Author: Editorial
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: November 8, 2002
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/081102-editorial.html
Diwali in the national capital passed
off peacefully, thanks mainly to some excellent work done by the local
police. The cops manned the main markets and meeting places and generally
kept a hawk-eye on strangers and strange-looking objects such as bombs
and any other form of incendiary material.
Without doubt, a pall of gloom would
have hung over the capital had the two Laskar- e-Toiba terrorists succeeded
in carrying out their unholy mission to mow down innocent men, women and
children in a busy shopping centre in South Delhi the previous evening.
The two were spotted coming in on their deadly mission in a stolen Maruti
car and were stopped literally seconds before they could perpetrate mayhem.
In the basement parking lot of the
multi-storey shopping complex, they were instantaneously felled by the
bullets of the cops even before they had a chance to recover their wits
caught as they were with total surprise by the Delhi Police. Since the
police force everywhere in the country normally tends to lock the door
after the stable has emptied, the Delhi Police needs must be commended
for having done an excellent job in preventing a Diwali-eve mayhem.
One shudders to think of the enormity
of the human tragedy had the two desperadoes succeeded in holding the unwary
and innocent shoppers, men, women and children et al, as hostages a la
the Akshardhan temple terrorist carnage.
But given our national trait for
self-flagellation, even before the Delhi Police could bask in the glory
of a job well done, the usual suspects among the secularists and human
rights busy-bodies began to question the manner in which the two terrorists
had been killed. Because the operation was carried out with surgical precision
and the police had suffered no serious casualties, these busybodies began
to raise doubts about the police version.
And sure enough, a day later there
emerged a self-proclaimed eyewitness who stated to a newspaper correspondent
that they two `boys' were killed in cold blood by the police and that there
was no encounter whatsoever. This was signal enough for a couple of publicity-seeking
columnists, including one who had since graduated to the Rajya Sabha through
nomination by a friendly regime, to rope in the National Human Rights Commission
on behalf of the terrorists and their masters back in Pakistan.
Acting on their complaint to the
NHRC, its chairman Justice J S. Verma lost no time in asking the Delhi
Police to submit a report detailing all aspects of the incidents leading
to the killing of the two terrorists. For sure, the Delhi Police would
provide the requisite information to the NHRC so that all doubts are set
at rest. But we wish the NHRC had not played to the gallery, like the two
self-styled human rights activists, and instead sought to satisfy itself
of the facts of the case without going public. Anything that weakens the
resolve of the hard-pressed police and other security agencies to extinguish
the challenge of the ISI-exported terrorists cannot but prove deleterious
to the national cause.
The question that may sound unfair
but nonetheless needs must be asked is whether the human rights professionals
and other such busybodies would have been happy had the two terrorists
been killed but only after they had convincingly proved their evil credentials
by mowing down a score or two of innocent shoppers that evening in the
shopping plaza in South Delhi.
Now that we are asking such basic
questions we might as well ask as to what would have been the reaction
of these busybodies who had made a career by posing as champions of human
rights had one of their own near and dear ones been taken hostage by the
two Lashkar terrorists.
Artifice and hypocrisy is the virtue
of the idle and the attention-seeking armchair human rights activists which
the police and other agencies of the State tasked to protect ordinary citizens
against the perfidy of the ISI against all odds can ill-afford to match.
They have to do their job under a lot of constraints. Admittedly, in the
ideal situation the two terrorists should have been nabbed alive. But as
the recent experience shows such an option inevitably proves counter-productive.
Terrorists do not give their innocent
victims a second chance; the Delhi Police would have been unwise to do
so. Meanwhile, we would commend to the nation as a whole the recent missile
strike by the CIA operatives in Yemen which killed six Al Qaeda thugs.
The CIA carried out the operation against the suspected Oaeda leader, Qaed
Salim Sinan al-Harethi, and five of his accomplices under broad presidential
authority.
As reported, President Bush was
not required to personally approve the operation. After 9\11, he was empowered
to authorize the CIA and other such agencies fighting the menace of terrorists
to pursue Qaeda and other anti-US maniacs by all means possible. The killing
of Qaeda and his companions in terror was ordered by senior CIA officials.
And, surprisingly, nearly a week later no eyewitness has surfaced to shout
` cold-blooded murder' and no human rights activist has filed a complaint
with the international human rights body against the killings.
Clearly, a nation as mighty, and
as litigious, as the US has to dispense with the dilatory and often unproductive
process of prior sanctions, judicial and administrative, to deal with dangerous
desperadoes out to kill completely innocent citizens in the name of Islamic
jehad. Since we are a poor country with a rickety judicial and administrative
set-up, we must per force be weighed down by the tremendous burden of wasteful
processes, and, of course, by the self-seeking interventions of numerous
busybodies.
