Bomb Blasts: Indians - Half truths, Full lies and lots of rumours

The last few days have been very crucial for the investigators of the pan India bomb blasts. They seem to have found some leads after the humiliating 4 years where they were running around in circles (like a dog trying to jab its tail). As usual the police and the public gave different version of things which most of the media was quick to show as “Breaking News”. The media content swung like a pendulum moving from India’s Osama Tauqeer to Azamgarh being India’s Waziristan. One channel showed Tauqeer and others with devils ears and tongue. Please for god sake “SHUT UP”. If this is the level of media coverage then I and other sane people will support going back to the days of “Dukhdarshan” (Doordarshan).
As being slightly more “knowledgeable” and “Level minded” (pun intended) than our electronic media journalists, there are a couple of points that I wish to communicate out on these bomb blasts, their investigation and also take the liberty of commenting on some allied issues.

The Delhi – Batla House Encounter

Please for god’s sake, this was not a fake encounter. Fake encounters are not done in broad day light in the middle of a colony, nor does the mission leader tell his family that he is going to be back in a couple of hours leaving behind his critically ill son. Please accept the encounter story of the Delhi police as they are saying the truth (at least this time). Any sceptic can watch a very balanced coverage on headlines today news channel which was able to procure the actual encounter footage shot either with a mobile phone camera or a normal camera with low quality digital zoom. It clearly showed a below par police action where casualty was nearly 100% sure. As has been reported in some creditable media that the cops were of the opinion that this would be a “QUICK ARREST” operation and before other people realise it, they would be back at their Lodhi Road office. Some Police officers want to join such raids for the lure of medals; some for promotions but some do have genuine team spirit and all these scenarios’ can lead to mistakes and lots of them were committed on that fateful day. As for the shots having hit Inspector Sharma from the back, the headlines today clip clearly shows the volley of fire coming from the house and the ill equipped and ill prepared raiding party rushing downstairs to escape that gun fire. As for the escape of the terrorist, well if such was the planning of the arrest, then escapee of 2 -3 or all the terrorists is no big deal. Having myself seen visuals and also read about the manual of procedures employed by a raiding party in U.K, I can tell that this was a shoddy work by the special cell. The blame if any goes to the concepts in training for such operations that Indian police employ in which a false sense of bravado and complete sense of recklessness gets groomed into them. In this age of the internet and you tube, just look into clips of such raids by U.K and U.S police and one can appreciate my view on this. I do not doubt the bravery or the team spirit of these policemen but just sacrificing one’s life leads to nothing. What if the court tomorrow says that no the encounter was not perfect or the captured people are not terrorists? These scenarios can happen and the only reason is that our police hardly go with an effort to create a case against the accused. The entire exercise is to capture an accused and then “Break” him down to reveal everything. This does sensationalise the news of that day but when the story goes to the inner pages of the newspapers, the terrorists go scot free. This is totally opposite to the procedure employed by the U.K police who operate in a scenario where the suspects are trailed for months and only when enough legally admissible evidence is accumulated, the cell is busted. This is the biggest reason that police in such countries enjoy far higher credibility than our police do. Such credibility not only leads to better moles in the terrorist cells but also in improved convictions.

Month of Ramdan – There were murmurs at the Batla house area that a Muslim could not do something so un-Islamic during the holy month of Ramdan. The terrorist have no knowledge of Islam or love for it. They only know the language of hate and nothing else. This was reaffirmed as within a couple of days the terrorist and that too the wahibi’s (purist) nearly blew up the Marriott in Islamabad and that also when an iftar dinner was being organised. This is their level of knowledge of Islam and their thoughts for a Muslim Ummah or an Islamic Caliphate.

What can be done to assure the sceptical people of India that such encounters are genuine?

1. Give raiding party helmet cams (U.K police has started using them). This if needed can show if the raiding party was following the set procedures or not. Army has been doing this for a long time and it is time that the police forces start the same also.
2. All deaths natural and unnatural needs be verified by a system called Coroner’s Inquest. This simple process goes a long way in clearing the air about encounters. The system is presently working in the U.K and has been able to produce wonderful results. The Coroner is somewhat like a constitutional figure and he/she goes beyond the role of a post mortem expert. He/She also enquires about the conditions leading to the death and also what could and should be done to prevent such a loss of life. Lots of changes have been bought into the emergency management system in the U.K by such inquests.
In the U.K even the Armed Forces are under the preview of the Coroner’s Inquest which might not be possible so we could have a separate Coroner for Armed forces directly reporting to the Defence Minister. We need this openness not only for keeping the Armed Forces record clean but also to make sure that generals who are responsible for the life of the front line jawans and officers give them the best quality tools to achieve their missions. Right now jawans and officers who lay down their lives for this nation are quickly termed Saheed and no institutional effort is made to address the root causes of their deaths. Lots of deaths in Indian Armed forces are attributed to malfunctioning of ammunition or poor quality of communication equipment or weapons or body armour and nothing is done quickly enough to correct these issues.
3. Please allow press briefings to be done by professionals and not regular policemen and women. Train your P.R cops in what P.R means. For someone who has wielded lathi all his life, words would not be the easiest things which would flow from his/her mouth.
4. Rumour mills work over time at such places especially where the majority of the people are either illiterate or semi educated or like most Indian’s - Born sceptics. What the police and their P.R fellows need to do is to make sure that their voice is heard. Tools that You Tube, Orkut, Face book and Internet chat rooms offer a quick and easy way to disseminate your point of view. These days even royal family of U.K, U.N, etc have their own video channels on the You Tube.
5. Order a Coroner’s Inquest and publish its finding or even updates on the internet.
6. Train and prepare your men and women on such missions well enough. Equip them well and show your evidence gathered to a magistrate before a raid is started (Italy does that – A Magistrate leads the police campaigns against mafia’s, terrorist or other shady characters). This will allow the encounter specialists to access if the evidence gathered is good enough or more needs to be done under the existing laws to nail the terrorist in a court of law.
7. Pick up more people from smaller communities into the force especially Delhi Police in the lower rung. There are hundreds of young retired ex Army men and women including Muslims who could be immediately absorbed into the force. This will allow some credibility and increase professionalism into the police forces.

As I have reported in my earlier blogs that intelligence agencies and police forces are busy doing “bandobast” for their “bade sahibs” and their free loader relatives rather than trailing the terrorists. A quick reading of Maj. Gen V.K Singh’s book on R&AW reveals the same, 90% of all information in R&AW is purely technical and that is shocking. Human assets remain and will remain your best bet in thwarting any sinister plans of the terrorists.

Religion from a modern perspective is the right to practise your rituals and beliefs without any fear until and unless they impede on the other person’s right of existence. If you look at these terrorists this is not what they want, they are hell bent on forcing their beliefs on people lesser capable of defending themselves which include groups like women, economically downtrodden, etc. Forcing religious beliefs leads to different problems and that is pretty well seen in Muslim countries. If you starting discriminating than people have a habit to take such acts to levels beyond the comprehension of sane people. Glaring examples are Muslims in Iraq; first the division was between Iran and Iran, then it was divided between Iraqis and Kurds and the Iraqis subdivided themselves between Iraqis and marsh Arabs; then Iraqis got divided into Shia’s and Sunni’s and then Shia and Sunni’s got divided into different factions and then these factions would finally get divided into different factions as per each household. Gen. Petreus of the U.S ARMY did nothing extraordinary but just divided people as per their wishes and some kind of peace was restored in Iraq.

A proof of forcing people to follow a certain philosophy is that a few days back I read an interesting fact about Pakistan. Lots of Sunni Muslims write their faith as Shia Muslims to escape the compulsory Zakat during the months of Ramdan that Gen. Zia had introduced in that country. This Zakat amount is compulsorily deducted from the salaries for all Sunni Muslims and exempted for Shias and other Minority groups. Also anybody flying into Bangkok can find Saudi jets with their billionaire owners are parked in Bangkok and other places of pleasure for days at end – Do not think for prayers (As far as I know Bangkok is NOT famous for that).

Trust me if Hindu’s think that their saviour in the current times is Dr. Praveen Togadia or Raj Thackeray and Muslims think that their saviour is Osama or some Paki funded politician or “Amar Chitra Katha of Dalal Salam fame and his Netaji or the very “Punny” Chara Eater – Laloo, Aloo, Balu and his family including his railway platform changing brother in Laws” then all the best to those who believe in this. I would to stick myself to reading books and writing by blog.

Live together we have to, so better it is that we start quickly.

p.s – Ignorance breeds even more ignorance: I asked a friend of mine if he knew who was ABU FAZL. The answer even before I could end the question was TERRORIST (As all terrorists change their names to Abu something). All I can say is the fact is that Abu Fazl was one of the most learned scholars that Akbar had in his court. Abu Fazl wrote Akbarnama, translated Bible into Persian and also was instrumental in changing Akbar’s temperament to a modern outlook.
Now there are two ways of looking at this answer, one all is lost and now Muslims are doomed. The other way is that such things need to be highlighted. Firstly accept that there is a problem and this cycle of violence that can be stopped if and only if people from within the Muslim community wake up and tell not only other Indians but also young boys and girls of their community that their ideals need to be Abu Fazl or Dara Shikoh and not osama’s of this world.

Please also read: Muslim Freedom Fighters of India/edited by S. Ganjoo. ISBN 81-261-1281-6

Central Para Military Organisations

CENTRAL PARAMILITARY ORGANISATIONS (CPO):

Formed by the union to help both Military and Police forces, they seem to have lost direction and momentum as years have passed by. We have succeeded in creating multiple CPO for jobs that do not need more than 3-4 of such organisations.

The new and division of the CPOs should be:

1. BSF/ITBP/SSB/EASTERN RIFLES – This combined border organisation should have an officer like the CDS in the Armed Forces headed by a DG – Borders to oversee their workings.

Make four divisions of the DG - Borders.

The BSF division should be made to handle the North Western and western borders only. They should be removed from the other points of the Border e.g. Eastern, Nepal border. They should have separate wings or sub divisions like Air (surveillance and reconnaissance), Water (rivers, marshes, estuaries etc), Desert, Intelligence, Disaster management etc as each of these is a specialised jobs which they have to ensure with complete dedication.

The ITBP division should be made to handle the North/North Eastern – Himalayan Range borders only. They should be removed from the other points of the Border e.g. Eastern border. They should have separate wings or sub divisions like Air (surveillance and reconnaissance), High Altitude, Intelligence (Human &Electronic), Disaster management etc as each of these is a specialised jobs which they have to ensure with complete knowledge and dedication.

The SSB division should be made to handle the North Eastern (Nepal) border only. They should be removed from the other points of the Border e.g. western or Eastern borders. They should have separate wings or sub divisions like Air (surveillance and reconnaissance), Special Operations (Due to sensitive Nature and high Volume of People using this zone), Jungle, Intelligence (Human &Electronic), Disaster management etc as each of these is a specialised jobs which they have to ensure with complete knowledge and dedication.

The EASTERN RIFLES division should be made to handle the Eastern (Sikkim/Seven Sister states) border only. They should not be given other points of the Border e.g. western or Northern borders. They should have separate wings or sub divisions like Air (surveillance and reconnaissance), Special Operations (Due to sensitive nature and high Volume of People using this zone), Jungle, Intelligence (Human &Electronic), Water, Disaster management, etc as each of these is a specialised jobs which they have to ensure with complete knowledge and dedication.

The training and other courses should be combined as far as possible to help in the better management of resources and manpower.

2. CSF – This should be an amalgamation of CRPF, CISF and any other remaining CPO. They should have separate wings or sub divisions like Air (surveillance and reconnaissance), Special Operations, Jungle, Intelligence (Human & Electronic), Water, Counter Insurgency, Urban Warfare, Riot control, Marshall, Commandoes, Industrial Security, Disaster Management, etc as each of these is a specialised jobs which they have to ensure with complete knowledge and dedication. Each of these divisions need specialised equipments and training to ensure excellence in the assigned jobs. This would also ensure relieving Armed forces of their unnecessary civilian duties.

It needs an air wing as they handle and also would handle in future more of civil strife’s including Naxals, militancy, riots and a reconnaissance wing will help them as a force multiplier.

It needs special operations to act as the operations wing of the central government that till now is being handled by the ill equipped state police forces. It should be one that directly liaise and coordinate with their own and other central intelligence agencies.

It needs Jungle operations divisions as most anti naxal, anti terrorist, etc take place in jungle environment.

It needs Marshall division to handle specific jobs like hunting down untraceable central (Federal) offenders, providing protection to centrally important people, managing and protecting any future central prisons, etc.

It needs intelligence (Human &Electronic) but mostly at the unit or the battalion level to ensure that precious resources are not wasted and duplicity of work with other central and state intelligence agencies does not take place.

It needs an industrial security division to manage security of Airports, Atomic plants and other vital installations.

It needs a Disaster management division as the central government lacks a central disaster management force and heavily relies on the armed force to do the same. To ensure that duality of jobs with the armed forces does not take place; the CSF should handle the basic disaster management using light and medium equipment. As the heavy equipments are very costly, difficult to maintain, difficult to transport and can be used for dual purposes (War and Peace), such jobs should be reserved for the armed forces only.

It should also be noted that separate disaster management divisions (DMD) were allotted to all the border organisations as the areas of our borders are generally of a very difficult terrain and the only help one gets is either of the Armed forces or in future should be of the CPO. The system should be able to function in both modes i.e., with the help of state government and without the help of state government.

The only exception to the CPO structure should be the COAST GUARD. This CPO should be transferred to the Ministry of Defence as their job nature involves more of interaction with Navy than with any other border management department of the country. They should be sub divided into Brown Water, Shallow water, Air, Special Operations, Intelligence (Human & Electronic), DMD and Coastline/estuaries/Marshes Divisions. The coast guard should work with 2 kinds of ships – medium size covering larger tracts and smaller faster boats. The bigger ships can become the cover ships for smaller but faster boats. The bigger ships could be handling up to 150 men and the smaller between 10-30 men. These should be supplemented by UAVs, Helicopters and fixed wing aircrafts. This mother ship can be packed with an array of electronic surveillance equipment with a constant secured link between them and the smaller ships for two way transmission of such data. With the current strength of less than 100 ships the coast guard is the poor reflection of the countries perception and priorities of how to defend its borders. A lot of it stems from the fact that our nation neither had a sea faring culture nor a strong navy. The only exception to this perception is Shivaji, who understood the importance of retaining such an arm in his defence forces.

The concept could work with Navy handling sea beyond 50kms from the coast line, coast guard handling between 50kms till 5kms from the coast line and coastal police handling between shore line and 5kms into the sea (Brown and Blue water navy concept).

The urgent need to have a Coastline Divisions is further highlighted as the countries sea/ocean borders are very poorly guarded. The fact that most of the RDX and other ammunition for the Bombay blasts were bought into the country from the gaps in the coastal protection grid further highlights the need to have such a dedicated division. There is hardly any coastal state where the state government has a coastal police having enough boats to be of any deterrent value. Such costal police divisions if any have to be created to give “compliant” state governments police officers timely promotions and to help guard the vast coastal borders of the country.

The jobs of CPO have become very difficult since they are now being used to handle most jobs that a regular police need to do. What is the logic of using BSF/ITBP for internal policing when they have been created for specific jobs? Does one realise that catching a terrorist at the countries border is far better than searching for him in the by lanes of our cities and towns! Do we realise that the role of BSF is to be the first line of defence in peace time and second line of defence in war time. Their operations even in the peace time have to be coordinated with the armed forces. How many trainings does a BSF man undergo if he is just busy doing internal security duties. The height of misuse of BSF is that their Air wing operates no UAV or drones to secure our borders but operates business jets for their political or bureaucratic masters. This money spent on buying a business jet could have virtually bought two squadrons of day/night working UAV/drones useful for patrolling inhospitable places like Bengal or Assam borders. These jet are not as useful as the ones with the air force as they do have automatic landing rights at defence airfields and can land or park only at the civil aerodromes which are usually serviced by scheduled carriers. We have still not utilised the full potential of the UAV/Drones and still work with the concept of human guard at every possible of impossible place. I take the example of ITBP, such a specific force formed to counter the threat coming from the Himalayan region. This force is the most ill equipped, untrained, mismanaged, over fatigued of all the CPOs. They have no structure in place, their equipment is out dated to say the least, and they work at some of the highest points at the borders but have no specialised school like HAWAS (High Altitude warfare School-Gulmarg). Their armoury is poor, clothing worse and to top it all most of the force hardly have rotational pattern of low altitude and high altitude postings. They like BSF also have a role to play during the War and Peace situations at the borders. The ITBP has the unenvious task of taking out LRPs (Long range patrols) in the Himalayan ranges and the equipment they carry is better forgotten than revealed. Seeing their trainings and organisational structure, I think it would be better if the armed forces plan their War scenarios without considering any significant help from either BSF or ITBP any more than what they expect from the local police force. Far better than them are the Scout regiments of the army which have at least their parent units to fall back upon for trainings, equipments and organizational structures.

CBI – What can be said? It is a sick organisation which is brain dead and only surviving on an artificial ventilator provided the incumbent governments for their own petty political gains. Successive governments including the ones run by the opposition parties did nothing to change the condition of the CBI. A small pointer to this is the fact that all P.M till date have tried to put their men in charge of this organisation, an example of this is Narsimha Rao government got Vijay Rama Rao, Deve Gowda got Joginder Singh and many more got many more which only proves that CBI director is not more than a personal servant or even worse a lap dog of the incumbent government.

Drink the poison and make it a constitutional body like the election commission. It is better if we do it as fast as we can. Change its name to just the central Bureau and create 3 divisions within it, first called the Intelligence Division by amalgamating the Intelligence Bureau, second called the Investigation and prosecution Division much the same as it is today and the Immigration division by moving the FRRO office from untrained, de motivated and rejected police officers to a specialised force run by dedicated bunch of trained men and women.

Why the need to merge the IB into the CB? Well the biggest problem of IB is that it is still a shadow organisation run for, by and because of petty political leaders. It cannot and does not have an enforcement wing nor a prosecution wing or a witness protecting wing leaving all such important jobs on the shoulders of the local police which might be governed by men like Md. Taslimuddin or Md. Shabuddin. Only god and the personal destiny of the witness can save him or her.

As a nation, we are still not in a habit of demanding answers so this state of the CBI is unlikely to change.

UNION BORDER & PORTS MANAGEMENT COMMISSION (UBPMC): For better management of our borders a UNION BORDER & PORTS MANAGEMENT COMMISSION (UBPMC) should be set up.

The Commission should have the following people as their members:

1. UNION HOME MINISTER

2. UNION HOME SECETARY

3. DG of BSF/SSB/ITBP/EASTERN RIFLES/CSF

4. DG - Borders

5. Chief of IB, MI, R&AW.

6. Chiefs of Immigration and Customs Department.

7. Chief of Coast Guard.

8. Lt General Rank position – Borders management/Armed Forces (As a lot of the countries land and sea borders/LOC are manned by the Army, Navy and Air force - a new position of coordinating these land and sea borders within the forces and also with the civilian authorities should be created at the Integrated Defence Headquarters).

This board should on case to case basis invite officers like DG – Border Roads, Chief Engineer PWD/CPWD, DGP Local Police, Customs, State Home Secretary, Chief of AAI/BCAS/NSG/FRRO, etc. As a number of private ports and airports would be coming up in the near future, even the heads of such private ports should be invited in case such a need arises. It should however be noted that border management being a central issue should be tackled with an independent mindset without waiting for the state governments to help in the same.

As some part of our borders is with specialised Army regiments called scouts, an office manned by an officer of the rank of Major General – per Regimental scouts (As total number of jawans and officers in the regimental scouts are at most the size of a Division) should be created for effective management of the Army scout’s concept.

Not much is written about these regiments which have been designed as a specialised back up force for our borders. Most of them like Ladakh Scouts, Kumaon Scouts, Garhwal Scouts, etc have been given the unenvious task of defending inhospitable borders in their respective areas. These borders due to their terrain need specialised people to guard them and who better than the locals to do the job. As the locals reside in such places, their ability to stay long in such areas is legendary. During the kargil war, stories of Ladakh scouts have become tales of legends. Their ability to climb the rugged Karakoram/Himalayan Range during the war put even the hardened mountain goats to shame. Their motivation to fight was far higher than the normal Indian solider. For them it was a fight to defend their unique way of life which has been guaranteed by the founding fathers of our country. This should be the basis of our future organisation border forces and operational planning.

Their main job should be to coordinate the operations of the borders managing agencies, planning and execution of civil, Para military and military projects along the borders.

Policy involving citizenship ID cards, Fencing, creating and maintaining Border Roads and Border Canals/Ducts etc should be handled exclusively by this commission. They should also be involved in developing a central software platform meant exclusively for the requirement of the border CPO’s. This could then be integrated into the central police software. They should not be involved in the day to day operations of the borders but help provide the coordination that currently lacks our borders today. They should also help in the effective coordination of the same with other allied authorities of the state and district.

As this board has nil or very little interaction with the average citizen, the need to include other representative should not arise.

An officer of the rank of Additional Secretary should function as Secretary UBPMC coordination.

The entire concept should work on quality and not on quantity. What has happened last 55 years has proven to us that the concept of employing 100 policemen where 5 were needed served no one except the criminals and terrorists. We would need to realise that policing is the most difficult and different of all governmental jobs undertaken. This has proved to be the biggest failure of the system in the last 50 years. Our democracy has survived, our judiciary has survived, our Armed forces have survived, our fourth estate has survived but our policing has let us down. There has been a total blame game on accepting the problem as it has been. We are a growing nation having 35% population under 25 years of age. This generation is yearning for change and if this change is got from within the system they will start demanding it through other means not generally suitable in a democracy. We need to realise that the entire system will need to be radically changed. Just a mere changing of names or designations in the police force will not help. The new generation is far more integrated with the other more modern countries of this world and for them to understand that the most basic thing in a civil society needs to be changed to global standards. When we can match global standards for phones, railways, airports, technology why cannot we match the same for policing. What has been given above is a part of the global policing concept that most of the countries in the developed world follow. Ours is a difficult nation to govern but then we have moved on from being just recently independent to fast growing democracy. We can’t this dream of our freedom fighters and other founding father of our nation go waste. This is just not a country abut one of the most holy land in the world. It has been the nursery of 4 major religions of this world. No religion has been prosecuted and most religions have thrived in this land. Even minorities communities have ruled this nation for decades and their integration into the society has been accomplished without a hitch.

If we are unable to change the policing, we will have more problems with our law and order in the future. Even today we have a vast fertile area which cannot be cultivated, new industries cannot be setup just because a few criminals are hell bent upon destroying the fabric of that community. We need to ponder over why certain areas of this nation are poor in spite of having vast natural and man made resources in that areas. What are the reasons that industries do not set up factories in such areas and keep their factories hundreds of kilometres away from these areas? To employ productively 50crore (500million) people (working population of India) would be impossible until each and every possible area of this country is industrialised. A place to look at this is china, the way they have cleared the entire country of crooks and thugs has been remarkable and it has ensured that most of their smaller cities and town have caught on to the economic boom that is sweeping the country. This is in mark contrast to India where majority of states are outside the radar of this boom. Large areas in states like Assam, other N.E states; Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, etc have been largely if not totally been left outside the economic boom. This disparity has the potential of a future possibly civil war which would be very difficult to curb. We have been lucky with the fact that most of the people in this country are god fearing and that has largely help the ruling class to linger on with a system that has failed on all counts.

In this nation of 100 crores can the proponents of the current system cite even one common man who supports this stagnant system? This is the chance, the nation is undergoing change and the economy is on the upswing, People are expecting change and what better time then now to do that.

The battle to fight crime and criminal is not the easiest any where in the world but with a small thought and beginning we can achieve a better and a more peaceful society for ourselves and for our country.