Curtains are Down

The chilling accounts of the fake encounter in which Ishrat Jahan and three others were killed in 2004, further reinforce the apprehensions that the campaign against terrorism by security agencies has gone totally haywire. It was only three years before that veils over fallacious investigation were ripped apart and the hands of the real culprits began to be unravalled. From Malegaon to Samjhauta Express and Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Dargah, complicityof outfits affiliated to Hindutva ideology has been etched to relief in these incidents. In several of these bomb blasts the hands of the so called jihadi outfits had been taken for granted, widely publicized and several ‘terrorists’ were even arraigned before courts and even ‘confessions’ were secured and paraded. Thanks to some genuine investigation by the newly created NIA, the clumsy work by the Intelligence Bureau has come to the fore.
But the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case has taken the issue a step further. It is only now known that some official agencies were not only messing up the cases, but stand formally accused of criminal conspiracy, abduction, planting of evidence, and worse, plain, cold-blooded murder. CBI evidence suggests that one of the victims of encounter killings was actually in touch with the IB long before he was gunned down. A supplementary charge-sheet is about to be filed. Surprisingly, all this was done to boost public image of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and paint him a warrior against terrorism, which till then was solely considered a handiwork of Muslim terrorists.
If the criminal collusion of the officials is indeed going to be proved, it is time the entire operations against terrorism are reassessed as they no longer seem to be aimed at catching the culprits behind terrorism, but victimizing people totally innocent of any crimes.