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After Hemant Karkare, look who
is heading ATS
WSN Network
NEW DELHI:
Even as
the brouhaha is at peak about Indian minister A R Antulay’s remarks
over the killing of Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) chief Hemant
Karkare, the worst has happened, and very silently.
Indian and world
civil society leaders and those looking for a fair probe into the
Malegaon blasts can now simply give up, or bring a focus to what has
happened. The same man who had earlier supervised the Malegaon
blasts probe before Karkare and who had held a few Muslim youth
responsible for these has been made ATS chief after Karkare’s death.
Even as the whole world knows clearly that the breakthrough in the
Malegaon case was clearly because of Hemant Karkare’s personal
dedication, integrity and dexterity at bringing out the truth, and
that he faced Hindutva lobby’s barbs when he arrested Sadhvi Pragya
Thakur and went after the so-called religious men of Hindutva
brigade, New Delhi looked sideways as Maharashtra Government handed
over the temporary charge of ATS to K.P. Raghuvanshi — who headed
the agency before and had supervised the arrest of Muslim youths
soon after the 2006 Malegaon blasts.
Clearly, if
Antulay had spoken out of turn, this turn of events will not help
retore the faith of Muslims in Indian justice dispensing system.
With such a development, there is now little hope of uncovering the
nefarious linkages between Hindutva extremists and terrorism. Most
dispassionate experts and politically aware citizenry now fears that
the anti-terrorist squad’s probe into the Malegaon case might
flounder and perhaps even get buried. There is a serious risk of
that happening but even those trying to defend Antulay failed to
bring out this turn of events.
Indian media has
chosen not to focus on the fact that the new man at the helm is the
old man who was at helm when Malegaon was cracked wrongly. Now, the
same Hindutva brigade is using Antulay’s remarks as a pathetic
smokescreen whose ultimate outcome will be to let the Malegaon
accused get away scotfree. Just before his tragic death, hemant
Karkare and the ATS was under fire from top RSS and BJP leadership
for investigations that exposed involvement of Hindu extremists in
terrorist acts.
24 December
2008
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