THOMAS Jefferson, founding father and the third President of the USA wanted to banish banking , judiciary and bureaucracy from the Republic. Now all three are making a mess of the American as well as of Indian Republic.
Is the UPA-II fighting terrorists or the Left, the Right, Comptroller & Auditor General of India or the People of India at large? There is hue and cry from the usually taciturn elements of society against the arrest and prosecution of several publicists and fighters for the human cause. Some of them have been branded Leftists, others Rightists.
On January 17, 2011 there was, like any other day, a silent march of intellectuals-Professors, Lawyers, Doctors, Media People and other prominent members of the Intelligentsia who gathered and walked silently at the Jantar Mantar under the banner of an outfit called Justice and Human Rights Forum holding placards that pointed accusingly at the Government’s Investigative Agencies.
Lancet India “Towards Universal Health Care” recently launched in Delhi their protest by keeping an empty chair with Dr Benayak Sen’s poster kept on an empty chair who was supposed to occupy but could not because he is behind bars on charges of sedition.
The Supreme Court has observed that it cannot allow the Republic to kill its “own children”, and sought an “answer” from the Centre and Andhra Pradesh government on the killings of top Maoist leader Azad and journalist Hemchandra Pandey in an allegedly fake encounter.
Investigations linking the banned SIMI, Swami Aseemananda and associates, and David Headley with Samjhauta Express and some other blasts is becoming curiouser and curiouser. The plot by the CBI, NIA and other government agencies smacks of a third rate potboiler.
Top SIMI commanders Safdar Nagori, Kamruddin Nagori and Aamil Parvez had, in their narco test, rejected any probability of Lt Col Srikant Purohit or Pragya Singh Thakur in the Malegaon blasts and owned up to the Samjhauta Express explosion.
But now, as the media reports or selective leaks by the concerned investigative agencies claim , Aseemananda , and his associates – Riteshwar, Sadhvi Pragya and Sunil Joshi – met at Riteshwar’s house in Valsad in June 2006 and conspired to attack Muslim localities as a counter to terror strikes by jihadi groups in the country.
And what about top SIMI leaders’ admission of their involvement in the Samjhauta train carnage and Malegaon blasts of 2006. These happened when the investigators knew nothing about Headley’s link and had the faintest idea about the Hindu outfits. There appears to be a stage managed competition for confessions as other than the Samjhauta Express and Malegaon blasts, Nagori and his associates have also confessed to SIMI’s role and involvement of Muslims in terror attacks in several cities such as Mumbai, Aurangabad, Hyderabad, Ajmer and the Kolkata American consulate shootout.
Organised confusion is a hallmark of the Indian bureaucracy who resort to it more blatantly as a way of solving critical problems for their political bosses of the day. In common man’s perceptions, the corrupt UPA government is enacting this farce of investigations to divert people’s attention from 2G, CWG, Adarsh scam and unmitigated price rise. Meanwhile, ministers , politicians and their cronies are making ill-gotten gains from rising prices and people’s misery.
The Central Bureau of Investigation and National Intelligence Agency have become the Dirty Tricks Department of the Congress-led UPA and are now notoriously known as the Congress Bureau of Investigation and the Nasty Intriguers Agency. It is becoming difficult for the common man to distinguish between the criminal and the police!
(The writer is Director Marshall McLuhan Centre and writes on politics and current affairs)
