"Terror Swami" Aseemanand has confessed to staging false-flag terror attacks that until now have been falsely blamed on Muslims.
BBC News: Hindu holy man Aseemanand in custody over India blastsRelated BBC stories:
Hindu radicals 'threaten India''Hindu terrorism' debate grips IndiaIndia army officer on bomb chargeMinister in Mumbai police furoreDozens dead in India train blastsAn Indian court has remanded in custody a Hindu holy man accused of a string of bomb attacks previously thought to be the work of Muslim militants.
Swami Aseemanand allegedly admitted to placing bombs on a train to Pakistan, at a Sufi shrine and at a mosque.
He has also allegedly confessed to carrying out two assaults on the southern Indian town of Malegaon, which has a large Muslim population.
He has been remanded in custody for the four attacks until 27 January.
Police say that Mr Aseemanand gave them details of his role in the mosque attack in the city of Hyderabad in 2007 in addition to attacks on a graveyard in Malegaon and a Sufi shrine in Ajmer.
THE FOUR ATTACKSFebruary 2007: on the Samjhauta Express train
May 2007: on the Mecca Masjid mosque in Hyderabad
October 2007: Sufi shrine in the city of Ajmer
September 2008: Three bombs in the city of Malegaon
Several Muslim men were arrested for those attacks - and some reports said that they had been tortured. Most are still in custody.
Mr Aseemanand was arrested in November after being in hiding for two years, police said.
According to India's Tehelka magazine, which has obtained a copy of his 42-page confession, he told his interrogators that the attacks on Muslim places were in response to attacks by Islamist militants in India.
It quotes him as saying that many of those involved in the bombings were members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) - the right-wing parent organisation of India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.
The bomb attack on the Samjhauta (Friendship) Express train travelling from India to Pakistan in February 2007 killed 68 people. Many of the passengers who died in the incident were Pakistanis returning home.
The 2008 blast in the town of Malegaon killed seven people and left more than 100 injured. A female Hindu priest, Sadhwi Pragya Singh Thakur, and a serving Indian army officer were among 11 people who were arrested in connection with the attack.
In May 2007, at least 14 people were killed in an explosion during Friday prayers at the Mecca mosque in Hyderabad. It is one of India's biggest mosques, and there was rioting afterwards.
And in October 2007, a bomb attack on a famous Sufi Muslim shrine in the city of Ajmer - in the state of Rajasthan - killed two people.
Anger over leaksMost of these blasts were initially blamed on local militant groups and several Muslim men were arrested for alleged involvement.
But correspondents say the police were unable to make much headway in their investigations.
Opposition politicians were angered recently after leaked diplomatic cables suggested Rahul Gandhi, widely tipped as a future Indian PM, believed Hindu radicals might pose a greater threat than Islamist militants.
According to Wikileaks, Mr Gandhi told a US envoy last year there was some support among Indian Muslims for militants such as Lashkar-e-Taiba.
But he told ambassador Timothy Roemer the greater threat could come from the growth of radical Hindu groups.
* * *
Flawed war on terror: Time to undo wrongs against Muslims
The author is Secretary General of Lok Janshakti Party in India. He explains how (Hindu extremist) Hinduvta/RSS terrorists backed by some Indian politicians and intelligence agencies staged false flag bombings and blamed them on Indian Muslim patsies, i.e. the typical Zionist trick like 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, London, Mumbai, etc.In the aftermath of the bomb blasts at Ajmer Sharif Dargah (2006), Malegaon (2006), Mecca Masjid (2007) and Samjhauta Express (2007), our intelligence agencies claimed that these gruesome attacks were the handiwork of Islamist terrorist groups. The disclosures were followed by large-scale arrests of suspects -- predictably all of them Muslims. That was not all!
The intelligence agencies fed the media with detailed accounts of how the accused had planned the mass killings in cahoots with their Pakistani and Bangladeshi counterparts. As tangible evidence, Muslim men and even boys with beards and skull caps were paraded as the perpetrators of terror before an unquestioning media, and in turn some mischievous media men coloured the incidents with a communal hue. It was no surprise then that during this period, a vicious SMS proclaiming “all Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims” was widely circulated in a clear attempt to reinforce prejudices and further the divide between Hindus and Muslims in the country.
Biased war on terror and ordinary MuslimsThe woes of the ordinary law-abiding Muslim have been compounded by these mindless acts of terror. Living as he is on the margins of society, discriminated against in the job market, in education, when seeking loans and even when looking for accommodation, he is now burdened with the stigma of being in tacit collusion with the terrorists. His commitment to the nation is being questioned because of the widespread belief, fuelled by the intelligence agencies and media that all terrorists were Muslims. Numerous Muslims have complained about being called “aatankvaadis” sometimes by their associates and sometimes even by strangers. An entire community is being punished for the crimes of an aberrant few. Scores of Muslims have been rounded up, detained without any proof of wrongdoing and tortured.
So insecure is the Muslim mindset that following every terror attack, we have the spectacle of Muslim leaders and celebrities of every hue condemning the barbaric attacks. Clearly the Muslim celebrity feels that unless he publicly condemns the terrorist acts, the general impression would be that he actually approves of these acts or was indifferent to them; perhaps at the back of their mind was the infamous statement of the former Prime Minister Vajpayee who almost justified the Gujarat riots 2002 by stating that the Muslim condemnation of Godhra incident was not loud enough: hence the loud protests. They tiresomely proclaim the universal truth that terrorists have no religion. And yet Muslims feel insecure and harried with every terrorist attack as they sense the country’s negative focus on them.
Now truth about Hindutva terror is outBut now the truth is out. Swami Aseemanand’s confession has finally and indubitably confirmed what Hemant Karkare had first exposed—the Hindutva nexus with terror. The brave Karkare’s investigations had sent shock waves through the nation and inevitably invited the wrath of known Muslim baiters such as Bal Thackeray and L.K. Advani. Despite the grave allegations against Sadhavi Pragya of inspiring the terror attacks, the President of a national party visited her in jail and came out strongly in her defense. But somehow the media and public at large did not seem too outraged by the open support given to such criminal, anti-national elements by leading functionaries of a national party. There is a lesson here somewhere. Would the nation at large be as tolerant if a Muslim leader had visited the perpetrator of the 26/11 attacks and spoken in his defense? Such a Muslim leader would most certainly have been pronounced an antinational. Clearly, there are dual standards in assessing actions of the dominant and minority communities respectively.
That the Hindutva terror network has spread far and wide is evident from the fact that apart from the Sadhavi, the Swami, myriad underworld figures, there is an army colonel involved in planning the attacks. For some strange reason there has hardly been any discernible public disquiet at revelations that Hindutva terrorists have executed a series of terrorist acts. However, it would be dangerous to dismiss the evil of Hindutva terror as a mere aberration or ‘the handiwork of a few hotheads’ when they should actually be regarded as monsters for the heinous acts committed. What is disturbing is that many misguided Indians believe that these mass murderers are giving Muslims a dose of their own medicine and therefore deserve commendation. Little do they realize that violence is a zero sum game. There are no winners in this awful expression of hate.
4 steps to undo wrongs against Muslims
There is no doubt that the fight against terrorism in this country is coloured with religious overtones. It is therefore essential that the government act firmly and without prejudice in stamping out this cancer.
(1) The first job of the government should be to unconditionally release all those Muslims detained in connection with the blasts admittedly authored by Aseemanand and his group. The government and its law enforcement agencies cannot possibly undo the hurt caused to the hundreds of Muslims who have been persecuted for no fault of theirs, but by releasing these innocents unconditionally, the government would be sending a message that a grievous wrong is being corrected.
(2) Our country has been extremely sensitive to victims of any form of devastation whether natural, social or accidental. While no amount of compensation can make up for the torture and harassment undergone by countless Muslims for crimes they knew nothing of, it is imperative that the government adequately compensate the victims and their families. Apart from monetary compensation jobs should be given to each victim or some members of his family.
(3) The law enforcement authorities have been merciless in dealing with Muslim organizations such as SIMI, IM… that are suspected of nurturing terrorists. While the government may have strong reasons for the stringent action taken, it is intriguing that there is no move to ban equally dangerous organizations like the RSS, VHP, Bajran Dal and Abhinav Bharat. Soft peddling on this issue would not only encourage these antinational groups to continue their criminal activities aimed at the minority community, but also heighten the sense of insecurity among Muslims. It was that great visionary, Nehru, who had sanctioned that by virtue of numbers as well as in other ways, it was the responsibility of the dominant community not to use its position in any way which might prejudice the secular ideal of the nation. If the fundamentalist outfits are not challenged and defeated, this country will continue to live in the shadow of terrorism.
(4) In the last two decades, innocent Muslims have suffered grievously at the hands of religious fundamentalist groups. The Mumbai pogrom of 1993, the Gujarat genocide of 2002 were not random killings but mass murder of a particular community, and both these ghastly happenings were at least as heinous as the dastardly Sikh Killings of 1984. Our Prime Minister rightly felt that the nation owed an apology to the Sikhs for that terrible act and it was indeed honourable of him to tender such an apology. In the last four years, scores of innocent Muslims have been rounded up, confined and tortured for bomb blasts engineered by fundamentalist Hindutva groups. Would it not be in the fitness of things for the Prime Minister to say sorry to the Muslims for the suffering that they have had to undergo for no fault of theirs?
(The author is Secretary General of Lok Janshakti Party. Email:
lokjanshaktiparty@gmail.com)
* * *
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 2, Dated January 15, 2011
In the words of a zealot…Swami Aseemanand’s chilling confession is the first legal evidence of RSS pracharaks’ involvement in the Samjhauta Express and 2006 Malegaon blasts. ASHISH KHETAN scoops the 42-page document that reveals a frightening story of hate and deliberate mayhemON 18 DECEMBER 2010, a team of CBI sleuths escorted an elderly Bengali man Naba Kumar Sarkar, 59 — popularly known as Swami Aseemanand — from Tihar jail to the Tis Hazari court in Delhi, where he was produced before metropolitan magistrate Deepak Dabas. Aseemanand is the key accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast that killed nine people. This was his second court appearance in a span of little over 48 hours. On 16 December, Aseemanand had requested the magistrate to record his confession about his involvement in a string of terror attacks. He stated that he was making the confession without any fear, force, coercion or inducement.
In accordance with the law, the magistrate asked Aseemanand to reflect over his decision and sent him to judicial custody for two days — away from any police interference or influence.
On 18 December, Aseemanand returned, resolute. The magistrate asked everybody except his stenographer to leave his chamber. “I know I can be sentenced to the death penalty but I still want to make the confession,” Aseemanand said.
Over the next five hours, in an unprecedented move, Aseemanand laid bare an explosive story about the involvement of a few Hindutva leaders, including himself, in planning and executing a series of gruesome terror attacks. Over the past few years, several pieces of the Hindutva terror puzzle have slowly been falling into place — each piece corroborating and validating what has gone before. First, the arrest of Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Dayanand Pandey, Lt Col Shrikant Purohit and others in 2008. The seizure of 37 audio tapes from Pandey’s laptop that featured all these people discussing their terror activities. And most recently, the Rajasthan ATS’ chargesheet on the 2007 Ajmer Sharif blast. Aseemanand’s confession, however, is likely to prove one of the most crucial pieces for investigative agencies.
Unlike police interrogation reports or confessions, under clause 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), confessions before a magistrate are considered legally admissible evidence. Aseemanand’s statement, therefore, is extremely crucial and will have serious ramifications.... (read the complete story
here)
In collaboration with We Are Change - Wisconsin and Christians for 9/11 Truth, Muslims for 9/11 Truth is sponsoring a symposium on engagé alternative media featuring Sander Hicks.
