Politics and piquant terror conclusions

The politics over terror has a long history in India. Over the years it has built a number of stereotypes leading, in many cases, to the brutalisation of the minority community. The Malegaon blasts cases of 2006 and 2008 helped change the perspective for the first time even if it began on the same stereotypical note with a number of Muslims initially jailed as suspects.

Their exoneration and the charging of the members of a Hindu group much later was the first indication that, may be, the acts had been carried out by Hindu zealots aiming to disrupt communal harmony or perpetrating acts of revenge. The swing in the direction of suspicion helped reiterate the argument that terror has no religion and terrorists should be brought to book regardless of their religion or political persuasion.

The always moving wheels of politics also change direction, which is why we are now seeing an extraordinary change in the Malegaon blasts cases in which Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and five others had been charged with committing a terrorist act. While the ATS Mumbai had concluded long ago that they had no evidence against the Muslims charged with the crime, the NIA, which had taken over the investigation in Maharashtra in 2011, has now concluded that it has little evidence against the people charged.

The changed findings in the case mean that who perpetrated the act of terror is now a complete mystery. The realistic conclusion to draw from these sudden about-turns in the investigation is that the probing agencies and the prosecuting authorities are susceptible to change with swings in political fortune.

The fear is that the independence of government agencies probing crimes has been compromised so much that authentic investigation and prosecution, even in cases of terrorism, has become a rarity. The Malegaon blasts cases are not the only investigations that appear to have suffered from heavy doses of politics. Any number of instances of the agencies barking up the wrong tree has been documented, including the Akshardham temple attack in 2002.

At the root of all this is also the lack of thoroughness in the investigation process and the interminable delays in the judicial system, particularly when it comes to justice delivery. The loudness with which such issues are politicised also helps bring about these swings in the findings. Be it the Ishrat Jahan encounter case or the Malegaon blasts, the loud play of politics uses the delays to whip up a campaign to exonerate those charged or change the scenario altogether. Even so, the losers are those who are charge-sheeted for crimes as they suffer incarceration which brutalises them needlessly. And indeed if they are innocent, they are the real victims of Indian politics, irrespective of their religion.