State wakes up to sleeper cell terror

State wakes up to sleeper cell terror

VIJAY DEO JHA

Ranchi, March 10: Suspected Indian Mujahideen (IM) agent Manzar Imam (35), arrested from Ranchi on March 4, has divulged names of six aides and confirmed the existence of IM sleeper cells in Jharkhand, sounding a red alert on behind-the scenes activities that so far had managed to stay off the intelligence radar. Sleeper cells are support systems used by terror groups in places considered low-key, safe havens. Radical hard-liners use these cells to hide active agents pursued by police and intelligence personnel or prepare logistics before a big-ticket attack. Imam, arrested by a joint team of police and intelligence agencies from Kanke on March 4, and grilled both by city police and National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Ranchi and the NIA in Ernakulam, confessed to six aides from Ranchi and Ramgarh and their role in a sleeper cell. Federal agency NIA contacted intelligence counterparts based in Ranchi, which sent Union ministry of home affairs a report based on Imam’s confession. The report added the six suspects, all educated and without any criminal record, were “recruited and indoctrinated” by the IM to expand its terror base in Jharkhand. Imam’s name figured in several acts of terror, including the February 21 Hyderabad blasts. His close associate Danish Riyaz from Bariatu was arrested in Vadodara on June 21, 2011, in connection with Ahmedabad blasts. According to Imam, Salahuddin, Abrar and Haidar are from Ranchi, while Farhatullah, Muajamin and Hidayatullah are from Ramgarh. Intelligence sources refused to reveal details about them but hinted that Haidar was a frequent visitor to Aurangabad in Bihar as he was given the important assignment of creating similar network in the district’s Madanpur area. “All of them are under our close watch. It is a big network that operates in a secret manner. It is a part of a larger investigation,” said an intelligence source. Central intelligence agencies have also set alarm bells ringing by saying they have specific inputs on the flow of foreign funds in Jharkhand from West Asia to allegedly fund terror activity. Jharkhand, strategically located with hidden forest tracks to bordering states, can prove a useful hideout for terror networks as it has for Maoist cadres. Off and on, worrying reports of Jharkhand’s link with terror groups have surfaced since the US consulate attack in January 2002, when a suspect died in Khirpur, Hazaribagh. Only a concerted effort by state police intelligence, central agencies and military intelligence can bust terror networks and shelters. Jharkhand police also needs to sharpen its antennae. Insiders said state police two months ago refused to act on a specific tip-off about the consignment of sophisticated arms stocked in a densely populated area of Ranchi.

Your class enemies too have right Comrades

Your class enemies too have right Comrades
VIJAY DEO JHA
RANCHI   
They planted bomb in the belly of a dead CRPF jawan, Babulal Patel, grabbed another fateful to and yanked off his eyes, chopped private parts before finishing them during a bloody encounter in Latehar this gone week.They yell to move from ambush to ambush to wage wars on establishment, class enemy corporate interests that they allege are grabbing and fast belting land and resources of poor tribal: a fact or fancied fear.They repeatedly refer their commitment on June 2010 Document’ to wage violence as the central instrument of revolutionary overthrow of government by 2040. They refer their fight across the globe in standard radical discourse right from Philippines to Saranda and many a hitherto unknown locations in Jharkhand.When mutilated bodies of 10 dead jawans of the CRPF were collected from blistered Latehar datelines their commitment for the Geneva Convention dealing with ‘Prisoners of War’ and ‘Honour to dead,’ suffered a collateral damage in the battlefield.Three civilians too died during the single blast when they were allegedly forced by the security forces to collect bodies of two of their dead. Maoists had used them as booby trap by placing bodies on pressure bomb. This is something hunter versus hunter fight, each wearing victimhood as virtue, each portraying the other in villainy, each promising the portents of its calling. The very definition of ‘class enemy,’ method of brutal execution and mutilation of set conventions has long been debated in the top echelons of the CPI (Maoist).It was debated when Maoists had chopped head of Jharkhand police’s special branch officer Fransis Induwar in excess show of brutality. Induwar was a ‘Prisoner of War’ in Maoists’ own discourse. That time the then Second in Command of People’s Liberation of Guerrilla Army, Koteswar Rao, had admitted it as wrong saying the lower rung executed it without permission. And then the killing of poor cop, Lucas Tete, at Lakhisarai in Bihar of Induwar order, and, that poor cop at Bhandaria in Garhwa who was set on fire.  In both the case Maoists were criticized for targeting and killing the very poor tribal class on whose name they have been fighting. In between hundred got killed in similar fashion whose alleged association with class enemy or corporate interest were claimed and disputed by both sides.Noted radical Left ideologue GN Saibaba calls it a global propaganda. “Long back Maoists had set a clear guideline against brutal methods. There is no proof Maoist planted bomb in the belly. Why Maoist will waste their bomb and weapons in such things? This is cook and bull story,” Saibaba told the Pioneer over telephone. But the police counter the allegations of any kind.Last year the central committee of the CPI (Maoist) had announced to end cruel form of execution.  Maoist leader and spokesperson Manash had said: “Class enemies were killed by slitting their throat…we have decided to stop this. It has already been stopped more or less.” But dispatches from Latehar and mortuary of the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences come with disturbing confirmations.If one to believe Saibaba; security forces might have planted a bomb to plant a cock and bull story. “There are evidences that forces had used innocent villagers as human shield in Latehar,” he said. To Saibaba, the killing of Induwar was a sporadic case and such cases make Maoist leadership worried and they take corrective and punitive steps. The claim requires examples that are not too many and confirming. But he accepts the trend of brutal killing became prevalent after 1998.A senior journalist who has watched and reported Naxal movement calls it a simple of case of Maoists’ deviation from ideology and top leadership fast losing command over lower rung. “When they have guns in their hands they care little for ideology. Woefully Maoist movement has lost on destination,” he said.Something seems have lost in the claim and counter claim of welfare democracy and people’s revolution because this ongoing battle is red of hue and creed: bluntly, bullet for bullet, blood for blood.