Blame games & parleys on terrorist killers

Thursday, 03 January, 2008 , 04:22 PM

. By: V SUNDARAM http://newstodaynet.com/col.php?section=20&catid=33

“India is no longer battling a foreign monster, trained and armed by Pakistan. We are now confronted by enemies within who are no less diabolical than those from whom they draw inspiration” – The Pioneer, New Delhi. Thanks to the Islam-embracing, Islam-promoting, Islam-sponsoring, Islam-projecting, Hindu-hating and Hindu-baiting UPA Government in New Delhi under an imperiously impotent and invertebrate surrogate Prime Minister, Islamic terrorists are having a field day in several parts of India and more particularly in Uttar Pradesh. The common people of India seem to have come to the categorical conclusion that the UPA Government in New Delhi is the biggest Champion of Islamic Terrorism in all non-Congress governed States! Therefore, no one is surprised by the fact that in a pre-dawn attack on 1 January 2008, heavily-armed Islamic terrorists struck at a CRPF camp in Rampur near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, killing eight persons, including seven security personnel, and injuring five others. Government of India, UP Government and its police and government officials continue to be clueless on the whereabouts of the terrorists who killed seven CRPF personnel.

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The ineffective, inept and inefficient de jure Home Minister Shivraj Patil cannot distinguish between Law and Order, terrorism and Law and Order, terrorism and humanism and he is waiting with folded hands as ever on the side lines waiting for instructions from number 10 Janpath in New Delhi. Unlike the proverbially potent silence of Kamaraj, the impotent silence of Shivraj Patil on all matters connected with the security of our shattered nation today has become ludicrous and laughable. He owes an explanation as to why the CRPF centre at Rampur was so poorly protected although it was on the hit list of terrorists according to Government of India Security Agencies. Terming the attack on the Central Reserve Police Force camp at Rampur a ‘failure’ on the part of the Central Reserve Police Force, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati said the State Government had alerted the central security agency about the threat much in advance. She said: “Rampur district officials some time ago had met the CRPF officials and asked them to take necessary precautions and the incident indicates laxity on their part. It is an act of shameful cowardice. When there was a terrorist threat, the CRPF should have been careful. It is largely because of carelessness of the CRPF that terrorists entered the camp.” UP Chief Minister Mayawati has stressed the need for Centre’s help in dealing with the rising cases of terrorism in Uttar Pradesh and requested the Centre to co-operate with the State Government in the formidable task of jointly countering the challenge of the forces of unbridled terrorism. Taking a dig at the Central Government, Mayawati rightly said: “The terrorist influx is not a recent event as ‘international borders of the country are unsafe and terrorists have already made inroads in different parts of the country’”. In a lukewarm post-facto response, the Government of India have said that Central security agencies had warned the CRPF and the Uttar Pradesh Police about the possibility of a suicide attack at their recruitment Centre by Pakistan-based terror group Lashker-e-Tayiba. However, it is not yet clear whether the suicide attack on 1st January 2008 at Rampur was carried out by Lashker-e-Tayiba or by another Pakistan-based terror group, Jaish-e-Mohammed. I am of the view that the recent Islamic Terrorist attack on the Central Reserve Police Force camp at Rampur marks a great paradigm shift in strategy and tactics of jihadi groups, in India which are hell-bent on making Uttar Pradesh their major theatre of operation in India—the four terrorists who escaped at Rampur are believed to be part of a fidayeen squad. This is the second fidayeen attack after the failed attempt at Ayodhya’s Ramjanmabhoomi complex on July 5, 2005. Five terrorists were killed then. Thanks to the Jihadi-promotion policies of Mulayamsingh Yadav in UP, that State has been on the Terrorist Radar for more than 10 years. After Jammu and Kashmir, UP has become the most important area for Islamic Terrorism. Most of the Islamic terror modules in western UP have inherited the infrastructure developed by the Harkat-ul-Ansar in 1993. All the current major players in UP — the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Harkat-ul-Jehad Islami and the Hizbul Mujahideen – are splinter groups of the Harkat-ul-Ansar while Lashkar-e-Taiba has created its own base using SIMI’s infrastructure, with the full political support of Mulayam Singh’s Government. Again and again it came to light that the Hapur-Moradabad-Bareilly-Rampur belt has always been vulnerable to these terror modules. Under the Government of Mulayam Singh, the State Police were informally directed not to take any effective action in following vital leads for investigating the criminal cases against the terrorists—both known and unknown. What is worse is that the UP police are totally dependent on Central Agencies. If they worked out any case on their own, they got the wrong people to escape from local political compulsions. The best example is the Ayodhya attack in 2005. The UP police arrested LeT men but Delhi picked up the real players – JeM-in Jammu. Our Prime Minister often spends a sleepless night whenever and wherever, in any part of the world, any Islamic terrorist gets killed or caught by the Law-enforcement Agency of that Country or the State. But he is least concerned with either Islamic terror or victims of Islamic terror in India. Now he is blamed the CRPF for what happened at Rampur in U.P. Likewise, like rats that followed the Pied Piper of Hamlyn, our lifeless Home Minister Shivraj Patil has also declared with secular aplomb that the CRPF unit at Rampur have to take the full blame for what happened on 1st January 2008. To crown this all, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh has functioned in a dictatorial manner like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini by imposing an illegal and unconstitutional ban on the entry of BJP President Rajnath Singh into the Rampur CRPF area. She has forgotten the fact that Indira Gandhi was thrown out by the people of India in 1977 because she functioned like a cruel despot. Mayawati can seek no exemption – moral, legal and constitutional—from this unwritten Law of Democracy. B S Raghavan, IAS, (Rtd), Formerly Secretary to Government of India with rich experience in the field of enforcement of law & order & security, has rightly concluded: TERRORIST ATTACK ON CRPF GROUP CENTRE AT RAMPUR “The terrorist attack on the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Group Centre at Rampur resulting in the death of seven CRPF personnel and a civilian is a shocking example of a carnage that was waiting to happen, and that will doubtless repeat itself if the same casualness continues to be shown by the top brass of the Force and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to a threat that must have been as obvious as noon-day sun. The senior officers at the Rampur Group Centre seem to have ignored both the general alert sounded by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the specific warnings conveyed to them by the district administration based on suspicious intercepts. On all accounts, they made it easy for the terrorists to gain entry and wreak havoc as per their lethal designs. Reports say that the gates of the Group Centre were actually kept wide open without any stringent screening to control access. Much the greater lapse in this matter is that of the MHA. Security coordination and enforcement of follow-up action on IB warnings, especially in regard to para-military forces, is squarely that of the MHA. In this particular instance, immediately on receipt of IB’s security alert, the MHA should have ascertained from the DG, CRPF, the measures taken to prevent the kind of attacks that occurred at Rampur. The MHA is supposed to have the broader picture and as such, in a commanding position to give directions and monitor and review the action taken in compliance. It is also its paramount Constitutional duty which it cannot burke without being open to the charge of dereliction. The people are, therefore, entitled to know whether and to what extent the MHA discharged its Constitutional obligation. It must be noted that since 9/11 there has not been a single incident involving terrorism on the US homeland. The MHA should put in place the same type of mechanisms and methodologies for curbing terrorism in India also”. (The writer is a retired IAS officer)