Lest We Forget

As the nation observes the fourth anniversary of the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai, there are still many unfinished tasks arising from the strikes to which attention needs to be drawn. These are the following:

• The Government of Pakistan is yet to complete the prosecution and trial of the seven masterminds of the strikes. They have been arrested, but the trial against them before an anti-terrorism tribunal of Rawalpindi is being repeatedly adjourned under some pretext or the other, thereby making a mockery of the trial.
• Pakistan has not taken any action  against the officers of its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who had helped the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in carrying out the strikes. We find ourselves without any diplomatic or covert action options to force the Pakistani State to act against them. This dramatically illustrates our powerlessness in the face of the continued sponsorship of terroism by Pakistan against Indian citizens in Indian territory.
• Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed, the Amir of the LET and its political wing Jamaat-ud-Dawa, continues to be a free man. Pakistan has repeatedly rejected all the evidence produced by us against him.
• The anti-India terrorist infrastructure of the LET in Pakistani territory continues to function unimpaired. The Pakistani State is not prepared to act against it. By our continued reluctance to revive our covert action capability, we have denied ourselves the means of acting against it covertly and effectively.
• We have not yet been able to reconstruct the conspiracy in our territory completely. We have not been able to identify the Indian Muslims who might have acted as the accomplices of the LET in the planning and execution of the strikes and arrest them. We have not been able to interrogate thoroughly David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana of the Chicago cell of the LET and establish the identities of their contacts in India who helped them in the collection of operational intelligence for being passed on to the LET in Pakistan. It is inconceivable that Headley, who repeatedly visited India at the instance of the LET and the ISI, had no contacts in India on whose help he relied. The sleeper cells in the Indian Muslim community which helped Headley and Rana remain unidentified and unneutralised.
• We have not yet been able to establish how Headley and Rana repeatedly managed to evade detection by the Indian intelligence and immigration during their visits to India before the strikes.
• The quality of our investigation has not improved despite our setting up the National investigation Agency (NIA) after the strikes. This would be evident from the poorly detected cases that have taken place after 26/11.
• The exercise to set up a National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) has got stuck up without any forward movement due to political mishandling by the Government of India.
• We have failed to mobilise and persuade the relatives of the foreigners killed to act legally against the ISI in the courts of their countries.
• We have failed to take follow-up action against our TV channels and TV journalists on whom strictures were passed by the Supreme Court while confirming the death sentence on Ajmal Kasab. These strictures related to their irresponsible live coverage of the strikes, which complicated the tasks of the security forces. The channels and the journalists have succeeded in creating a wall of silence around their sins of commission and omission. It is as if the TV journos are a law unto themselves and not subject to any scrutiny or even public debate on the judicial strictures.

Unless these tasks are completed, we can never talk of closure in respect of the terrorist strikes. 

Will the closure ever come? I have my doubts unless the voters decide to teach  all concerned a lesson during the forthcoming elections and continue to keep the spotlight on the irresponsible and unprofessional  coverage by the TV journos.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies.