[Reader-list] The Mirror Explodes

[Javed]

hindu terror: The Mirror Explodes
Hindu terror is a reality, yet India refuses to utter its name

(Smruti Koppikar, Debarshi Dasgupta, Snigdha Hasan)

Unfinished stories, goes an old idiom in Ajmer, find their denouement
in Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s shrine. Perhaps, unfinished
investigations do too. Two-and-a-half years after low-intensity blasts
ripped apart the courtyard of the centuries-old shrine, the Rajasthan
police arrested three men—Devendra Gupta, Vishnu Prasad and
Chandrashekhar Patidar. Gupta, an RSS worker, was suspected to have
bought the mobile phone and SIM card that triggered off the October
2007 blast in which three were killed. Till their arrest on April 30
this year, the story narrated by the investigators, lapped up by the
establishment and reiterated in large sections of the media was that
the Ajmer blast was the handiwork of jehadi terrorists.

The SIM-mobile phone-detonated bombs are similar in Ajmer and Mecca
Masjid blasts, with RDX-TNT mix in proportion used by the Indian army.

The one troubling question—would jehadis target Muslim devout at a
dargah?—can have complicated answers, as the body count at Lahore’s
Data Ganj Baksh would testify. But in India, the question wasn’t even
deemed worthy of being asked as a reasonable line of inquiry. The
needle of suspicion remained firmly and automatically fixed on Islamic
terrorists—young men from the community were detained at various
stages of the investigation and interrogated at length—until the trail
finally led to Gupta and pointed to radical Hindu nationalist groups
instead. Says Rajasthan Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Kapil Garg: “We
have arrested some people of that religion (Hinduism) and we’re dead
sure we’re on the right track.”

In Hyderabad too, the CBI team believes it is on the right track,
finally, in the Mecca Masjid bomb blasts case. Four men belonging to
radical Hindu groups were arrested this May for triggering a
high-intensity bomb that went off in the masjid complex in May 2007,
killing 14 and injuring some 50. At that time, the Hyderabad police
had said it was most likely the work of the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami
(HuJI), backed by local logistical support; some 26 Muslim men were
picked up, interrogated, forced to confess and detained for up to six
months.

The terror trail in India changed after the Maharashtra ATS’s
investigations into the 2008 Malegaon blasts, which alerted them to
Abhinav Bharat.

The story followed this script till the CBI found evidence to the
contrary: the SIM card-and-mobile phone-detonated explosives packed in
metal tubes were strikingly similar to the Ajmer blasts contraption.
Tellingly, both bombs are believed to have contained a deadly mix of
RDX and TNT, in proportions often used by the Indian army. CBI
director Ashwani Kumar told the media that an activist named Sunil
Joshi “played a key role in orchestrating the Ajmer blast... and a set
of mobile SIM cards that had been used in activation of the
bomb-triggers in the Mecca Masjid blast was used again in the Ajmer
blast”.

Around the same time, officers of the National Investigating Agency
(NIA) filed a chargesheet in a Panjim court accusing 11 people, all
Hindus and members of the ultra-right-wing Sanathan Sanstha, of
masterminding and executing the October 2009 Margao blasts that killed
the two people ferrying the explosives to a local festival.
Investigation in Pune’s German Bakery blast this February has run
aground after the initial suspicion, detaining and interrogation of
suspected Muslim men, some believed to be members of “sleeper cells of
jehadi groups” or the Indian Mujahideen (IM). When Abdul Samad was
arrested last month, the Maharashtra ATS actively encouraged the
understanding that he was the man caught on CCTV cameras in the bakery
that night. However, Samad was never charged with the blast and
subsequently let off in other cases too.

Malegaon Blasts II: September 29, 2008
Deadly Bike The bomb here was mounted on a Hero Honda (Reuters, From
Outlook July 19, 2010 Issue)

    Malegaon Blasts-I
    September 8, 2006
    37 dead

        * Initial arrests: Arrested include Salman Farsi, Farooq Iqbal
Makhdoomi, Raees Ahmed, Noorul Huda Samsudoha and Shabbir Batterywala.
        * Later revelation: Suspicion now rests on Hindu terrorists
because of the 2008 blasts.

    Samjhauta Express Blasts
    February 18, 2007
    68 dead, mostly Pakistanis

        * Initial suspicion: LeT and JeM were blamed. Those arrested
included Pakistani national Azmat Ali.
        * Later revelation: Police have seen the evidence trail lead
to right-wing Hindu activists. Investigators claim the triggering
mechanism for the Mecca masjid blast three months later was similar to
the one used here. Police are looking for RSS pracharaks Sandeep Dange
and Ramji.

    Mecca Masjid Blast
    May 18, 2007
    14 dead

        * Initial arrests: Around 80 Muslims detained for questioning
and 25 arrested. Several have now been acquitted, including Ibrahim
Junaid, Shoaib Jagirdar, Imran Khan and Mohammed Adul Kaleem.
        * Later revelation: In June 2010 the CBI announced a cash
reward of Rs 10 lakh for information on the two accused, Sandeep Dange
and Ramchandra Kalsangra. Lokesh Sharma arrested.

    Ajmer Sharif Blast
    October 11, 2007
    3 dead

        * Initial arrests: HuJI, LeT blamed. Those arrested include
Abdul Hafiz Shamim, Khushibur Rahman, Imran Ali.
        * Later revelation: In 2010, Rajasthan ATS arrests Devendra
Gupta, Chandrashekhar and Vishnu Prasad Patidar. Accused Sunil Joshi,
who was killed weeks before the blast, is believed to have been a key
planner.

    Thane Cinema Blast
    June 4, 2008

        * Affiliated to Hindu Janjagruti Samiti and Sanathan Sanstha,
Ramesh Hanumant Gadkari and Mangesh Dinkar Nikam arrested. Blast
planned to oppose the screening of Jodhaa Akbar.

    Kanpur And Nanded Bomb Mishaps
    August 2008

        * Two members of Bajrang Dal—Rajiv Mishra and Bhupinder
Singh—were killed while assembling bombs in Kanpur. In April 2006, N.
Rajkondwar and H. Panse from the same outfit died under similar
circumstances in a bomb-making workshop in Nanded.

    Malegaon Blasts II
    September 29, 2008
    7 dead

        * Initial suspicion: Groups like Indian Mujahideen involved
        * Later revelation: Abhinav Bharat and Rashtriya Jagaran Manch
accused of involvement. Arrested include Pragya Singh Thakur, Lt Col
Srikant Purohit and Swami Amritanand Dev Tirth, also known as Dayanand
Pandey.

    Goa Blasts
    October 16, 2009

        * 2 dead Both accused are members of the Sanathan Sanstha.
Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik were riding a scooter laden with
explosives, which accidentally went off.

Terror trails in India dramatically changed with the Malegaon blasts
investigation in September-October 2008. Led by then Maharashtra ATS
chief Hemant Karkare, who was subsequently killed on the night of
26/11, the investigation pointed to Abhinav Bharat (AB), an
ultra-right-wing Pune-based organisation established in 2005-06, and
its members or affiliates. What Karkare’s teams managed to uncover is
part of recent history and should have become the basis of examining
and monitoring the new phenomenon of Hindutva terror but didn’t.

The Hindutva links to Mecca Masjid, Ajmer and other low-intensity
blasts have been in the public domain for close to two years; the
signs were visible since 2002-03 when an ied found at the Bhopal
railway station was traced back to local Hindutva activists Ramnarayan
Kalsangra and Sunil Joshi. They were questioned, but no evidence was
found. Yet, it prompted Congress leader Digvijay Singh to declare a
Bajrang Dal hand. Later in 2006, there were explosions in the houses
of Hindutva activists in Nanded and Kanpur, where ieds were being
prepared. Through that year, mosques in several towns in
Maharashtra—Purna, Parbhani, Jalna—were rocked by low-intensity
blasts; the Nanded one was meant for a mosque in Aurangabad. Recovered
with a map of Aurangabad were false beards and Muslim male outfits.
That should have been warning enough.

However, till May-June this year, the establishment did not either see
these warning signals or chose to ignore them—except for a brief
two-month period in 2008 when Karkare led the Malegaon probe. Now, it
may be difficult to sustain the denial. “For the last 10 years,
stories about Hindu right-wing violence have been trickling out.
Instead of a systematic investigation, there has been an
event-to-event investigation. The larger story has remained
underinvestigated and under-reported,” says Mumbai advocate and human
rights campaigner Mihir Desai. The CBI is only now seeking directions
from the Union home ministry to see the Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon
and other blasts in conjunction after there has been no conclusive
evidence of the involvement of Islamic groups.

Malegaon 2008 provided the much-needed aperture to review the role of
Hindutva groups. In September that year, eight people were killed and
many injured in a low-intensity blast. The ATS investigation led to
Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, whose motorcycle was used to explode the
bomb, and then to 13 others, including self-styled guru Dayanand
Pandey and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, the first-ever serving
officer to be charged. During interrogation, he had disclosed to ATS
investigators that he had provided the RDX in the Mecca Masjid blasts
too but the ATS was reportedly asked not to make it public as the
Hyderabad police had detained HuJI suspects. The similarity with the
Ajmer Sharif blasts was evident too.

The 4,528-page chargesheet filed in the Malegaon case offers insight
into the grand design of the Abhinav Bharat and its affiliates.
Purohit, the Sadhvi and others had spoken to one another “to avenge
bomb attacks on Hindu shrines” and had engineered a series of blasts
with the larger ambition to establish a “separate Hindu rashtra”.
Abhinav Bharat—whose original avatar was started by Veer Savarkar,
later disbanded, and restarted by Himani Savarkar—was set up to
achieve this ambition. “This organised crime syndicate,” states the
chargesheet, “wanted to adopt a national flag, that is, a solo-themed
saffron flag with a golden border...with an ancient golden torch.”

The one crucial missing link, who has been named by all accused in
custody as “the man”, is Ramnarayan Kalsangra, an expert at assembling
bombs.

Malegaon honoured Karkare by naming a chowk after him—the tribute of a
relieved town to a man they believed would have led them to the truth
about the September 2006 blasts too. Three bombs had gone off that
Friday afternoon near a mosque and cemetery, killing 37 and injuring
100. Typically, Muslim men alleged to be members of the proscribed
SIMI were picked up, interrogated and forced to confess. But the
chargesheet had several loopholes—main accused Mohammed Zahid, though
a SIMI activist, was leading prayers in a village 700 km from Malegaon
that day; conspirator Shabbir Masiuallah had been in police custody a
month before the blasts, police sketches made on the basis of
eyewitness accounts showed clean-shaven men while all accused had kept
beards for years.

The Rajasthan ATS now believes that Devendra Gupta, linked to the
Ajmer blasts, was in touch with AB members through RSS pracharak Sunil
Joshi. Providing the other end of the link, the Maharashtra ATS says
the Sadhvi, enraged when Joshi was killed by suspected SIMI activists
in September 2007, ordered the 2008 Malegaon blast. Joshi has also
been linked to the Samjhauta Express blasts which killed 68 people,
all Pakistanis. The evidence has come from Purohit’s reported phone
conversation as narrated by an unnamed witness.

Yet, the story has several loose ends, most critical among them being
fugitives Ramnarayan Kalsangra, Swami Aseemanand and others.
Kalsangra, investigators in Maharashtra and Rajasthan say, was
introduced to Devendra Gupta by the Sadhvi and is believed to be an
expert at assembling bombs. Finding Kalsangra is crucial since all
accused in custody have named him as “the man”. Ajmer, Mecca Masjid,
Malegaon, Samjhauta Express and several other blasts are clearly part
of a larger story. Only when the CBI puts all the pieces together will
the entire Hindutva terror picture emerge, if at all.

By Smruti Koppikar with Debarshi Dasgupta and Snigdha Hasan

http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?266145