A Terror Tale With Plenty of Loose Ends

The Karnataka Police claim to have prevented a major catastrophe by arresting a dozen Muslim youth. But does it have a watertight case? Imran Khan finds out

The citizens of Bangalore, who have been limping back to normalcy after more than 30,000 north-easterners fled the city amidst rumours of communal violence, is now living with the grim specter of terrorists living in their midst posing as respectable, law-abiding citizens- as journalists, scientists, doctors and students.

The Karnataka police last week arrested 18 Muslim youths including two from Hyderabad and Maharashtra, for allegedly trying to assassinate several prominent personalities in the state.  The central crime branch of the Bangalore police claim that the arrested youths were part of the banned Pakistan based terror outfits Lashkar E Toiba and Harkat ul Jehad E Islami ( HuJI) and were running `sleeper cells’ in the southern part of the country.  The Bangalore police, who claim to have recovered two 7.65 mm Italian made Berretta pistols from the arrested youth, have officially charged them with attempting to assassinate two Kannada journalists Vishweshwar Bhat and Pratap Simha of Kannda Prabha known for their hindutva leanings, state Bajrang Dal leader Ganu Jartarkar and a Hyderabad based corporator.

However, a number of statements from the Karnataka Home Minster R Ashok and the Union Home Secretary R K Singh hinted at a much larger plot, one that targeted vital national security assets including the Kaiga nuclear power plant and a series of conflicting stories in the media attributed to the alleged terrorists, plans to carry out bomb blasts at the Hubli Ganesh festival, to assassinate prominent legislators and even reported at armed terrorists camps operating in the forests of Hubli-. All these stories attributed the information to unnamed police sources and a leading English daily claimed that the LeT and Hujji are operating ‘sleeper cells’ in Karnataka and that their agents have infiltrated the mainstream media. Shiva Sunder, a political analyst says that unverified leaks from the police and irresponsible media reportage are creating an atmosphere of terror and suspicion in the state.

Tehelka looks at the police version and finds that at the moment the police have little more than two pistols they claim to have recovered and the confessional statements of three of the accused. According to the Indian Evidence Act, Section 36, confessions given to a police officer is legally not permissible as evidence in a court of law. Worse, even going by the confessions which form the basis of the FIR, there seems little evidence at this stage to link the other accused with the alleged plot, let alone with international terrorist organizations.

According to the details of the First information Report (FIR) and the confession statements extracted from the accused Abdul Hakeem Jamadar and Shoaib Ahmed Mirza obtained by Tehelka, the beginning of the alleged conspiracy stretches back a year ago, when Shoaib and Hakeem came in touch with a shadowy figure called Zakir alias Ustad. 

The confessional statements paint him as the main instigator behind the alleged plot, and a fundamentalist ideologue who moved the youngsters with his emotional appeals to retaliate against the persecution of Muslims.

The confession statement says that, Jamadar and Dr. Zafar Iqbal wanted to travel to Iran and then on to Pakistan to join the Taliban. They took a one month visiting visa from the Iranian consulate in Hyderabad by telling them that they wanted to visit the shrine of Fatima in Iran. Abdul Hakeem’s passport number is H-8028149 and was issued to him in 2009 by the Bangalore passport office. The police are yet to get hold of Zafar’s passport details.  

After this point, the event recorded in the statement takes a bizarre turn. The statement says that on December 11, 2011 Jamadar and Zafar took the Air Arabia flight from Bangalore International airport to Tehran airport. And from there it says, ISI agents took them through the border to Pakistan where they were met by Abdul Wahab, Deputy Director ISI Karachi, Hamd, Senior Director, ISI Karachi, and Mustafa a senior official of ISI Karachi.

Interestingly, he says that, the ISI officials questioned about whether they had any RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) connections and threatened. ‘’ They asked us to go to India and work for them as ISI agent. For that they have promised us to provide necessary information and money’’.  Most strangely the statement says that these wannabe Talibanis denied this offer and further that the ISI tortured them for 10-15 days.  Later the ISI took the two to the Pakistani border and they were allowed to travel back to Iran. They flew back to India through Shivaji International Airport and came back to Karnataka.

The assassination plot, according to the police confession, was hatched just before Ramzan when Zakir alias Ustaad got in touch with Jamadar and asked him to assassinate Pratap Simha a columnist with Kananda Prabha and its editor Vishweshar Bhatt. The ostensible reason was anti-minority and pro-Hindutva articles written by the two journalists.

Interestingly the confessional statements and the FIR make no mention of how the pistols and ammunition were procured by Shoaib and Jamaadar and whether it was supplied by the elusive Ustaad. Interestingly, according to the police, while the first pistol was recovered from the possession of Shoaib and Jamadar when the police allegedly intercepted their assassination mission on 28 August, the second was recovered from Akram, who was arrested from near the Bangalore central bus stand on September 1. The manner as well as timing of the arrest of Shoaib and Jamaadar also raises questions.  The FIR says that Shoaib pulled out the pistol and aimed at the policemen, but that K V Jithendranath the head of the police team pounced on Shoaib and disarmed him physically. According to the FIR after arresting Shoaib and Jamadar, their flatmates journalist Muthi ur Rehman Siddique, Reyaz Ahmed, Muhammed Yusuf Nalabund and DRDO engineer Aijaz Ahmed Mirza, elder brother of Shoaib Mirza were arrested at around 3:30 pm .However, contrary to the FIR report, a missing complaint filed by residents of JC Nagar area says that the accused were picked up by the police at around 9am.

Even the stolen Hero Honda splendor bike bearing number KA-27-E-1035 used by them, according to the police, turned out to be of fake. The bike’s registration number has been traced to one Mr. Datatre Mudri Marthanda Rao in Ranebennur town. The registration details reveal that it is a Bajaj M80 scooter bought in 1991. The police however claim that, the number plate on the bike was fake and are unwilling to reveal details of the registration number. 

On 30 August, commending CCB’s feat DG & IGP Lalrokuma Pachau said that – by this arrest the Bangalore police has prevented a major – ‘ catastrophe’.  Civil society activists however remain skeptical of the police’s claims. The family of the arrested men however, has accused the police of arresting them on false charges. And Muslim groups have accused the police of fabricating the case and victimizing the innocent members of the minority community. They point out to several previous instances where high profile arrests made by the police resulted in acquittals.  “All these cases followed the same pattern. All the arrested were youth mainly from the lower middle class of the Muslim community. After their arrest stories started appearing regularly in the media quoting unnamed police sources claiming that the accused were members of Indian Mujahideen, LeT or even the Al Qaeda.  After spending several years in prison the court finally acquitted many of the accused citing lack of evidence, ‘’ said Irshad Ahmed Desai of Association for Protection of Civil Rights.

Desai cited the last Wednesday’s acquittal of Faheem Ansari and Sabhuddin Ahmed who were wrongly charged by the Mumbai police for their connection in the 26/11 case.

In 2008, a month before BJP came to power in Karnataka; a bomb went off in the magistrate court in Hubli where seven SIMI members were to be produced. Police had blamed SIMI for that. Later however it turned out that, the blast was carried out by Nagaraj Jambagi, leader of a criminal gang with links to Sri Ram Sene. In 2008 again, in Belgaum (86km from Hubli and 499 km from Bangalore) the police arrested 15 people based on the material found on the hard disk. After spending three years, they were acquitted in December 2011 adds Desai.

 While the police investigation continues, the jury is still out on whether they have cracked a sinister terror plot that could have threatened the fragile communal harmony of an entire state, or whether the young men arrested and branded terrorists paid for nothing more than who they are

Note: The above article was first published in Tehelka magazine.