India-perpetrated terror acts blamed on Pakistan

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Tahir Mustafa

Shawwal 24, 1434 2013-09-01

Special Reports

by Tahir Mustafa (Special Reports, Crescent International Vol. 42, No. 7, Shawwal, 1434)

Indian bureaucrats have submitted written statements in court confirming that the highly publicized terror attacks in India were in fact the handiwork of successive Indian governments. Early this year, a number of politicians blamed the former BJP government of orchestrating some terror attacks. Now the Congress Party has also been found to be involved.

A lie, it is said, is halfway around the world, before truth has had a chance to tie its shoelaces. This is even more so when a state is involved in spreading lies to advance a particular agenda. In recent years, a series of terrorist attacks in India were blamed on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), its premier spy agency, as well as non-state actors allegedly supported by the ISI. The two most widely publicized attacks were the ones on India’s parliament on December 13, 2001, a couple of months after the attacks of 9/11, and the October 26, 2008 terrorist attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai.

The Taj Hotel attack that lasted several days was played out in all its gory details on television. Angry mobs were whipped into a frenzy condemning Pakistan, the ISI and its alleged accomplices. Recent revelations by Indian bureaucrats, however, paint this attack as well as the December 13, 2001 attack on India’s parliament in very different light. Satish Verma, a former Indian Home Ministry official and investigator revealed, as reported by the Times of India on July 14, 2013, that Indian governments in power at the time “orchestrated and pre-planned terror attacks on its own parliament (December 13, 2001) and [the] carnage in Mumbai (November 26, 2008).”

These are explosive revelations by India’s own bureaucrats but not the first ones. Why would the Indian government perpetrate such elaborate crimes against its own people? According to Verma, the purpose was to create terror, mayhem and pandemonium by killing hundreds of innocent people in cold blood as part of a broader plan to justify certain government policies and oppressive laws that had clearly been condemned at the international level.

India’s home ministry undersecretary R.V.S. Mani corroborated Verma’s revelations. He submitted signed affidavits in court that substantiated Verma’s report that both terror attacks were a set-up job by the Indian government and its intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). Both bureaucrats suggested that the targets — Taj Hotel in Mumbai and the Indian parliament — were carefully chosen because of their high profile and that they would generate huge publicity. The Taj Hotel with its Mughal-era style architecture is very popular with foreign tourists, as well as India’s nouveau riche. It is one of Mumbai’s important landmarks.

The same holds true for the Indian parliament. It is “venerated” as the debating and lawmaking house of the “largest democracy” in the world. That the same house has been responsible for passing such oppressive anti-people’s laws as Terrorism and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA), National Security Act (NSA), Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (JKPSA) and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), was causing global concern. India’s ruling circles had to neutralize this.

India has successfully projected an image of non-violence and assiduously promoted Karamchand Gandhi as its “apostle.” Gandhi was a fraud and India’s non-violent image is as contrived as its democracy but often image matters more than reality. India has also had much help from the West that wants to promote the concept of non-violence among targeted people but never practice this itself.

There are numerous uprisings underway against the central government in India. They range from Kashmir in the northwest to India’s far east as well as south. India’s brutal crackdown and gross human rights violations in these areas, especially in Kashmir, fly in the face of its carefully contrived image of non-violence. Further, the oppressive laws giving vast powers to police and other security forces and their abuse of such powers have aroused global concerns.

Politicians and security personnel in India had to do something about their tarnished image. Criminal acts were concocted at the highest level. Incredible as it may sound, this is not the first time that a state has indulged in such behavior nor is India alone. The US and Zionist Israel routinely carry out false flag operations that they blame on their enemies thereby providing a pretext for military aggression against targeted peoples.

India has two principal enemies: Pakistan’s ISI and Kashmiri strugglers for freedom. In recent years, successive governments in Delhi have added a third group to its enemy list: Indian Muslims whom they accuse of having links with the ISI. Over the last decade, there have been a series of terrorist acts that were blamed on Indian Muslims and scores were arrested and thrown in prison. They were beaten up and tortured, practices that are routine in India where the police and other security forces operate above the law or with no law.

Among numerous terrorist acts, three stand out in particular: Samjhauta Express bomb attack of February 19, 2007 on a train traveling to Pakistan, Mecca Masjid bomb blast of May 18, 2007, and Ajmer Dargah Sharif blasts of October 2007. In each case Muslims were blamed and scores of them arrested. For the record, Samjhauta Express is a train service launched between India and Pakistan to promote understanding and friendship. Why Muslims or Pakistani agents would want to undermine such service was never explained.

Despite an official campaign to blame Muslims and Pakistan for these terrorist acts, some investigators within the Indian security establishment were not prepared to accept these allegations at face value. For them, the issue was not politics but security and law and order. Politics also came into play when one group — the ruling Congress Party — decided to expose their opponents in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) whose ranks are filled with Hindu extremists and terrorists.

Gradually, the evidence started to emerge. On January 22, 2013, for instance, the Indian Home Secretary R.K. Singh said that at least 10 people with close links to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a well-known Hindu terrorist outfit, and its affiliate organizations were named accused in various acts of terror across India.

“Yes, during investigations of Samjhauta Express [attacked February 19, 2007], Mecca Masjid [May 18, 2007] and [Ajmer] Dargah Sharif blasts [October 2007], we have found names of at least 10 persons who have been associated with the RSS at some point or the other,” according to Singh’s statement in the Indian daily, The Hindu of January 22, 2013. He made the statement two days after his boss, Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde had said in Jaipur that investigative agencies had found that the BJP and the RSS conducted training camps to spread terrorism. “We will have to think about it seriously and will have to remain alert,” he said.

In his statement to the media, Singh named a number of Hindus with close links to the RSS that are either in police custody or wanted by the National Investigative Agency (NIA) in connection with numerous terrorist acts. Even more pertinent was a person using the alias Swami Aseemanand (his real name is Jatin Chatterjee or Naba Kumar Sarkar, depending on the Indian agency or media source one uses). He is alleged to be the main conspirator in the Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif Dargah blasts. Aseemanand was associated with Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad, a wing of the RSS in Dang, Gujarat, from the 1990s to 2007, according to Singh. He is considered an ideologue of Abhinav Bharat (New India), an organization that is believed to be behind the Malegaon blast in Maharashtra in September 2008. Aseemanand was arrested on November 19, 2010 while hiding in an ashram (a Hindu holy place) in Hardiwar.

Aseemanand, however, was not acting alone. After discovering the media-generated hysteria against alleged Muslim terrorists blowing up their own masjids to be false, Indian investigators started to dig deeper. One investigator’s name in particular stood out: Hemant Karkare, chief of the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS). His investigation led him to the Hindu terrorist outfits. The deeper he dug, the more evidence he unearthed of the Hindu terrorists and a larger conspiracy being hatched by some elements in the Indian army to stage a coup. Unlike others, Karkare did not pre-apportion blame. He was able to establish the presence of a radical Hindu outfit, Abhinav Bharat for the blasts in Malegaon, and later stitching it with a larger conspiracy by these extremists to use elements in the Indian army to organize a coup.

Just days before the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008, Karkare had told an Indian weekly: “We are not looking at seers or saints in relation to the Malegaon blasts. We are not looking at people from a particular community when we question them. We are just detaining people on the basis of evidence… There are a lot of people going around claiming to be saints,” in a veiled reference to Aseemanand (or Jatin Chatterjee/Naba Kumar Sarkar). Karkare was killed while the Mumbai Taj Hotel attack was underway but in circumstances that have raised serious questions about those behind his killing and that of his two police associates. He was not killed at or near the hotel but in a totally different location.

Karkare’s investigation had led him to Lieutenant Colonel Shrikant Purohit who had provided explosives used in the various bomb attacks. Interrogation of other extremists like Pragya Thakur and Dayanand Pande exposed a vast network of Hindu extremists hell bent on blaming Muslims but in fact directly responsible for the terrorist attacks. It also revealed a nexus of Hindu extremists and Zionists pursuing the same agenda: to pin the blame on Muslims for every terrorist act. Karkare exposed this diabolical conspiracy; he paid the price with his life.

Recent revelations by senior Indian bureaucrats confirm that the rot has spread to both political parties in India and that neither is above dirty tricks and using diabolical means to tarnish enemies, even to the point of killing their own people.