
and market. How do you expect a Terrorist Yasin Malik to get so much
attention in media then ? Give me a break too Sir, most media groups are
hell bent on proving this encounter as fake; which till now they have failed
to. How will they possibly hide the truth ? Brave M.C. Sharma did a fabulous
job.

You have seen Amar Singh and others. Who is the next politician hunting for
votes ?

This is all about Muslim Appeasement. On 14th Sept. Muslim clerics are
meeting to disuss this sudden so called Muslim terrorising thing.

Note: The PM himself has said no to probe. What more can you do ? Arundhati
Roy may pose for shutter bugs by visiting her friends in Jamia; but that
won't help. It just exposes their corrupt mindset and divisive policies.
Instigating Muslims is what they can do most, only to widen the gap. How
will this result in PEACE ?

Wake Up !!!!

Aditya Raj Kaul



On 10/12/08, Javed <javedmasoo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Aditya
> I would simply like to ask you one question (since you consider
> Praveen Swamy as a great journalist and renowned expert of security
> and all):
>
> The police is not allowing any one (and I mean ANYONE) to meet the
> accused boys arrested from Batla House - they did not allow the
> lawyer, nor the relatives of the accused until the Delhi high court
> gave a judgment that they should be allowed to meet for one hour. Then
> the relatives and the lawyer Prashant Bhushan could meet only once for
> a few minutes. The police also did not allow any journalist or TV crew
> to enter the L-18 flat until now. In such a situation, how can
> somebody like Praveen Swamy (or Mihir Srivastava of India Today, who
> promptly took a cover-story interview) have such a deep access to the
> secrets of Special Cell? Did they find all this out by some
> sting-operation? Or are they above law? Or are they the mouthpieces of
> the Police? Or are they copywriting all these stories and feeding to
> the state?
>
> The 3 accused were presented to the media with their faces hidden in
> Arab scarves. They were presented to the court (for extension of
> remand) with muffled faces. But their faces were exhibited openly for
> INDIA TODAY cover story! Wow, is this country being run by Prabhu
> Chawla?
>
> Give us a break Mr. Praveen Swami and Prabhu Chawla. Or at least show
> us the "Mind of the Terror" from Orissa and Bangalore too, if you are
> the upholders of unbiased journalism.
>
>
> J
>
>
> 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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