Soft underbelly of India’s internal security

There are a series of disturbing bits of news flowing in just one week’s media reports that expose the soft underbelly of India’s internal security (own comments are given in italics):

• Saleem Abbasi, an Algerian wanted for his involvement in the blast at Houari Boumediene airport in Algiers on August 26, 1992 was arrested by airport security after Chennai airport immigration authorities spotted him on his arrival from Kualalumpur on June 17th night at Chennai airport. The immigration authorities had no prior knowledge that he was a wanted criminal but a Interpol Red Corner alert in his name resulted in the arrest. The Algerian, travelling on a Qatari passport, was on his way to catch a flight to Bangalore to attend a meeting with the Karnataka Planning Board Deputy Chairman DH Shankaramurthy to discuss Rs 130-crore investment in a solar energy project in Karnataka. Newspapers inform that Abbasi was a globe trotter who has not been caught all these years. So much for global war on terror! It will be interesting to know how many times Abbasi had visited India and where all he has invested and who are his contacts here. But if our past experience is any guide, Abbasi would be set free because India has no extradition treaty with Algeria and he had not committed any offence in India (at least not in public knowledge).

• According to media reports the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a raid seized nine firearms (some of them unlicensed) and VHF radio communication sets from the house of Dr Padamsinh Patil, MP and a leader of the Nationalist Congress Party, in Mumbai on June 18th. Dr Patil is accused of plotting the murder of his cousin and political rival Pavanraja Nimbalkar in 2006. His son however claimed that only four weapons, including a pistol, a revolver, a 12 bore gun and a rifle, were seized and all of them were licensed. The radio sets were authorised to be installed in the NCP leader’s residence when he was a cabinet minister for irrigation. However, when he relinquished office they were not returned to the government but shifted to his new home, which was illegal. (He relinquished office when social crusader Anna Hazare levelled corruption charges against him.) According to Dr Patil’s lawyer, the radio sets were shifted “inadvertently”; he claimed that some of the radiosets were in a packed condition and not used at all.

• Interrogators of Mohammed Madani, a suspected Lashkar-e-Tayyabba (LeT) terrorist, arrested in Delhi on June 4th , told a Delhi court that Madni had revealed to the police interrogators that the LeT was acting in coordination with CPI(Maoists) in Jharkand.

• For a second day battle was “raging” on June 19th in Lalgarh in West Bengal between the Maoists and the paramilitary forces of the state and Centre. The West Bengal government is at last trying to re-establish government control after Maoist rampage in Lalgarh in which the local leader of the ruling CPM party was killed and the police station was attacked. Union Home MinisterP Chidambaram questioned why the West Bengal government had not banned the CPI(Maoists) when other states had already outlawed it. He also said the Naxals were entrenched in the adjoining districts of Bankura and Purulia also and it was difficult to say how many were there. Earlier, in an interview in a forest adjoining Lalgarh, Maoist leader Mullajhola Koteshwar Rao alias Kishanji “calmly admitted both the murder of Badal Ahir, a member of the Pingboni local committee and the plot to assassinate West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. We wanted to kill the chief minstier because the people wanted him to die,” Kishanjee claimed. “We failed. But in future if people give out the same verdict, we will re-plot his assassination” he threatened according to the news report. The media reported that Kishanji might have escaped the police dragnet in Lalgarh area. Naturally he would flee because instead of taking concerted action, the state government and Centre are finger pointing at each othe,r playing the blame game for their inaction against the Naxalites takeover of parts of West Bengal.

Is there a connection between all the above reports (actually I have given only a few of them)? Yes; there is. The bottom line we have a uncoordinated, poorly planned and highly politicised internal security system that is being executed by de-motivated paramilitary and police forces. That is why nobody takes the rule of law seriously, because one has to search for it.

It is no mystery why government in Delhi or elsewhere is not taking seriously the Naxalite threat which is there in nearly 160 districts of the country. Because, they are reluctant. Only Chhattisgarh had taken concerted action against them and it had been facing the flak from Left intellectuals and even the Centre!

So what are we waiting? For another 26/11 to happen I suppose. Then we can have yet another episode of media circus and political mudslinging, appoint a commission to inquire into the new born 26/11 and proceed to suppress the inquiry report from public dissemination. The Maharashtra government has just done it.