Malegaon
Blasts:
Footprints Of Nanded?
By Subhash Gatade
15 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Everybody knows that Shab-e-Barat
happens to be a day when Muslims visit graveyards of their loved ones,
clean and decorate the graves and spend the night there, reading out
special prayers for the occasion. But who from Malegaon and adjoining
areas would have imagined that the day to remember the departed ones
would turn out to be the last day of some of their own lives and would
maim many among them for the rest of their lives.
People in Malegaon are still
in the mourning. They are still recovering from the two blasts, which
occurred at two places in the city killing around 31 people and wounding
more than 100 of them. Residents of the city shudder to think the way
they could save themselves. The prayer was almost over, people were
preparing to leave the grounds of the Bada Kabaristan and there was
a bomb blast near the Vazu Khana’ where mostly children were sitting
for their prayers. And within fraction of seconds there was a transfer
scene. The tranquility, the silence witnessed during the prayers was
all gone and one could hear shrieks of the wounded, one could see blood
splattered on the ground, people running for cover desperately, children
getting crushed under the stampede.
The only feeling of comfort
in the otherwise gloomy scenario was that there was no repeat of 2001-
the year when the city of 7 lakhs where 75 per cent population is Muslim,
witnessed large scale rioting. This time despite provocation there was
no communal flare-up.
The ‘Communally sensitive’
town remained calm. Instead one could see new bonds of solidarity getting
forged between the two communities who for various reasons have remained
in an adversial relationship with each other. Scores of Hindus could
be seen at the various hospitals standing in queue to donate blood and
doing whatever little they could do to help the victims.
Is it Bajrang or Lashkar?
Looking at the nature of
crime, where fanatics planted bombs in crowded areas in the city to
see to it that people are killed in large numbers and communal flare-ups
ensues, it is clear that meticulous planning went into it. Question
naturally arises, who could have benefited from growing communal divide?
A general answer could be a fanatic group who believes and propagates
a religion-based ideology. It could be Lashkar-e-Toiba or any of those
Jihadi terrorist organizations or one of those Hindu Militant groups,
which have of late demonstrated similar prowess umpteen times.
A newspaper clipping from
a leading national daily rightly underlines
MUMBAI: The police are probing
whether the Bajrang Dal or a Lashkar group could have been involved
in Friday’s Malegaon blasts. The Bajrang Dal is known to have
followed a similar pattern in blasts at Parbhani’s Mohammadi Masjid
and mosques at Pona and Jalna earlier this year. "We are probing
this angle, though it is too early to hold any group responsible,"
DGP P S Pasricha said on Friday. (Times of India, 9 th Sep 2006, Updated
at 12.3111 hrs IST)
A section of the readers
would definitely feel surprised over the inclusion of Bajrang Dal or
for that matter any of the Parivar organizations on the list of possible
suspects. Perhaps they are unaware of similar terrorist acts committed
by these very organizations or their activists. One of the most recent
one being the deaths of few activists of Bajrang Dal on 6 th April in
Nanded, Maharashtra while making bombs. One could have a look at a news
clipping of The Telegraph ( 10 th April 2006) how they got killed.
Mumbai, April 9: Bajrang
Dal activists were involved in last week’s bomb blast in Maharashtra
in which two people died, police have confirmed.The incident could prove
to be an embarrassment for Lal Krishna Advani whose yatra, ironically
called Bharat Suraksha, entered the state today since the Bajrang Dal
is an associate of the Sangh parivar.
“Bajrang Dal activists
were actually making a bomb before one exploded in an activist’s
house,” said a senior police officer..… “We have seized
another bomb from the same site on Saturday which has now been defused,”
said another police official. Interestingly in an interview to ‘Communalism
Combat’ Mr. K.P. Raghuvanshi, head of the Anti-Terrorism Squad
(ATS) of Maharashtra had given details of the way in which the ATS was
working on this particular case : In the Nanded case, the very fact
that the investigation has been handed over to us, the ATS, shows how
the administration and government are viewing it. Investigations are
on. Two persons making the bombs died on the spot (Himanshu Panse, 27,
and Naresh Rajkondwar, 26). The house was the residence of the local
Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad activist.
Of the two who survive, one
is so seriously ill he cannot speak. He is not expected to survive.
The other is the sole surviving accused. We have him and one witness.
On both we have already done a brain-mapping and narco-analysis test.
This is the same group of terrorists responsible for the bomb blasts
at the Parbhani mosque in (April) 2003, an incident in which 25 persons
were injured. Until now we do not know for sure if they are linked to
the other masjid bomb blasts at Purna and Jalna (August 2004, in which
18 persons were injured). …...We have applied the provisions of
the Unlawful Practices Act. It is clear that these bombs were not being
manufactured for a puja. They were being manufactured for unlawful ends
to wreak violence through terror.
Praveen Swami and Anupama
Katakam, in their writeup in ‘The Hindu’ (Malegaon : the
road to perdition, 9 th September 2006) rightly underline that ‘
It is possible that no full account of the Malegaon bombings and their
perpetrators will emerge for weeks or months. But the contours of the
evidence available so far do not portend well.’ Ofcourse, at this
stage it is humanly impossible to be anything like certain that a Hindu
Fundamentalist group or a Islamist terrorist group carried out the bombing.
At this juncture one need not revisit the way Islamist terrorist groups
have engaged in large scale attacks against not only shrines and mosques
in West Asia, Pakistan and even Jammu and Kashmir but also on cultural
troupes or independent intellectuals who have refused to toe their anti-democratic
dictats. One also need to bear in mind that it was only May-June this
year that police had recovered RDX as well as assault rifles and grenades
from a Lashkar-e-Toiba safe house in Malegaon itself.
The most important lesson,
which should be remembered, is that the law and order machinery should
be even handed in its approach in unearthing the truth. It should not
repeat its earlier folly of stigmatizing the whole community, which
it is alleged to have engaged in after the Bombay blasts. It should
also not be seen going soft on Hindu militant formations for fear of
providing political capital to Hindutva organizations.
And as far as civil society
is concerned it should bear in mind the advice rendered by Swaminathan
S Anklesariya Aiyar, Consulting Editor of The Economic Times wherein
he cautions the reader in assuming that ‘terrorism is a Muslim
monopoly’: “.In terms of membership and area controlled,
secular terrorists are far ahead of Muslim terrorists. In sum, terrorism
is certainly not a Muslim monopoly. There are or have been terrorist
groups among Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and even Buddhists. Secular
terrorists have been the biggest killers.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1794203.cms):