Hindu terror link ‘wider than we thought’: former top cop

PUNE, MAHARASHTRA - A former police official in India says there are reasons to suspect the role of right wing Hindu outfits behind many terrorist attacks that have been blamed on Islamist outfits.

India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) has been protecting right wing Hindu groups, vis-à-vis their role in terrorist attacks, for several years, alleged S.M. Mushrif, former inspector general of police.

‘This is why even before the reverberations of a blast die down, investigation agencies blame it on some Muslim outfits,’ said Mushrif while speaking to Lapido in Pune city in the western state of Maharashtra.

Before retiring in 2005, Mushrif served for decades in Maharashtra, which is now being seen as hub of right wing organisations’ terror activities.

The Times of India daily reported on October 21 that Maharashtra’s investigation agencies had arrested members of right wing outfits in at least five cases related to bomb explosions during the last one and a half years.

These outfits include the Abhinav Bharat (Pride of India) and the Sanatan Sanstha (Eternal Organisation), both based in Maharashtra.

‘The IB does not allow any bomb blast investigation to run its logical course as it interferes and forces local investigation agencies to accept readymade evidence furnished by it’, said Mushrif.

Even when the local police begin to investigate a case correctly, he added, the IB abruptly intervenes and imposes its own theory under the pretext of ‘assistance’.

Sudden shifts

‘There are sudden shifts in the versions of investigation agencies, as can be seen in newspaper reports, in numerous cases’ he adds.

The IB is India’s internal intelligence agency that garners intelligence from within the country besides executing counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism tasks.

The IB comprises employees mostly from the Indian Police Service and the military.

Mushrif went on to say that the IB was one of India’s most ‘Brahminist’ organisations, ‘even more Brahminist than the Hindu nationalist conglomerate Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’.

‘By Brahminist, I mean a very small section among the Brahmins and also some highly indoctrinated non-Brahmins’, he added.

According to the traditional caste hierarchy, mainly in the Hindu society, Brahmins are considered to be the the highest - priestly - caste.

As one of its strategies to create a Hindu nation, ‘read Brahminist nation’, the RSS infiltrated the IB with its supporters.

Mushrif said Professor S. A. R. Geelani of Delhi University, an accused in the 2001 parliament attack case who was later acquitted by the Supreme Court, had experienced how Brahminist the IB was.

Pretext

The Tehelka weekly (November 22, 2008 issue) quoted Geelani as saying: ‘I have seen the intelligence agency very closely. Sitting with them, I never felt I was in a government office of a democratic country. Instead, it felt like the RSS headquarters.’

‘Though theoretically, the government has the prerogative of appointing the IB chief, in practice, the government has hardly any choice in the selection’, said Mushrif.

It has become a convention, he added, that the outgoing IB director nominates his successor and the government accepts it without questioning.

Given that the IB director briefs the prime minister and the home minister on a daily basis, its word is accepted as final by most government agencies, including the police, he pointed out.

‘This proximity to the top leaders in the government is often exploited by IB chiefs, who insulate themselves against the rest of the government and administrative leaders under the pretext of their “right to secrecy”.’

Mushrif identified several terror attacks in which the IB may have interfered to falsely implicate Muslims.

These included the 11 July 2006 Mumbai suburban train bombings killing over 200 and injuring 700, and the 26 July 2008 serial blasts in Ahmedabad and Surat in the western state of Gujarat that killed over 50 and injured around 200.

He also called for reinvestigation of the 13 September 2008 Delhi blasts that killed at least 30 and injured over 100; the 23 November 2007 blasts in courts in the cities of Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh killing 13 people; and the 13 May 2008 blasts in Jaipur in the northern state of Rajasthan that killed over 60 and injured around 150.

Hindu nationalist ideology, which sees India as a land of Hindus, is the brain child of Brahminists, said Mushrif.
The Hindu nationalist movement was started in Maharashtra in the late 19th century to counter the movement of social justice for the Dalits (people who are considered casteless and formerly known as ‘untouchables’) and other lower castes in the state which challenged the Brahmin hegemony, he explained.

The Brahminists created an enemy out of Indian Muslims by misrepresenting the 700-year rule of Muslim kings in India as an Islamic ‘invasion’, to divert the attention of the Dalits, he added.

This is why, he said, there were no anti-Muslim riots until 1893.

‘Reasons for suspicion’

Lapido spoke to former director general of police of Maharashtra, OP Bali, about Mushrif’s theory.

‘There is no conclusive evidence yet on the involvement of right wing groups in bomb blasts other than the known cases. However, there are reasons for suspicion’, he said.

Dr. Suresh Khairnar, a renowned civil activist from Nagpur, Maharashtra, told Lapido that he took Mushrif’s theory very seriously.

Khairnar has conducted fact-finding missions on nearly 100 incidents of blasts and communal violence.
Mushrif’s theory goes even further.

He has come out with an explosive book, Who Killed Karkare? The Real Face of Terrorism, to present an alternative theory on the killing of former chief of Mumbai’s Anti-terrorism Squad, Hemant Karkare.

Karkare was the first official to have arrested members of a right wing outfit for bomb explosions.

Mushrif says in his book that Karkare was killed by right-wing Hindu groups in an attack that was distinct from the ones launched by Pakistani terrorists on November 26, 2008.

Mumbai police, however, claim that Karkare was killed by the Pakistani terrorists.

‘I know my book will invite severe criticism,’ said Mushrif, a Muslim by faith.

‘After all, Brahminists are very powerful and it is very easy to target Muslims. But in order to save the nation and its Constitution, somebody had to bell the cat. I am prepared to face any consequences.’