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From: "chro chro chro" <chro@rediffmail.com> Subject: ENCOUNTER WATCH The Rediff Interview, July 27, 2004, Tuesday "Gujarat Has Become A Destination For Terrorists" Dahyaji Gobarji Vanzara, Additional Commissioner of Police heading the Crime Branch in Ahmedabad, has been under the scanner ever since his team gunned down a teenaged college student from Mumbai in an 'encounter' with an group of Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists last month. Ishrat Jahan Raza was shot dead in the company of three Lashkar terrorists, including two Pakistanis. But her friends and family members insist she was not involved with terrorism. (The Lashkar itself has since claimed that Ishrat Jahan was a member of the organisation.) So, was she really a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer? In an exclusive interview with Senior Editor Sheela Bhatt, Vanzara defends his boys. What does this encounter killing of terrorists convey? After the Godhra carnage and the subsequent riots terrorists of a variety of types and shapes are aiming at Gujarat. Gujarat has become the destination for terrorists. Some critics believe that more than terrorism, it is fear of terrorism that is more prevalent here. The threat perception is politicised to an extent. We are in a position to see what you are unable to see. People who think that the terrorism perceived by us is illusory are loose talkers, informal chatters. The people who are a threat to Gujarat have international links. What do the deaths of two Pakistanis prove? It has some local links too. In our investigation of the Akshardham case also we proved that one terrorist cell was supported by four sub-cells. Most terrorist operations are supported by four sub-cells of finance, weapons, fidayeen [team on a death mission], and logistics. Each cell works separately and most times without mutual knowledge. All these cells can function only with the help of local people's support. When all these cells' efforts are coordinated, terrorist action becomes a reality. The Akshardham case was successfully investigated and we have busted four sub-cells. After the riots, we have detected 12 such modules so far. We have arrested 83 persons, including three [Hindu] women under POTA. Those women were assisting Chhota Shakeel's hired hitmen Ganesh Khunte and Mahendra Jadhav, who had come to Ahmedabad to kill BJP leaders Ashok Bhatt and Bharat Barot. Many policemen who are well aware of such encounters argue off the record that Ishrat should have been saved. Some even argue that there is a difference between a criminal and a terrorist. First of all, those people who believe we should have hit them on the lower parts of their body have no idea of operations of this type. Do you want to say that when Salim, one of the Pakistani terrorists, opened fire with an AK-56, he should have been hit only in the lower body? So that he can hit my men in the upper body? All these arguments are okay while dealing with the masses. Second, we had information about three people only. We were expecting three people in the car and not four. We had no idea that a woman was in the car when my boys intercepted them. When Salim jumped out and started firing on my policemen they retaliated. The encounter went on for hardly 10 minutes and after the guns fell silent we found Ishrat in the car. She had been hit by the bullets. We just did not know she was in the car. After this encounter, you have claimed success in your follow-up investigation. Can you share some information? The Jammu and Kashmir police has identified the two Pakistanis. They knew about their infiltration into India and their movements. The Pune police has given us much more information than we expected. It has proved beyond doubt that Javed Khan visited Muscat for 10 days between March 29 and April 11. He used a passport issued in his original name Pranesh Kumar. Our information is that the conspiracy was planned abroad. Javed Khan was listed as a criminal and a few cases were pending against him. We have reconstructed the movements of Ishrat after May 1. Javed Khan met Ishrat, her mother Shamima, and their neighbour Rasheed in Hotel Taloja in Kalyan. Javed told Shamima that he need Ishrat for some 'computer' work and agreed to pay her Rs 3,500 a month. He told Shamima that he was involved in some 'do numberi' [illegal] work too and Ishrat will have to pose as his wife if needed. In first week of June Ishrat and Javed went to Lucknow and stayed in Hotel Mezbaan. They changed their names to Ayesha and Abdul Rahim and stayed as husband and wife. All the hotel owners where Ishrat and Javed lived together have identified them. Salim, the Pakistani terrorist, stayed near Lucknow in Ibrahimpur. Here he asked his hosts Raju and Meraj to get him a sten-gun and pistol. Since it was election time weapons were easily available. He had an AK-56 which he used to threaten us. Talk about purchase of weapons took place in Ishrat's presence. She knew about the operation to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Her e-mail ID was shhateseverybody@h... I wonder, if she was not a criminal, why did she not keep her ID 'ishloveseverybody'? In your assessment, how many terrorist modules are operating in Gujarat after the communal riots? We have arrested 16 to 17 Gujarati boys who went to Pakistan via Dhaka and took arms training. When they came back here, well-equipped with weapons, to disrupt Gujarat's economy and kill political leaders, we arrested them. They were motivated by Mufti Sufiyan, maulvi of the Sunnis of Gujarat. When we investigated the Haren Pandya murder case we stumbled upon his anti-national activities. He fled the country. We believe he is in Dhaka. Sufiyan selected boys who were not poor or illiterate. He selected smart, educated Gujarati Muslims without criminal backgrounds. The other thing we noted was that most of our POTA detainees who are involved in terrorist activities are from the Tableeghi Jamaat. Javed Khan's in-laws are also from the Tableeghi Jamaat. How is the situation now? What is the current threat perception? We have already busted 12 modules of Pakistan-based terror groups Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad in Gujarat. But I believe tempers are coming down. Muslims in Gujarat are moderate and they understand the situation better. But we have threats from abroad. Our investigations reveal that some groups in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Muscat and Kuwait are misguiding our people. In view of their activities the serious threat of terrorism remains. http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/jul/27inter1.htm --------------------------------------------------- [2] WHY MANIPUR BURNS ? The Telegraph, July 26, Monday WHY MANIPUR BURNS - The centre knows that the periphery will have to fall in ASHOK MITRA Reading classics broadens the mind. It also offers clues that help to sort out knotty contemporary concerns. The national question fills a large part of the socialist literature spanning from the mid-19th century. The reason is not at all obscure. A nation consists of a group of people who have a government of their own. Should some heterogeneities, such as of language and culture, distinguish the people constituting the nation, these are assumed to be taken care of by the deft hand of the government. The hand, however, can often be far from deft. The people are not unified, they are a baggage of nationalities riven by differences in ethnicity, language and culture, and the regime may fail to bring them together. This was the problem afflicting the great Habsburg empire, dominated by German-speaking Austrians: German-speaking other fiefdoms had no difficulty in considering themselves as an integral part of the nation-state. The Slavs and the Czechs would not however agree to merge their identity with a nation chock-full of German-speaking groups. They kept resisting. The resistance was a major irritant to the emperor and his flunkies. It posed an almost equal problem for the ideologues dreaming of a magnificent proletarian revolution that would sweep across the whole of Europe. Leaders plotting and planning the revolution had no doubt in their minds: nationalities refusing to sacrifice their identity in the cause of the nation are a nuisance; their divisiveness splits the working class, and thereby, sets back the revolution. Marx had no time to spare for such splitters. Engels was somewhat more ambivalent, and had a word of praise at least for the Czechs valiantly fighting against centuries of German oppression; he was though not supportive of them on overall considerations. Lenin opted for a cautionary approach: yes, sympathy for the lesser nationalities, but they must not allow themselves to be used for sabotaging the revolutionary solidarity of the proletarian masses. Besides, while the Poles, for example, had a strong case for establishing a separate nation-state of their own, would they have enough resources to run the administration of the state on a viable basis? Lenin had his reservations. Till the November Revolution and the end of the First World War, much of this was academic polemics. The births of Poland and Czechoslovakia apart, circumstances altered in a radical manner for revolutionary ideologues once the Soviet Union emerged as a reality in 1917. There was now no question of not acknowledging the datum of the existence of nationalities such as the Uzbeks, the Turkmen, the Kirgizh and others; their habitations were a bulk of the former Czarist empire and became annexures of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Lenin was incapacitated before he could attempt to tackle satisfactorily the national question: how to reconcile the interests of Russians and these other folk. It landed on the lap of Stalin, who approached the issue with rare imagination. Those firmly of the belief that Stalin was a cruel, insensate, blood-sucking dictator will experience a shock. ???In [the Soviet] Union, which as a whole unites not less than 240,000,000 people, of whom about 65,000,000 are non-Russians??¦ it is impossible to govern unless we have with us, here in Moscow, in the supreme organ, emissaries of these nationalities, to express not only the interests common to the proletariat as a whole, but also special, specific national interest. Without this it will be impossible to govern, comrades???: this was Joseph Dzhugashvili writing to the party??™s central committee at the time the Soviet constitution was being drafted. It is a different matter whether Stalin??™s pious wishes were followed to the hilt in the Soviet Union during the tortuous seventy years of its longevity. Perhaps it was, perhaps it was not beyond a certain point of time. But the dictum Stalin scripted stands out for its clarity. The terms and expressions have got shifted, the debate is no longer in terms of nation and nationalities; these days we talk of the centre and the periphery. The centre is the dominant category, those inhabiting the periphery lead a tremulous existence. They want to migrate towards power and self-determination, but are thwarted. Thereby hangs a tale of dispute, misunderstanding, fulmination, reprisal and counter-reprisal. Like many other things, the centre-periphery imbroglio is now a global phenomenon. Consider the current state of affairs in Manipur, and, for that matter, in the rest of the North-east. The entities in this region were, in the course of the 19th century, gobbled up by the British crown and directly administered, till 1947, by the viceroy of India. They were not, strictly speaking, a part of the Indian empire; the government of India Act 1935 did not apply to them. With the departure of the British, the north-eastern provinces were taken over by the Union of India as if by inheritance. The question of nationalities was not resolved though. States such as Manipur remained in the periphery; the Centre was distant and authoritarian. Each year, Jawaharlal Nehru made quite a ceremony of commending to New Delhi artistes of different ethnicities from the North-east and have them perform tribal dances on Republic Day evening ??” a superficial gesture of this nature, smacking of feudal mores, took the periphery further away from the centre. The nationalities in the north-eastern region have taken their turn to voice their discontent with the existing arrangements: they have many problems, and they want to be heard. The Centre has been cool and indifferent, provoking every now and then armed rebellions. A pattern has emerged over the past five decades in the region: the Centre initially is reluctant to even acknowledge the problems afflicting a nationality; riots rage; the Centre then falls back on army-bandobast. After many killings, a perfunctory attempt is made to arrange a ceasefire, followed by some sort of a written patch-up. This story has been repeated in Nagaland and Mizoram, and promises to be repeated in Manipur. But in no instance is any intent visible to go into the root of the malady. The Centre, besides, will rob one nationality to placate another, or set one against another, almost on a regular basis: fun and games. Perhaps the inability lies in the failure to comprehend that the assumption ??” the Centre always knows best the periphery will have to fall in, or else ??” will simply not pass muster. And yet, the solution of the centre-periphery issue should have been easier than it was in the European historical instances. The entities in India??™s North-east, in contrast to those 19th century nationalities who were dispersed all over Europe and flaunted their distinct identities, are territorially homogeneous. With adequate recognition on the Centre??™s part that they deserve equal respect, regard and attention as other federating states such as Uttar Pradesh or Tamil Nadu do, a happy season could still have unfolded in the North-east. Instead, just watch what is happening in Manipur. While the Meiteis, concentrated in the three plain districts around Imphal, occupy only 10 per cent of the territory, they constitute 70 per cent of the state??™s population. Their grievances fall by the wayside because, at this juncture, the Nagas and the Kukis, who hold sway in the strategic hill districts, have to be given more consideration. The plain Manipuris are disaffected. New Delhi tries to side-step the issue by buying up votes of legislators. The culture of smothering genuine grievances by bribing legislators or chieftains remains the same whether the party occupying the power centre is the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party. Manipur is unquiet, the Centre sends hordes of army and police forces. The situation worsens. More troops descend, incensing the Meiteis further. Unlike in the days of yore, no contingent of women of easy virtue accompanies the troops. The latter therefore pounce upon local women, and the situation becomes a thousand times more explosive. The Meiteis are in fact a very gentle people, grace spilling from their countenance and bearing. They were won over to the Chaitanya cult of Vaisnavism in the 16th century, which preaches love and humility. Provoked beyond endurance, the Meiteis are now on the warpath, and they are led particularly by the women. The Centre, installed in remote New Delhi, will conceivably continue to behave as woodenly as it has done in the past; it will send more troops. ------------------------------------ Confederation of Human Rights Organizations (CHRO) 3, Rams' Cottage Ambalathumukku, Pettah Thiruvananthapuram-695 024 (Ph.: 0471-2476262) Web: www.humanrightsindia.com www.humanrightskerala.com |
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| << July26, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]GOVERNMENT MAY MAKE WITCHCRAFT ILLEGAL |
July28, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]Adivasi news,Encounter & Superstition watch etc >> |
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