Now that Aseemanand has confessed, what about the innocent Muslim youth languishing in jails?

Whispers have become words. Murmurs have taken form of sentences. Private conversations and personal convictions are no longer confined within the four walls of a decrepit Muslim household. A quiet sign language has been replaced by a wild scream. The guilt-soaked eyes have got new sparkle of hope and redemption. The Indian Muslim has finally got the guilt-free-pass handed by a ‘devout’ Hindu priest Swami Aseemanand of Dangs, Gujarat.

 

Aseemanand’s judicial confession – that he and his Hindutva men were responsible for five major bomb blasts – has opened Pandora’s Box. The bees of the box have stung so many men in Khakhi. One confession has destroyed the credibility of countless police officers. It is safe to assume that Rajwardhan, the then Rural SP of Nasik, did not sleep properly on Friday night. He weaved a dangerous fictional tale in order to implicate 11 innocent Muslims in Malegaon’s 2006 blasts. It is equally safe to assume that the conscience of former ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi must be cursing himself. It was Raghuvanshi who proudly displayed sketches of two suspects who bought new cycles. How conveniently he forgot the fact that the sketches don’t match with the bearded Muslims languishing in jail! How conveniently he forgot the fact that Shabbir Masiullah, one of the accused, was already in Mumbai police custody since many months before the blasts! How conveniently he forgot the fact that Noorul-Huda, the accused number one, was under close police watch since many years! 

Aseemanand’s confession has brought open the divide within the CBI. The confession is an indictment CBI as well. CBI blindly followed the footprints of KP Raghuvanshi when it filed a supplementary chargesheet in Malegaon 2006 blasts repeating the lies woven by ATS. How conveniently CBI relied on ATS theory that Zahid, the Imam of Phoolsavangi, planted bomb when he was leading Friday prayers hundreds of miles away!  It is altogether a different matter that Aseemanand was arrested by CBI! Therefore it can be safely assumed that there are two kinds of CBI; one highly communal and the other secular. Does CBI stand for Communal Bureau of Investigation?

Harish Gupta, the then Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police, took inspiration from KP Raghuvanshi when he falsely implicated 19 Muslims in Mecca Masjid blast case.

The role of RSS has come on spotlight after Aseemanand’s confession. Ram Madhav, RSS spokesman, has said that confession was given under “duress”. He should know that it’s a judicial confession recorded as per the guidelines laid down in Section 164 of Criminal Procedure Code which says that confessions recorded before a magistrate are legally admissible evidence. Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab had given confession under the same section. It is very difficult to retract the confession given under this section. If one retracts confession then it is quite possible that perjury charges will be slapped on him. Retired Bombay High Court judge Justice Hosbet Suresh is of the opinion that the accused can retract his statement. In a recent interview Justice Suresh remarked, “Even if the prosecution relies on it, the magistrate who recorded the confession is summoned and he will give evidence in the court. The magistrate can be cross-examined”.

The communal and biased role of investigating agencies must be fully examined by Prime Minister Manmoham Singh. There is an urgent need for a legislation which will hold our investigating agencies accountable for their misdeeds. Delivering the Fourth R.N. Kao Memorial Lecture on January 19, 2010 organised by the Research and Intelligence Wing (RAW), Vice-President Hamid Ansari had called for greater “oversight and accountability” in the operations of the country’s intelligence agencies. He had suggested setting up of a standing committee of Parliament on intelligence. He passionately argued that just like other democracies like the United States and the United Kingdom, the “concerned agencies should make public their mission statement, outlining periodically their strategic intent, vision, mission, core values and their goals”. It is high time to implement the suggestion of Hamid Ansari. 

Similarly we need to have a mechanism in place whose job is to keep watch that no innocent is falsely accused on terror charges. 32 Muslims have been wrongly imprisoned on terror charges. Four years of incarceration has ruined their lives; their families had literally given up the hope that they will get justice. It remains to be seen how the Indian government is going to right the wrongs done by law-enforcing agencies. Will the offending police officers be booked under the same stringent laws which were abused by them? This will be the biggest test of Indian democracy.   

Indian Muslim’s quest for inclusion in new India will remain a dream unless the guilty police officers are punished. The average Indian Muslim is still trapped between two keywords: Justice and survival.  

From Mubashir Mushtaq's article in Inquilab. More Here

 

The root of right-wing terror lies in Malegaon’s Bada Qabristan

The recent arrests in Ajmer blasts of October 11, 2007 flies in the face of then Home Minister Shivraj Patil who had publicly blamed Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HUJI) of Bangladesh without taking any laundry break! The standard statement of Home Minister is not issued in individual capacity but a reflection of official stand of the government. So who fed the words in the mouth of Home Minister? It is clear now that he was misled by a section of intelligentsia. This episode speaks volumes about the power of intelligence agencies: it has the potential to mislead any government.

The notorious right-wing trend of targeting Muslims began with Malegaon September 8, 2006 blasts. It was a pioneer project whose first experiment was performed in Malegaon’s Bada Qabristan. Emboldened by false arrests and biased investigation, these elements swore to repeat ‘Malegaon syndrome’. The syndrome first travelled South in the form of Mecca Masjid blast on May 18, 2007. Here again, they met with success. The syndrome raised its ugly head in North in the form of Ajmer blast on October 11, 2007. It returned to Malegaon once again on September 29, 2008 to complete a full circle. It was grit, determination and honesty of Hemant Karkare that exposed the face of right-wing terror. Malegaon 2006 blast occurred on Friday on the day of Shabe-Barat. Mecca Masjid blast took place on Friday again. Ajmer blast was triggered on Thursday; the day people throng Ajmer Sharif dargah. Malegaon 2008 blast went off in the holy month of Ramadan at Bhikku chowk where Muslims gather in large numbers after tarawih prayers. All this falls under one pattern.  Therefore, it will not be incorrect to assume that Hyderabad and Ajmer blasts were exact replica of Malegaon.

Like Malegaon, dozens of innocent Muslims were rounded up and beaten in Hyderabad in order to weave a fictional narrative of terror. Senior journalist Seema Mustafa who interviewed all the accused has remarked that “In Hyderabad not a single policeman has been made to pay for the illegal detention and terrible torture of young Muslims detained for days and weeks for alleged involvement in terror attacks. All were finally released as no evidence substantiating the charges was found, but not before their lives were ruined with many of them still unable to pick up the pieces.”

All these years security agencies have been sniffing out the same old and ‘standard pattern’. The theorists of the old and standard pattern suggest that whatever happens in India (Prime Minister’s sneeze included!) is the ultimate outcome of the designs made on the other side of the border. And designs are implemented by the educated Muslim youths of the country. Isn’t it a unique case of remote-control governance? What more, deadly designs direct these youths to kill their co-religionists in mosques and dargahs!

Surprisingly, Malegaon 2006 blasts have not figured anywhere in the ongoing Ajmer and Hyderabad investigation. The root of right-wing terror lies in Malegaon’s Bada Qabristan. There is an urgent need to connect the dots and form a triangle of Malegaon, Hyderabad and Ajmer. Perhaps, the mystery will unfold in MCOCA court later this month when Malegaon case stands up for argument. 

From Mubasshir Mushtaq's Blog  :

To read the full article click The Missing Malegaon dot

Who is Pramod Mutalik?

 Pramod Mutalik may have become a Muslim household name with his provocative statement, “Malegaon is a Jhalak. More is possible if every woman picks up bombs”, but he was in the news much before Sadhvi Pragya. In the second half of 2008, the same Mutalik, a vendor of anarchy, had said in a press conference held in Bangalore press club that Hindu suicide squads are ready “to take on Islamic terrorists.”

This news item remained on the fringe and nobody bothered to pick it up since Mutalik posed a threat only to the Indian Muslims. He became a despicable object only when his men attacked ‘Hindu’ women in a pub in Mangalore.

Sadhvi Rithambara, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Pramod Mutalik once belonged to BJP whose unofficial doctrine is based on the hate culture. It is altogether a different matter that when the hate crosses the permissible limit, BJP tries to distance itself from its ardent supporters.

From Mubasshir Mushtaq's article in Inquilab

To read the full article, click here.

What does it take to stoke a riot in Bangalore? Not a lot, for if you are willing to spend then Pramod Muthalik’s Sri Ram Sene will do the job.

This was the essence of the six-weeks long joint investigation by the news channel, Headlines Today, and Tehelka magazine, which was aired on Thursday.

Muthalik — whose claim to notoriety is the Mangalore pub attack of 2009 — has been caught on a hidden camera saying that a communal riot can be ‘organised’ in Bangalore or Mangalore. “Mangalore main kar sakte hain...Bangalore.” 

The sting’s script was simple: A reporter posed as an artist hungry for fame and wanted a communal riot sparked off by his exhibition so that he could be ‘famous like M F Hussain’; Muthalik said it could be organised and directed the artist to meet his deputies.

What followed was a series of meetings, primarily, with Prasad Attavur, national vicepresident, Sri Ram Sene and Vasantkumar Bhavani, Bangalore head of the Sene.Three out of four conversations with Attavur were held inside a jail. Muthalik is also shown accepting a donation of Rs 10,000 from a painter for “the cause of Hindutva”.
From Express News Service's report in Expressbuzz
To read the full report click here