By Najiya O., TwoCircles.net
Investigation by the Rajasthan Anti-Terrorism Squad has brought to light new, and supposedly real, faces behind the deadly attacks in the Ajmer shrine in 2007. And the CBI says that the Ajmer and Hyderabad Mecca Masjid blasts are linked, done by the same forces. So what about all the news stories published in the media about the so-called Islamic terrorists like the HuJI behind those bomb blasts? What about all the articles published by the media based on the revelations of ‘intelligence officers’ and ‘official sources’?
Three people were killed and 17 others injured when a bomb exploded in the Ajmer Dargah Sharif on October 11, 2007. As always, the police, government and media began to hunt for the involvement of the so-called ‘Islamic terrorists’ with Pakistani and Bangladeshi connections. That the blast took place in a Muslim shrine, killing and injuring Muslims in the holy month of Ramadan was not a matter at all. The Harkat-ul Jehad e Islami based in Karachi became the prime suspect immediately.
On October 13, Praveen Swami wrote in ‘The Hindu’ on why the ‘Islamic terrorist groups’ should attack a Muslim shrine (http://www.hinduonnet.com/2007/10/12/stories/2007101261651600.htm). Certain media doubted the HuJI while some speculated that the HuJI had organized the blast in association with other terrorist groups. Shahid Bilal was the man reported to be the key operative behind the attack. The Rajasthan police also suspected Syed Salim, a victim of the blast and former resident of Hyderabad, to be a part of the HuJI network and claimed that he must have triggered the bomb, but the Andhra police rejected the theory stating Salim had no record of any terror link. The report by Shishir Gupta in the Indian Express on October 15 added – ‘Official sources said that nothing concrete has emerged so far in the probe and any link of the HUJI or its operative Shahid Bilal to this case is still to be established (http://www.indianexpress.com/story/228506.html).
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The police picked up many clergymen and madrasa teachers during the investigation. One person named Bashir was arrested by the UP police. He is reported to have given clues about Moulvi Abdul Hafiz Shamim who also ran a madrasa besides being the moulvi in a local masjid. Moulvi was reportedly tortured in police custody for 18 days and then set free for lack of evidence. Khushbur Rahman, a teacher in a Rajasthani madrasa, was arrested on October 25 from his home in Jharkhand and released on November 6 on want of evidence. Moulvi Imran Ali was picked up as per the clues given by Khushbur Rahman (http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/08/stories/2007110855030500.htm).
The reports of 2007 stated clearly that the Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blasts were linked, though not in the way it is said now. The way the two blasts were organized looked similar. In both cases one bomb was left unexploded. ‘Investigators feel the Mecca Masjid attack and the Ajmer blast were carried out by the same group — HuJI Bangladesh — due to similarities in the modus operandi. Both used a mobile phone trigger and unexploded devices were found after both strikes’ (http://www.indianexpress.com/story/231352.html). ‘The police have stumbled upon evidence indicating that the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) used in Mecca Masjid and Ajmer blasts were fabricated in Hyderabad .. … Bangladeshi HuJI activist Abu Hamja prepared eight IEDs in Hyderabad in May first week and the explosive material was smuggled into the city from Bangladesh by an alleged LeT operative Shaik Abdul Nayeem of Maharashtra, sources said on Friday. While two IEDs were used in Mecca Masjid, four were sent to Ajmer. One bomb at the mosque failed to detonate.’ (http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/12/stories/2008011250010100.htm). And more importantly, SIM cards of mobile phones were used to trigger the bomb in both cases; the seller of the SIM cards was traced to Jharkhand. A report of the IANS said -“The central intelligence team was in Jamtara and they interrogated Sahid, the owner of Sargam Telecom. Sahid had sold the SIM card used in the Ajmer blast to someone called Babulal Yadav without asking for valid documents,” a police official told IANS (http://www.twocircles.net/2007oct18/links_ajmer_and_hyderabad_blasts_found_jharkhand.html). The report also states that the name and address given by the man who bought the SIM card were false. The fake name on the ID card was traced to Babulal Yadav of Jharkhand while the photo was that of Tarak Nath Pramanik, a yoga instructor in Noida. The report continues about the police interrogation of Sahid and the alleged connections that the Pakistan’s ISI has in Jharkhand. A report carried by the Indian Express states that the government contacted Pakistan on the matter: ‘India is learnt to have referred to Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami (HuJI) and its commander Shahid Bilal, who is alleged to have masterminded nearly
all the recent terror strikes in the country’ (http://www.indianexpress.com/story/231352.html). The then Home minister Shivraj Patil also made the following statement after visiting the blast site at Ajmer “I am fully aware of the progress of the investigations and how far it has reached. The investigation is going as far as our borders,” (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2454951.cms).
Ajmer dargah
Fast forward to 2010
However, all these clues and links have attained an entirely different meaning now, when the Rajasthan ATS have discovered new hands behind the blast. Beginning a new wave of arrests in the blast case, The ATS arrested Devender Gupta, a member of the RSS, from Ajmer on April 30, 2010. It was followed by the arrest of Chandrashekhar Barod and Vishnu Patidhar from Madhya Pradesh on May 1. ‘Two members of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) – Devender Gupta and Chandrashekhar Barod – have emerged as the prime suspects in the Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid and Ajmer blasts. …. Investigators say the names of Gupta and Barod came up during the narco-analysis of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Srikant Purohit during the Malegaon blast investigation…. The name of Sunil Joshi, an RSS member from Madhya Pradesh, who died in December 2007 also cropped up. … The Rajasthan Home Minister, Shanti Dhariwal, confirmed the links to The Hindu newspaper saying, “Colonel Purohit, arrested for Malegaon blast, has confessed that Sunil Joshi had organised the Dargah operation with the help of Gupta.” (http://ibnlive.in.com/news/rss-members-behind-hyderabad-ajmer-blasts/115372-3.html). ‘A few days after this (the Ajmer blast), Sunil Joshi and Vinod Patidar were found dead at their respective houses in Indore. It is suspected that Joshi and Patidar were “silenced” since they were reportedly “becoming weak links.” (http://www.deccanchronicle.com/hyderabad/terror%E2%80%99s-hindu-face-643 May 18, 2010).
Vishnu Patidhar was arrested from Shahjahanpur allegedly for helping to procure mobile phones and SIM cards used in the blast on May 1 and released a few days later when he reportedly agreed to be approver against the two prime suspects. Prior to this a man named Sanjay Gupta was also detained in Dhar. Lokesh Sharma was detained on May 13 and was remanded in police custody till May 21.Rajesh Mishra, an industrialist, became the fourth to be picked up from MP on the Ajmer blast case when he was detained for questioning on May 15. He was then released on May 20. The ATS is yet to catch hold of the two other suspected masterminds Asimanand and Ramnarayan Kalsangara who are reportedly hiding in Gujarat and Karnataka (http://www.deccanchronicle.com/hyderabad/terror%E2%80%99s-hindu-face-643).
The Indian Express’s report on May 18 said that ‘at least two accused in the newly emerging network behind the two 2007 blasts, Devendra Gupta and Chandrashekar, have affiliations with Abhinav Bharat, which was founded in 2006 by Lt Col Prasad Purohit — another accused in the Malegaon blast — as an educational trust but was in reality a step to “set up a parallel Hindu state and an armed government’ (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/malegaon-ajmer-hyderabad-blasts…-joining-the-dots/616424/)
Home Minister P Chidambaram said in an interview with the CNN-IBN channel, “We think now there is evidence pointing to terrorist groups, which are supported by extreme right Hindu fundamentalist organisations. We don’t call it Hindu terror–terror is terror… The groups seem to subscribe to an extreme fundamentalist Hindu philosophy. We think there is evidence that connects the Ajmer blasts, the Mecca Masjid blasts (in Hyderabad) and not yet (but) the Samjhauta (train) blast,” he said (http://ibnlive.in.com/news/kasab-afzal-will-be-treated-alike-govt/115637-3.html?from=tn)
A whole new list of suspects and arrests have come up and the media which had earlier published reports detailing how the HuJI members carried out the attack are now explaining how the RSS and Abhinav Bharat are behind the blasts. Praveen Swami writes about ‘The Rise of Hindutva Terrorism’ in the ‘Outlook’ (May 11, 2010) which says – the Rajasthan Home Minister Shanti Kumar Dhariwal said ‘the men were backed by an “organisation which tries to incite violence between Hindus and Muslims”, adding that authorities were “investigating the links of the organisation with the RSS” (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265400). But the question that continues to haunt every person who has observed the developments in the case is that why the Rajasthan police’s investigation did not move the way the ATS investigation has moved now even though both agencies used the same primary evidences and links such as the unexploded bomb, SIM cards etc.
Mentioning the results of investigations of the Ajmer, Malegaon and Mecca Masjid blasts, Nikhil S Dixit wrote in DNA on May 19, 2010, ‘All these arrests are an indication that investigators are slowly shifting their focus to the once neglected ‘Hindu terror’ groups and are waking up to the potent threat of ‘Hindutva terrorism’. Even though evidence of such groups existing has been there since 2002, investigative agencies have always turned a blind-eye towards them. Timely action on part of investigators could have helped saved many lives and prevent certain blasts’ (http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_investigators-have-neglected-hindu-terror-for-a-long-time_1384754).