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India’s skullduggery This could only be India’s abominable skullduggery, the impudent reaction of New Delhi to the Lahore High Court-ordered release of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, Jamaatud Dawa’s chief, though the Indian officialdom’s wish to see a politically-motivated verdict like the one handed down by their courts to the accused of the 2001 Indian parliament terrorist attack cannot be ruled out. That verdict has been decried and exposed for its partiality, subjectivity and unfairness by independent segments of India’s legal and humans rights community. Although in the clamorous din of nationalistic noises, their voices got drowned, they have brought out poignantly how the innocent have been framed up, incriminating evidence against them fabricated, and ghost witnesses set up to depose lies against them. Ironically, the case against the four accused as built up by the Indian officialdom was so slim and incredible, that the courts had to acquit two of them. And that included Professor Geelani, a Delhi university teacher, who the officialdom had touted as the mastermind of the attack. The third, Shaukat Guru, was discharged of all charges brought against him and convicted for an unrelated offence. Mohammad Afzal, the only one who got convicted and lost his final appeal in the Supreme Court of India against his death sentence, is widely seen to be a sorry case of an abject frame-up, especially in the Indian-occupied Kashmir. A Kashmiri renegade, he was statedly coerced by the Indian security forces in the occupied territory into snitching on his erstwhile Kashmiri resistance comrades. And according to his account, he was called by his handlers to New Delhi where he was hauled up as an accused for the parliament attack. And even the Supreme Court, while upholding the death sentence against him, conceded there was no proof of his links with any terrorist outfit, as claimed by the Indian officialdom. And the Indian apex court ruled that it was confirming his death sentence as “the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is” awarded to him. More ironically, till-date it is not known who actually were the attackers and what really were their motives and at whose behest had they perpetrated the act. Neither the Indian officialdom has bothered to find this out; nor had the Indian judiciary sought to know this; not even has the Indian media cared to investigate this. They all wanted some people in the docks. So the four Kashmiris came handy to them. None bothered about the due process or the ends of justice; not even the Indian courts. And it seems that the Indians were eagerly looking for a similar action and a similar verdict from the Lahore High Court. But their audacious reaction is to do very much with their long-cherished objective to somehow get Pakistan declared a terrorism-sponsoring state. This has been their driving motivating force ever since the Mumbai terrorist strike. India has been dilly-dallying on providing vital information to the Pakistani authorities to help it investigate and build up a credible case against the suspects that could hold in the court. Yet, all the while it has been clamouring to the world that Pakistan is not taking interest in the case. Indeed, it took the Indians many weeks even to provide information on their preliminary investigation, while they had been sharing it all around the world with various capitals and authorities. The only exception was the Interpol, which they treated as an outcaste as they did Pakistan in the matter. And then they took months in answering the questions Pakistani investigators had asked for to complete their probe. And now they have provided certain required matter in Hindi and Gujrati, certainly intentionally to delay the case when they could have easily supplied the texts in English or Urdu to expedite the disposal of the case. But the problem is that the Islamabad hierarchy is letting itself to be taken for a ride by the Indians comfortably, rather unconcernedly, absolutely unmindful of the dire consequences of the Indian dexterous game plan. Visibly, the Indians are exploiting the Mumbai tragedy for political objectives and diplomatic gains. And an inept Islamabad hierarchy is letting them to have their way unobstructed for its sheer lackadaisicalness and unimaginativeness. It has not even insisted on a credible and independent investigation of the murder of Hemant Karkare, Maharashtra’s anti-terrorism squad chief, in the first flush of the Mumbai strike. He was investigating a serving Indian army officer, Lt-Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, with strong links with fanatical Hindu Abhinav Bharat outfit, who, apart from infamous Malegaon bomb blasts, was statedly involved in the Samjhota train bombing that killed and injured scores of Pakistani passengers. His mentor, Jayant Chitale, a retired army colonel, openly bragged having trained Maharashtrian youth commandoes for terrorism in Pakistan. Sure, the Mumbai mayhem’s perpetrators must be brought to justice. But so must be the killers of Pakistani passengers, as also those planning perpetration of terrorism in Pakistan. Those passengers were no toys or robots. They cannot be deemed disposable commodities merely for being Pakistanis. The Islamabad establishment must see into the Indian game plan, and must launch into a forceful counter-action to frustrate India’s sinister design to get Pakistan declared a terrorist state, as it has powerful allies in league with it in this evil mission. The Frntier Post Editorial:June 04,2009 |