SOROOR AHMED raises some unanswered questions on the Batla House encounter and some earlier encounter and terror blasts.
Once again it is the Holy month of Ramadhan, which witnessed bloodshed in India. Be it the attack on Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001; killing of armymen in Lal Qila and subsequent killing of a suspect militant in an encounter in Batla House; the hijacking of Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu and subsequent release of Masood Azhar; October 29, 2005 Sarojini Nagar (Delhi) blasts on the eve of Diwali, or this year’s bomb blasts and subsequent encounter – once again in Batla House – all took place in the second half of the Islamic month of fasting.
As if that is not enough, right from March 12, 1993 Mumbai blasts, till September 19 last encounter most of these incidents have taken place on Friday – the Makkah Mosque blasts in Hyderabad during the Juma prayer is one of them. Even in the case of Malegaon the blasts in the mosque took place on the occasion of Shab-e-Barat, when Muslims were offering Friday prayers. These are some of the examples, which simply cannot be pushed under the carpet and not debated.
Now people are openly discussing different political angles too and politicians are using these incidents to settle their scores. It is none else but BJP’s Sushma Swaraj, who on the Ahmedabad explosions immediately after the July 22 no-confidence motion, directly charged that the Congress Party had triggered blasts so that, what she said, people may forget the (so-called) Money Bag Scam in Lok Sabha.
The Congress was quick to hit back with Digvijay Singh directly blaming the BJP as, according to him, the blasts took place whenever the BJP or NDA finds itself in the corner. It would not be out of place to mention that just after the devastating floods in Bihar, in which thousands lost their lives and attack on Christians in Orissa, some political pundits started saying jokingly that very soon explosions will take place somewhere in the country to divert people’s attention as the flood and incidents in Orissa were really embarrassing the NDA.
Some politicians and mediapersons have now started questioning the role of intelligence. Union Railway Minister Lalu Prasad is one among them. He raised the issue with the Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi, and even sought the resignation of the Home Minister, Shivraj Patil. Lalu is said to have not only raised the issue of the failure of intelligence but also objected to the indiscriminate arrest of Muslim youths in the name of terrorists.
In Muslim circle many people believe that these reprehensible incidents are the handiwork of Bajrang Dal, CIA and Mossad. Several Urdu newspapers have also accused the police of not probing these cases properly even when Bajrang Dal activists were killed in making bombs in Nanded and Kanpur. What irked them most is the role of media and Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi. One of them asked as to how can Delhi Police solve such a sensational case of Delhi blasts within a day or two when it and even the CBI could not fix the blame in four months as to who actually killed Arushi?
However, if the blasts are really carried out by Muslims in Ramadhan, Shab-e-Barat or on Fridays, once even during the prayer, may one ask as to why they choose these occasions? Killing any innocent is a crime and if that crime is being committed on such holy occasions, can the perpetrators be still called Muslim?
So far the involvement of foreign agencies of USA, UK and Israel are concerned, it is now a known fact that they want to keep the pot boiling in India. More the blasts take place more India will tilt towards their side. They can try any formula to keep a big nation like India in their camp. They may use Bajrang Dal; they may use even some extreme and senseless youths from the Muslim community to trigger these blasts. They may even use other nasty tricks to achieve this much greater goal.
However, one question remains unanswered. If India has so many and so powerful Muslim terrorists, why is it that they never come to the rescue or defence of the community in the time of distress? What were these people doing when Gujarat burnt for two months in 2002? Not to speak of AK-47, AK-56 or AK-74, none of them could fire a single pistol shot to save the former Congress MP Ehsan Jaffrey – why mention common folk – when his entire apartment was set ablaze by the rioters.
If the international intelligence agencies are really triggering these blasts with the help of their men in India – as it is being discussed in some circles – they are doing a great disservice to India. They may be demonising Muslims for their own larger goal, but the truth is that these blasts are having great negative impact on the psyche of the general Indian population. It may not be too far when a sort of fear psychosis develop among them. Whosoever is responsible for these incidents the truth is that they are doing a great harm to the people of the country in general.