Author: Ajay Uprety
Publication: The Week
Date: December 9, 2007
URL: http://www.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/theWeekContent.do?sectionName=Current+Events&contentId=3263048&programId=1073754900&pageTypeId=1073754893&contentType=EDITORIAL&BV_ID=@@@
Introduction: UP reaping a harvest of terror
strikes
In her statue-making and demolishing spree,
the behenji of Indian politics might not have noticed that her state faces
the most number of terror strikes after Jammu and Kashmir. Since 2005, UP
has witnessed 24 terror-related incidents-including blasts and arrests of
ultras. All these point towards the growing militancy in western and eastern
UP. The November 23 court-complex blasts in Varanasi, Lucknow and Faizabad
killed 15 people and injured 80.
The major incidents in 2005 were the Ayodhya
attack on July 5, which killed seven, and the Shramjeevi Express blast on
July 28, which killed 14 and injured 52. In 2006, the spotlight turned to
Varanasi as serial blasts rocked the city on March 7, killing 16 and injuring
100. On May 22, 2007, low-intensity serial blasts rocked Gorakhpur.
In between, many sensational schemes were
foiled by the timely action of the Special Task Force (STF) and the police.
The most recent one was the foiled kidnapping of Congress general secretary
Rahul Gandhi. There were regular hauls of arms and ammunition as well. On
March 25, 2006, the police arrested two suspects from the Lalgunj area in
Mirzapur with 250kg of explosives and 1,500 detonators. On May 24, 2007, the
Allahabad police nabbed three people with 50kg of ammonium nitrate and 1,000m
roll of detonator wire. In a separate operation, the STF arrested Noor-Islam,
an ultra of Bangladesh origin, from Unnao and seized 2kg of RDX and two detonators.
The Islamic fundamentalist circuit in UP involves
dreaded outfits like Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami (HuJi),
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Harkut-ul-Ansar. STF sources say that these organisations
have a strong presence in about 45 districts in UP, which have a sizeable
Muslim population. Most of these links are 'sleeping modules', which remain
dormant between strikes. Reportedly, there are 400 sleeping modules in the
whole of UP.
These modules have the additional responsibility
of recruiting new cadre. A very prominent module was Waliullah from Allahabad
district. A cleric and the UP area commander of HuJi, he was the mastermind
of the Varanasi blasts. Waliullah in Allahabad received three ultras who sneaked
into India-Zakaria, Mustafeez and Bashiruddin. He made arrangements for their
stay and travel and procured explosives for them.
As Union Minister of State for Home Affairs
Shriprakash Jaiswal reported to the Rajya Sabha, the UP Police had busted
10 espionage modules in the past three years. The modules were in Saharanpur,
Agra, Rampur, Varanasi, Meerut and Lucknow, and five of the 13 people nabbed
were Pakistani nationals.
A senior officer of the Intelligence Bureau said that the sheer size of the
state, its massive population, chaotic condition of intelligence agencies
and proximity to New Delhi were the attractions of UP for the ultras. Add
to that its extremely porous borders with Nepal. The ultras who planned to
blow up the temple complex in Ayodhya, investigators found, had slipped in
via Nepal. Apparently, they were temporarily based in Basti district of eastern
UP-just 60km from Ayodhya-and their supply of arms and ammunitions came from
sleeper cells in Akbarpur.
The IB officer said that after the attack
in Ayodhya, the IB had alerted the state administration at least thrice about
the movements of terrorists in the state. They also ignored the warning that
Varanasi was a ?high-priority target for terrorists. Even a week before the
Varanasi blasts, the state administration had ignored the IB's inputs. The
district administration and the police, too, were reportedly indifferent.
Insiders say that it is this apathy and lack of coordination that make the
job easier for terrorists.
Regarding the recent blasts, the scanner is
on HuJi. Initial reports show that the plan was hatched in Chandauli, another
eastern UP district, and the mastermind was Mohammed Shamin, a suspect of
the earlier Varanasi blasts.
Though officials probing the blasts in the
court-complexes are yet to confirm the identity of those who engineered them,
their motive has become clear. All three blasts were in places where suspects
linked to recent Islamic terror strikes were attacked or denied representation
by lawyers.
The lawyers in Lucknow manhandled the alleged
Rahul Gandhi kidnapping suspects-Mirza Rashid, Mohammed Abid and Mohammed
Yusuf-when they were being taken to court. Moreover, the lawyers refused to
represent the suspects. Before this, the lawyers in Faizabad had declined
to take up the case of Dr Irfan, an Ayodhya blast accused. The case was later
moved to Allahabad. Taking a cue from their counterparts, lawyers in Varanasi
decided not to represent Varanasi blast mastermind Waliullah. They also thrashed
him on the court premises, before the police intervened and rescued him. The
militants picked the three venues of humiliation for retaliatory blasts.
What corroborates this theory is that on November
23, about eight lakh pilgrims were taking the holy dip in the rivers Sarayu
and Ganges. Definitely, targeting the pilgrims would have got the militants
more casualties. Moreover, the blasts were of low intensity and were not meant
to cause heavy damage. The highest casualty was in Varanasi, where 10 people
were killed. A nondescript terror outfit called Indian Mujahideen has claimed
the responsibility for the blasts. It sent an email to a TV channel claiming
responsibility, just a couple of minutes before the blasts took place.
After the blast came the politics of it. Chief
Minister Mayawati blamed the Central intelligence agencies for failing to
track the movement of terrorists. But Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil refused
to be provoked and called it the handiwork of anti-national elements. Meanwhile,
investigators recovered two unexploded devices from Lucknow and Faizabad.
They said that all devices were triggered by detonators controlled by quartz
alarm clocks and had ammonium nitrate as the main component. Regarding the
time of the blasts, some think that it might even have been set up to match
the rising protests against Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen, a harsh critic
of Islamic fundamentalism in her country.
